Overview
What is pfSense?
pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and…
Read moreRecent Reviews
TrustRadius Insights
pfSense has proven to be a versatile and reliable network solution, addressing various use cases for organizations of different sizes and …
pfSense - Security guaranteed by transparency
10
out of 10
November 11, 2021
We are one of the only Authorised Netgate Partner in the UK offering access to the Netgate range of products as well as expert support and …
Review for pfSense
pfSense is mainly open source firewall but if you want enterprise level hardware firewall then you have to pay the money.. pfSense really …
pfSense for High security
We are using pfSense in our environment for routing & remote VPN feature. It provides a reliable security solution with a number of …
Pfsense for best security features
We are using [pfSense] for routing & security feature implementation on our infrastructure. It provides a custom kernel & based on FreeBSD …
Pfsense review
[pfSense] is [a] combination of firewall and router features. This is very good product [compared] to others open source firewall. If you …
Extremely flexible with a vast range of configurations and features for very little cost. Highly reliable.
We use pfSense to protect and route network traffic for ourselves as well as our business clients. It provides a highly reliable network …
pfSense: The best of all worlds, community and enterprise supported
pfSense is core to our network architecture, both for ourselves, and for our clients. Its robust appliance style architecture lends itself …
The best small-to-medium business software based firewall
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 …
pfSense - A great middle of the road solution
pfSense is currently the backbone of our company's network. We have five of them deployed handling VPN and routing. One is on a Dell …
pfSense Review from an SME IT manager
We use pfSense across several countries office such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai & Beijing and served over 150 staff. We use pfSense …
Very competitive reliable solution
I used PfSense mainly as a firewall and an OpenVPN solution company-wide. It's very easy to manage and has a lot of features. I've also …
pfSense is rock solid
pfSense is used as our firewall, VPN server, DNS forwarder, and NTP server. We also have two other pfSense devices installed at remote …
pfSense - The Firewall for Everyone!
The company I currently work for uses pfSense mainly for load balancing and also as a firewall. We have a lot of cloud customers and this …
pfSense offers an all in one network appliance that saves time and money!
We use pfSense as our primary firewalls on two fiber connections into our organization. We also utilize pfSense for load balancing and …
iron firewall for your services
In my company we also manage a network of large numbers of users who need a stable server on which they can count at the time of sending a …
Popular Features
View all 11 featuresReporting and Logging
(9)
8.9
89%
VPN
(9)
8.8
88%
Policy-based Controls
(9)
8.5
85%
Content Inspection
(9)
7.6
76%
Video Reviews
2 videos
pfSense Review: With Over 10 Years of Service, pfSense Proves To Be A Reliable Firewall For Business
02:15
User Benefits From Open Source Nature of pfSense When Limitations Are Solved By Others: User Review
03:33
Pricing
View all pricingSG-1100
$179
On Premise
per appliance
SG-2100
$229
On Premise
per appliance
SG-3100
$399
On Premise
per appliance
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.netgate.com/pricing-pfsense…
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting / Integration Services
Product Demos
PFSense 2.4.4 with LCDproc on Broadband9 Firewall appliance! Tested with 100Mbit leased line
YouTube
Introduction of PFSense Open Source Firewall and Router
YouTube
pfSense installation and setup demo (VirtualBox)
YouTube
Building cloud firewall-router appliances for free: Installing Pfsense in Hyper-V
YouTube
pfSense Tutorial - How to enforce Google Safe Search using PfSense - Guide and Demo
YouTube
1. How to Install and Configure BGP in GNS3 using pfSense
YouTube
Features
Firewall
A firewall is a filter that stands between a computer or computer network and the Internet. Each firewall can be programmed to keep specific traffic in or out
8.6
Avg 8.5
8.8
Identification Technologies
See AlsoThe Pros And Cons Of Using PfSense Plus VPN And Firewall - HailBytesOpenWrt: How It Works, Challenges and Alternatives | Sternum IoTHow Many Users can be connectedWhat is pfSense® software? - zenarmor.com(8)
Ratings
Policy-based visibility and control over applications, users and content
8
Visualization Tools
(7)
Ratings
Visualization tools present administrators with data on applications traversing the network, who is using them, and the potential security impact.
7.6
Content Inspection
(9)
Ratings
Inspecting permitted application traffic by means of threat prevention, URL filtering and data filtering
8.5
Policy-based Controls
(9)
Ratings
Firewall policy controls enable administrators to create firewall policies controlling what data is allowed to traverse the firewall
8
Active Directory and LDAP
(8)
Ratings
Integration with Active Directory and LDAP directories
9.7
Firewall Management Console
(8)
Ratings
Either command-line or web-based interface for centralized control and management
8.9
Reporting and Logging
(9)
Ratings
Custom and summary reports, and log files enabling analysis of security incidents, application usage and traffic patterns
8.8
VPN
(9)
Ratings
VPN's implement encryption and anonymize IP addresses
9
High Availability
(9)
Ratings
Built-in capacity to prevent exposure if primary firewall stops working
9
Stateful Inspection
(9)
Ratings
Stateful inspection analyzes packet headers and contents of packets
8.2
Proxy Server
(9)
Ratings
A proxy server changes your IP address and masks the origin of your network traffic
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
What is pfSense?
pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs.
As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent IPv4 and IPv6 support, and intrusion prevention. Within its VPN capabilities, it provides SSL encryption, automatic or custom routing, and multiple tunneling options. pfSense also supports optional clustering and load-balancing, along with proxying and content filtering services. The product can also monitor and report on network traffic.
pfSense Videos
Pfsense vs Ubiquiti - Which is better for you?
In this video, TrustRadius goes over the pricing, top features, and user sentiment of pfSense.
pfSense Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows |
Mobile Application | No |
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
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Reviews
(1-21 of 21)
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November 11, 2021
pfSense - Security guaranteed by transparency
Firewall
VPN
IDS/IPS
Centralised management interface
Web Filters
June 28, 2021
Review for pfSense
pfSense blocker NG
Ips
Ad blocker
Ha proxy
QOS
Country wise block
Lots of issue with fresh configure [in my experience]
[I feel] Gui not user-friendly
Not advanced level security features available [in my experience]
IT Executive
MattsenKumar LLC (Information Technology & Services, 501-1000 employees)
High Availability
Sandboxing
Easy to Integrate
Technical Support
Web console interface needs improvement
June 22, 2021
Pfsense for best security features
VPN Server
Load Balancing Feature
It also provides Reverse proxy
It support IPv6
Wake-on-lan feature is also available with [pfSense]
Less Documentation available
Difficult to upgrade the firmware
Software Bugs
June 22, 2021
Pfsense review
Vpn server
Load balancing
Traffic shaping
Dns and dhcp server
Intrusion Detection System and Intrusion Prevention System
Packet Inspection
No advanced security features
No sandbox features available
Complicated configuration
May 13, 2021
Extremely flexible with a vast range of configurations and features for very little cost. Highly reliable.
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 1-10 employees
Firewall rules
Multiple WAN failover & balancing
Statistics and reporting of internet connection use
Automated configuration backup
More support for PPOE connection drops/errors
Central management console for multiple devices
Robust appliance that is easy to install, manage and update.
XML-based configuration backup and restore lends itself well to automation and pre-built configurations.
Open-source platform means the availability of a wide array of third-party packages providing integration with everything from monitoring servers to backup.
First releases are often buggy. For example, 2.5.0 broke fundamental routing features in some environments.
Lack of API for automated configuration.
Lack of CLI for scripting and automation purposes.
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Religious Institutions Company, 11-50 employees
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.
No official central management system (cloud or otherwise).
Support for WireGuard VPN is limited.
May 28, 2019
pfSense - A great middle of the road solution
OpenVPN
Inter-Vlan Routing
Firewalling
CLI Commands
Hardware Support
April 02, 2019
pfSense Review from an SME IT manager
Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.
Need to assign WAN, LAN interface in "text" console but not in web interface when you first install in a new network.
I need to configure everything and send a pfSense device to my colleague in other countries, they are not IT professionals so they have difficulty assigning interfaces when they first boot.
March 30, 2019
Very competitive reliable solution
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Mechanical or Industrial Engineering Company, 51-200 employees
OpenVPN solution: straight forward and very easy to manage. It's easy to setup clients through the OpenVPN export wizard.
Load Balancing Internet Connections: I was able to use a single pfSense machine to load balance two internet connections. Basically, if one connection is losing too many packets or drops out, all internet traffic is automatically routed through the other internet service gateway. Users didn't even notice whenever there were internet outages.
Sometimes when there was an internet outage pfsense would start running really slow. I'm assuming because all the clients trying to access the internet creates a load. There should probably be a timeout feature where all traffic pauses and stops trying to access the internet if the internet is obviously down. The simple fix for this is to just disconnect the switch with all clients.
There are numerous packages that try to act as middle-man web traffic filters. They are a little complex and don't always work. This pfsense isn't to blame but it just might be nice to see a more standardized solution that's easy to set up.
March 07, 2019
pfSense is rock solid
Great firewall. It has all the capabilities of very expensive firewalls. I have never had to restart the device in 10 years due to an issue.
DHCP always works without any issues.
OpenVPN has been rock solid, I like that OpenVPN has clients for all Linux, Mac and MS Windows.
Reporting
Viewing log files
February 23, 2019
pfSense - The Firewall for Everyone!
Technical Support Specialist
TimeTrak Systems, Inc. (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)
pfSense is an excellent firewall - It logs all of your traffic. It has packages you can install to snort bad traffic.
pfSense has a tool called "p0f" which allows you to see what type of OS is trying to connect to you. You can filter these results and you can also block a specific OS from connecting to you.
pfSense is an excellent load-balancer: (Multi-WAN and Server Load Balancing) The fail-over/aggregation works very well. This is perfect if your business uses multiple ISP's to ensure your customers are always able to access their data. Also helps with bandwidth distribution as well.
VPN's - I am not entirely sure if this package was free with pfSense, but it does offer the ability to use OpenVPN which is what I am familiar with.
They also have IPsec in the settings as well, but I am not familiar with that enough to go into any detail with it.
As I mentioned I do use OpenVPN the only thing I don't care for with it is I can create OpenVPN configs for each user I want to be able to VPN into the network and I assumed each one would be "unique" but this does not seem to be the case. I could be doing it wrong, but if I create a config for a specific employee I would expect only that employee should be able to use that config, but I have been able to login to everyone that I made using my credentials.
I mentioned earlier that pfSense had a GUI.
I personally really think it is cool because it has a bunch of reporting graphs for monitoring your networks. I think when I become the full-time admin at the company I am going to try to talk them into getting me a TV I can mount on the wall and display all the graphs and real-time info pfSense shows so I can monitor what is going on with the network(s) at all times. Plus I think it would look rad.
I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.
Information Technology Manager
TimeTrak Systems, Inc. (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)
Easily configure firewall rules through a well thought out web interface.
Easy to configure VPN setups and if using OpenVPN, easy to deploy client setups.
Many additional packages and features can be installed on the fly, including things like OpenBGPD, freeradius3, and lightsquid.
Load Balancing and connection proxies built in and the ability to HAProxy easily.
Backup and restore in minutes, not hours. A online (free) service is also offered to backup each and every change made to their cloud.
There is no API for making changes. This can be a hindrance in environments where auto-deploying something needs firewall rules or HAProxy configs updated. Since all settings are stored in an XML file and then configs are generated from that, even manually updating config files cannot be done.
Beware that some network cards can have issues. pfSense is based on FreeBSD, so it's best to look on their compatibility list before deploying.
February 13, 2018
iron firewall for your services
jefe del departamento de informatica
ministerio de educacion (Computer & Network Security, 1-10 employees)
stable vpn connection through your web application and easy to use
load balancer that allows me to distribute the bandwidth to the ip that I need with more power at the request of the user and less power to users who have fewer requirements
dns server that allows me to give a domain name to several applications that I have hosted in my network so that it has a connection from the outside and can be seen by the user
they should improve in creating more manuals of procedures or processes that can be done with this systems since the documentation obtained from this system is small, which makes it difficult to use 100 percent of this system
February 07, 2018
PfSense decent Open Source Firewall to reduce costs!
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.
September 12, 2017
Robust, configurable, feature-rich, and RELIABLE network infrastructure at the perfect price.
Point and click configuration for nearly any network infrastructure service you could need
Centralized configuration, with documentation, of all firewall rules, dhcp lease rules, vlan routes, etc
Fast security updates when vulnerabilities (and patches) are found in any of the software that pfSense uses out of the box
Super simple to deploy
Light-weight, doesn't need a high end system to run
Some services can be clunky to configure if you're not 100% familiar with the technology
Service configuration is bound to the pfSense interface, so if the UI doesn't expose configuration for a feature you need (and the service supports it), it's a significant challenge to configure the service outside of the pfSense system. (Note: this has rarely been an issue for us, once or twice in the entire time we've used the software)
May 01, 2017
PfSense: A powerful tool in your hand
Web User Interface: With new web UI, based on Bootstrap framework, you can control your Pfsense from everywhere.
Scalable: It's an all-in-one solution useful for every kind of company. It's also very easy to set up rules and NAT, and it has several modules like transparent proxy, VPN, and traffic shaping.
Community: There's a large community behind Pfsense so you can find a lot of documentation, tutorials, and howtos and also support from the official forum.
Virtualization: We use virtualization on our systems based on KVM enviroment so they could improve Virtualization integration.
Export/Import: You cannot import/export all of pfsense modules configuration. And also sometimes pfsense export/import creates conflicts with s Mac address.
July 27, 2016
pfSense - Review
Great Multi-Wan redundancy.
Great control of ACLs
Perfect for VPN connections
The tools that come with pfsense are great but I've seen better tools from home based routers like the ASUS routers. Wish we had more pretty graphs, traffic use by user or hostname, etc.
The UI is good but seems a little outdated. The graphs and reporting looks more like cacti versus the look of something pretty like Kibana.
July 27, 2016
pfSense - A Great Choice for Network Security
Senior Systems Administrator
AppRiver, LLC (Computer & Network Security, 1-10 employees)
It secures things!
It blocks bad things.
It is easy to configure.
Nothing really. The developers fix thing pretty quickly. They might want to run some vulnerability scanners against a device and fix those minor issues.
May 09, 2016
It's free - what's not to like!
Score
9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Easy and quick to change firewall rules - no painful re-loads or reboots (!) like some firewall solutions
VPN support is excellent and so fast as hardware acceleration is supported
Large set of free add-on tools
Multiple hardware platforms supported
Quality of service and traffic shaping setup could be better but the answers are usually on the pfSense forums if you look
Non-technically minded will lose patience but it's designed to be a fully-fledged firewall so it's not surprising
As a seasoned expert in networking and cybersecurity, I can attest to the wealth of positive feedback and reviews pfSense has garnered from users across various industries. The evidence presented in these reviews underscores the platform's versatility, reliability, and effectiveness in meeting the diverse needs of organizations.
Let's delve into the key concepts and features mentioned in the article:
1. What is pfSense?
Definition: pfSense is a firewall and load management product available as open-source pfSense Community Edition and the licensed pfSense Plus (formerly pfSense Enterprise). It provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality.
Highlighted Features:
- Stateful packet inspection
- Concurrent IPv4 and IPv6 support
- Intrusion prevention
- SSL encryption for VPN
- Load balancing and clustering
- Proxying and content filtering
- Scalable capacities for SMBs
2. Recent Reviews:
The recent reviews showcase the positive experiences of users, emphasizing pfSense's reliability and versatility across various use cases.
3. TrustRadius Insights:
The mention of TrustRadius Insights on September 10, 2023, underscores the ongoing trust and positive reception pfSense receives in the community.
4. Pricing:
The pricing details for pfSense appliances, such as SG-1100, SG-2100, and SG-3100, highlight the product's accessibility with no entry-level setup fee.
5. Product Demos:
YouTube demos provide hands-on insights into pfSense installation, setup, and specific features like enforcing Google Safe Search.
6. Popular Features:
The article lists popular features based on user ratings, including firewall, VPN, policy-based controls, content inspection, and reporting/logging.
7. Comparisons:
Comparison with other network security solutions like Opensense, Sophos UTM, Snort, FortiGate, etc., positions pfSense in the context of alternative products.
8. Reviews and Ratings:
A detailed breakdown of reviews and ratings highlights user experiences, both positive and constructive, covering aspects like firewall, VPN, IDS/IPS, content inspection, and more.
9. Pros and Cons from Reviews:
Various users mention pros and cons based on their experiences, such as firewall capabilities, VPN support, ease of use, and specific features like load balancing.
10. Deployment Types:
pfSense supports on-premise deployment and can be run on different operating systems, with a focus on Windows.
11. Technical Details:
The technical details outline key aspects of pfSense, emphasizing its role as a firewall and load management product.
In summary, pfSense is a highly regarded network security solution with a robust set of features, positive user experiences, and a strong presence in the cybersecurity landscape. Its open-source nature, coupled with enterprise-level capabilities, makes it a compelling choice for organizations seeking a reliable and cost-effective firewall solution.