The best small-to-medium business software based firewall
May 10, 2021

The best small-to-medium business software based firewall

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

pfSense Community Edition (open source)

Overall Satisfaction with pfSense

We use pfSense on our campus as our primary firewall/internet gateway as well as DNS, DHCP, time, and VPN server/gateway. It also handles internal routing across our VLANs. The versatility/feature set is helpful as it avoids the need for running multiple other servers for a small-business environment.

Pros

  • OpenVPN is very easy to set up and administer.
  • The web UI makes it very easy to configure.
  • The feature set is broad and powerful.

Cons

  • No official central management system (cloud or otherwise).
  • Support for WireGuard VPN is limited.
  • Campus network has been very stable.
  • VPN is reliable and fast.
  • Saved money vs other expensive enterprise solutions.
pfSense is a lot cheaper and has higher firewall throughput per dollar than "enterprise" network appliances. It's also significantly easier to configure and learn. It may not have some of the "enterprise" features or the support level that someone like Cisco has, but for small to medium businesses or non-critical functions it's the best software based network appliance.

Do you think pfSense delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with pfSense's feature set?

Yes

Did pfSense live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of pfSense go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy pfSense again?

Yes

Cloudflare, NGINX, Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)
pfSense is an excellent all-in-one solution for firewall/routing/VPN and other network-related roles that a small to medium business would need (or even advanced home users). It's extremely powerful and relatively easy to use.

It may be less suited for larger businesses where having an all-in-one product could be a disadvantage where a spread infrastructure is desired, very high scalability is necessary, or specific enterprise features aren't available.

pfSense Feature Ratings

Firewall
7.1
Identification Technologies
6
Content Inspection
4
Policy-based Controls
7
Active Directory and LDAP
7
Firewall Management Console
9
Reporting and Logging
6
VPN
8
High Availability
8
Stateful Inspection
8
Proxy Server
8

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