PfSense decent Open Source Firewall to reduce costs!
Updated February 07, 2018
PfSense decent Open Source Firewall to reduce costs!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with pfSense
Pfsense is our layer 2 software firewall that allows us a better control over the overrides for the internet navigation; give us an accurate integration with a ton of plugins you can build your on appliance using a decent desktop; to manage with ease two ISPs, make the load balancing, set the VPN for your external users, reduce the downtime's, backup your config, and restore it in matter of seconds. Pfsense work together with the IPS sensor from the basic to the hard case. It's a 10 in our organization.
- Open Source (free). Pay only for support.
- Plugins are the crown of the product.
- An extensive dashboard gives you all that you need to have on the first look.
- Traffic graphics are wonderful.
- You can't integrate modem functionality into a pFSense box.
- I don't want to go completely open source if downtime is a risk factor that could lose more income that supported products would cost.
- Can be an expensive configuration if you choose to build your own pFsense box for several ISP.
- For non expertise users is a pain in the neck to manage the web GUI.
- Moving to a FWaaS solution installed on a decent computer the initial investment was moderate to cover 50 to 250 users, but still being cheaper that a Fortinet, Cisco ASA, or a Sophos UTM.
- Paying only for support can be a double edge knife, cause you need to identify what's the goal of the request, or your drown into a an endless list of requirements.
- To stay in the top with the half of a regular investment pFSense gives a wide variety of plugins that will give you a deep knowledge of your security flaws and strong points.
It's an open source solution can support from 50 to 700 user without sweating and with the half of the standard bundle investment that will take to deploy a FortiGate UTM, or a Cisco ASA, also a Sophos UTM that are quite remarkable units but to pFSense saves you money and will cut the lack of extras that has other branches using their plugins and the easy deployment steps this is a Firewall based on an open source software well fed for clever IT admins or pro Linux companies.
Using pfSense
2 - IT Administration, Network Security Administrator, these to colleagues manage the core of pfSense, deploy policies, set new configuration, limit simultaneous connections on a per-rule basis, use third-party tools to detect ports connections and protocols that can't be set on their IP and MAC Policies. Give support to end user according to their network access requirements.