--- title: Netgate pfSense Reviews meta_title: 'Netgate pfSense Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 326 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Netgate pfSense works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.7 review_count: 326 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-17' parent_category: name: Network Security url: https://www.g2.com/categories/network-security --- # Netgate pfSense Reviews **Vendor:** Netgate **Category:** [Firewall Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/firewall-software) **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 326 ## About Netgate pfSense pfSense® Plus software is the world’s most trusted firewall. The software has garnered the respect and adoration of users worldwide - installed well over three million times. Made possible by open source technology. Made into a robust, reliable, dependable product by Netgate. ## Netgate pfSense Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Netgate pfSense, valuing its intuitive interface and reliable management capabilities. (3 reviews) - Users value the **customizability** of Netgate pfSense, empowering them to configure their networks as desired. (2 reviews) - Users find the **easy setup** of Netgate pfSense straightforward, making it accessible for admins to configure effectively. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **control and flexibility** of Netgate pfSense, finding it secure and easy to manage. (2 reviews) - Users value the **robust security** of Netgate pfSense, finding it reliable and flexible for various networking needs. (2 reviews) - Control (1 reviews) - Users highlight the **excellent customer support** of Netgate pfSense, enhancing their experience with prompt assistance when needed. (1 reviews) - Users love the **customization options** of Netgate pfSense, enabling tailored configurations for unique network needs. (1 reviews) - Documentation (1 reviews) - Users highlight the **ease of implementation** of Netgate pfSense, allowing quick setup and configuration within minutes. (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **complex configuration** challenging, especially for newcomers, due to the steep learning curve. (2 reviews) - Users find the **difficult learning curve** of Netgate pfSense daunting, especially for those new to networking. (2 reviews) - Users note the **expertise required** to effectively navigate pfSense's complex interface and advanced features. (1 reviews) - Users find the **high resource usage** demanding, often consuming significant hardware memory during operation. (1 reviews) - Users feel there are **integration issues** with Netgate pfSense, affecting security and support for the CE edition. (1 reviews) - Users find the **lack of guidance** in pfSense challenging, especially without prior network knowledge or experience. (1 reviews) - Users find the **steep learning curve** of Netgate pfSense challenging, especially for those new to networking. (1 reviews) - Limited Options (1 reviews) - Poor Interface Design (1 reviews) - Users find the **poor support services** of Netgate pfSense problematic, making troubleshooting and upgrades frustrating. (1 reviews) ## Netgate pfSense Reviews ### 1. Open source and can be managed easily **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bikrant P. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 23, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Customer support and the product information in website **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Some packages are tough to run on 1 GB devices. Maybe some lighter version of package need to be developed. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using 1100, for a 50 number of user it is managing my network effeciently ### 2. Do what you need and more! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Felipe T. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Can tune and set pretty much anything related to networking. Another exciting aspect is the ability to download and install plugins, which add extra functionality to an already very functional device. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** On whatever section of the GUI you are in, there are many possible settings, but leaving them with their default values will suffice most of the time. I wonder if pfSense should have a quick settings view with only the most used options to make it easier for those who do not need all these extra settings. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** I got a pfSense to replace the router provided by my ISP. I got much more than a simple hardware upgrade. I'm studying about the pfSense capabilities and I'm getting very pleased with all the features it has and now I'm slowly implement in my network those features I deem useful to me. ### 3. Solid Network Devices with Great Security and Pricing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** We're able to feel confident about the security and performance of our network. We know pfSense defaults to secure configuration and know exactly what we've configured. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** There is no central management at this time. While not a big lift for our team, we do have to deploy changes to 11 locations individually. The lack of layer 7 filtering sometimes makes it challenging to block unwanted traffic, but PfBlocker does most of what we need. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** We're able to connect our locations securely and in a high performing fashion. We use Netgate pfSense as our firewall, router and DHCP server. ### 4. Set it and forget it **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Diego A. | Document Solutions Workflow Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 03, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** I bought a Netgate device because of the pfSense support and small footprint. And I wanted to run pfSense because I needed more options than a regular router provides plus, I wanted something that would run uninterrupted for months and years without needing to be restarted. Netgate + pfSense provided all for a very competitive price. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** I can't think of any downsides off the top of my head. Maybe the price of the appliances compared to off-the-shell routers? But then again, you are getting better quality hardware IMO. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** I don't need to run my VPN on a separate device anymore, which is great, and I can fine-tune my DNS and HDCP settings for each device with absolute control. I can also segregate devices into a guest network which increases my security. ### 5. Great Firewall with plenty of options **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luc S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** The UIS is easy touse and has tons of options. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** There is 2 option that is missing and would be greate to have - 2FA - UDP proxy (for NTP and DNS) **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Cost and easy to use, IPSec and normal VPN ### 6. Ecstatic and grateful for support received!! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael B. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Extremely knowledgeable with product. My support tech took time to listen and understand what we were attempting to accomplish while explaining the steps he took to accomplish the task at hand. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** The email support / easy to trigger disconnect and frustration if you are experiencing a "mission critical" situation. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Restoring configuration of a 4100 firewall ### 7. Powerful front-end security device **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James W. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** pfSense is rock solid, it is one of the few appliances that I never question. It is highly configurable for VLAN, DHCP, Routing and much more. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** I am unaware that pfSense has any down side. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** pfSense provides a rock solid front-end security gateway with DHCP for all of our VLANs. ### 8. pfSense is the ONLY way to do firewalls **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eric K. | Chief Technology Officer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 30, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Granular control over anything and everything firewall-related, including routing. Additionally, pfSense (Netgate) support is beyond stellar. They set the gold standard for product knowledge and support. I cannot recommend them highly enough. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** I had to do a little paradigm adjusting as I was used to doing things in different ways; however, any time you change vendors, this is going to occur. Netgate support was stellar and made the transition as painless as possible. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Site-to-Site VPN, access control, firewall rules, employee VPN, etc. ### 9. Run 8 casinos and hotels exclusively on pfSense **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eric H. | Director of I.T., Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** pdSense saves our company tens of thousands of dollars each year. It runs flawlessly on our VMware clusters and I've never had an outage in the 7 years I've ran it. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** The main downside is that almost everyone gives you a weird look when you tell them you're not spending $20K a year on Fortigate or PA licenses. A lot of people think pfSense is for home or small businesses that don't take security seriously. I kindly remind them that the NSA was caught once hiding a back door in Juniper's devices. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reliable and fast firewalls for our corporate and public WiFi networks. We use OpenVPN+Radius+Duo for free and secure VPN services for our employees. We use IPSec for Site to Site VPN tunnels to connect our multi-state properties together. ### 10. Support is Fast and very informative **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Allex L. | Cyber Security Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** The support ! even tought my support contract was expired ( the Pfsense was a gift ) , i couldn't upgrade it trought normal mean , contacted support within 15 min i had a reply and a link to the firmware needed to restore to default and all the procedure needed to complete the steps . asked follow up question and was anwsered correcly within a very short time frame **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Because of major update realease and the hardware that wasn't upgraded for a while couldn't upgrade to normal means and required support assistance ( which once contacted all was Easy to go arround ) **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Affordable soilution for homelab that support VLAN , well known technoilogies support and supported harware overtimes ### 11. Easy to use and works perfect! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Craig M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Easy to use and has many excellent features and addons. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** VPN has stopped working for a short while but has been fixed in a recent update. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** VPN from site to site and having it be a secure connection, website blocking and also cache most used sites and downloads saving bandwidth and internet speed. ### 12. Easy for the beginners and full feature for the professionals **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anthony C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 01, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Low requirement on on the hardware. You can run it on just about anything. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** pfSense CE is a bit outdated on the new hardware, pfSense plus lacks a direct installation image. Install the CE version then upgrade to the Plus version is a bit painful. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** What problem solved, not just one! The cost compared to Cisco was peanuts. The ability to install OpenVPN was a God send for the remote users. Stable is another primary reason. ### 13. Opensource software, professional support **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Greg K. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Pfsense is easy to use and includes everything a network engineer needs. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Tutorials and guides can be out of date but are usually sufficient to figure out what needs to be done. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** provides a uniform interface to manage multiple sites firewalls. ### 14. Best firewall/router ever **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rene H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 23, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** The best thing about PFSense is the capabilities it has and how it has implemented them. It's all quite straightforward, even if you have little knowledge about firewalls. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Interface can be slow if you haven't set up DNS properly. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using PFSense for its amazing routing and firewall capabilities. Setting up 4 internet connections on 1 device, using load balancing, is easy to achieve! ### 15. Easy to managment **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Erick V. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Many of the opensourse tools e.g. surica, opevnpn etc. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Its interface should be more user-friendly. And there should be no application control. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** In our company it helps us to network with our partners as well as our branches. ### 16. Rock solid network firewall platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** pfSense Plus has truly transformed my network experience. Its intuitive interface simplifies setup, making it accessible to all levels of users, even my coworker, which usually does not have much experience with firewalls can manage it. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** In a virtualized environment the performance is not the best unfortunately. Although we use high performance network cards on our hypervisor, it usually achieves about 2.5 Gigabits per seconds. Our regular setups do not reach those speeds, so this issue is not really important to us. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use pfSense to access our internal services through a wireguard vpn. Also we filter our dns requests using pfBlocker which has the benefit of blocking ads and unwanted hostnames. ### 17. Full option Firewall **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lohourignon Hervé O. | Information Technology Technician, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** the GUI is user friendly and contain descriptions to help pfsense administrator **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** I have a Netgate 6100 but I feel like the system work a bit slowly **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** it improved the security in my network, I can manage very easyly user authorisation and authentication now and remote VPN connection. ### 18. All the features you need for a network gateway **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** George C. | Network Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** I like that it can run in a VM as well as on dedicated hardware. It's easy to install and you get a GUI to configure everything. The user interface is fairly intuitive and the feature set is very rich. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Sometimes the extra software modules are not quite up to quality standards of the main software. They tend to be a big buggy at times. Although the frr module works okay, I wish it was a bit more mature. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** It works well for remote access and a point-to-point VPN. The OpenVPN implementation is very good and stable. Overall I've had very few support calls when using pfSense as a firewall and gateway. ### 19. Fast and efficient **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Darren N. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** The rapid response and the helpfulness of the support staff **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Absolutely nothing at all, I find the system to be perfect for what I need **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using this for client connectivity and for protecting our network ### 20. Reliable, feature rich and affordable for SMBs. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James P. | IT Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 02, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** We use pfSense to guard our mission critical VoIP cluster in a remote lights-out data center. The reliability of its "CARP" feature helps us maintain near-zero downtime for our client's phone calls. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Netgate does not provide a central management console for pfSense. Managing multiple installations, for example, requires manual remote access, version tracking, backup consolidation and statistic gathering. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** The online support community provides both a quick reference for technical issues and an easy path to master the platform. This allows out business to provide a unique solution to our clients. ### 21. The only firewall I would choose **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andres S. | CTO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 01, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** The interface and menus are built to explain what each setting will do. Having the piece of mind that I can apply a change and what the outcome will be is priceless. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Finding packages that enhance the features of pfSense can sometimes be difficult. A great deal of scrutiny is always good, since we are talking about a firewall, but having the more options would be great. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Connecting remote offices, securing internal networks, allowing secure remote management and overall making the user experience much more enjoyable when using the internet. ### 22. Great for Businesses of All Sizes **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** pfSense is a very scaleable solution. It is very easy for consultants like myself to install and train up the client's local IT contact to manage. HA is also a very nice touch. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Nothing really! I do wish there was a cloud portal to manage feild units :) **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Edge routing and firewalling. We have also used them as cloud based VPN consolodators. ### 23. Great products and support **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Full featured appliances and software with great support at a fraction of the cost of some other similar products **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Lack of native centralised management can make large deployments more time consuming to manage or require developing own management tools/processes **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Highly available networks with complex and diverse routing, multi WAN, VPN and many filtering options are easily solved ### 24. We use pfSense appliances for almost all our customers. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mario E. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** The easy-to-set GUI helps our team manage all the features we need to meet our clients' needs. It is a stable and strong open-source system with a lot of useful apps available. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** The complex and ineffective voice QoS feature, you should work on this issue and bring a more efficient way to manage QoS for VoIP. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** A low-cost and very efficient IPsec/OpenVPN solution that helps us benefit our clients. ### 25. Fast, reliable, confident **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Samuele B. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Really easy to use, good documentation, great support! **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Nothing! All is working well. VPN are really easy to configure and use. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Secure connection PTP to branches and personal to our dislocated personnel. ### 26. Excellent Firewall **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Can use own hardware with such a good firewall platform. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Pfsense is not for novice web users. Please make sure you have a good understanding of network protocals and firewall technology. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Heavily rely on haproxy for access to my internal resources. Also use openvpn for vlan routing through tunnel for geo network considerations. ### 27. PFSense Review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Axel S. | Chief Executive Officer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** PFSense is a Great Solution for Small Companies that are Cost-Sensitive but still require excellent Protection. Online Documentation is vast and easy to navigate and to implement. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Some basic Features are, at times, complicated to configure, and although a vast community is available for support, some solutions are not easy to implement for a normal end user. Software upgrades always need to be thoroughly tested as they can regularly break your Firewall Configs. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** PFSense has excellent Perimeter and Network Protection for smaller SMB's, and the Out of the Box features are great. VPN Solutions work great without significant Challenges. ### 28. Bricked device 1100 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leo P. | IT Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 26, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Raised a ticket in the early hours after a software fault. pfSense support responded with a solution within 30mins! didn't expect support out of hours, really impressed **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Nothing so far. The software and support has been great **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Providing open-source cost-effective solution that scale and provides flexibility for my needs as a home user. It also makes sense environmentally that their software can be updated unlike vendor routers that are thrown away after a time ### 29. Easiest to use Firewall Solution, period. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike T. | Assistant Director Of Operations-Compliance, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** I use it at home and work. Easy to set up, easy to configure. The community has been great. The few times I've contacted support, they have been excellent with a fast turnaround on my ticket. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** There have not been any downsides to using pfSense at home or in the office. pfSense does what I wanted it to do, and that was to protect my networks! **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** With the Netgate programmers actively working on FreeBSD, and add-ons such as Wireguard, that brings the added benefit of code that has been reviewed and is known to work in the firewall. ### 30. Main firewall system, work great ! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tanguy F. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 01, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** It provide a simple and user friendly interface, as well as a great security and fonctionnality panel. With Pfsense we can provide our customer the best solution for their firewall. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** The only issue so far has been when upgrading from PfSense 2.4.5p1 to PfSense+ 22.05; we need to flash the appliance and restore from an older version which is not great for stability and reliability. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps us solve the lack of security and functionality of the internet provider modem/router and allows us to provide our customers access to their servers through VPN. ### 31. The best firewall solutions **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eidy E. | Desarrollador de software, Administrador de redes y sistemas, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 04, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** The pfsense is the most complete perimeter firewall solution that I have used so far. This firewall greatly facilitates the work of network administrators and computer security specialists. Pfsense has many useful network tools and services such as dns forwarder or resolver, dhcp server, ntp server, radius, etc. Allows easy integration with LDAP and RADIUS servers. PFsense has a very intuitive and easy to use administration web interface. Managing vpns with openvpn is very comfortable for both servers and clients **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** pfsense still needs to improve a bit more on features like vpns with wireguard, export and imports wireguard vpns configs. pfsense it should also include a reverse web proxy service for use in perimeter firewalls. pfsense being based on freebsd should have the freebsd repositories active in order to install tools available from the freebsd software sources. example (pkg install mc) pfsense should have terminals tools like nano, mc, byobu, htop, ncdu installed to make it easier to work from the terminal. vpns such as softethervpn servers and clients should be included (https://www.softether.org/) The qemu-guest-additions should be officially included for the use of pfsense over Proxmox-ve should improve the way to revert changes from the terminal **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** pfSense the most stable, comfortable, safe and easy to use firewall that I have tested in my more than 10 years of experience working in networks. the high availability of the service of my work is thanks to pfsense ### 32. Reliable and good set of tools **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zoltan F. | Field Application Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 03, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** I have used pfSense on 3 installations for over 5 years. It installs easy, basic setup is easy, so as the daily operation. When I selected it I evaluated using plain Linux tools on Ubuntu server and Zentyal. pfSense gave me the functionality and ease of use I needed. I also find it reliable. After loading an updated driver few years back, which caused me some headache, I had no issues with reliability. I very rarely reboot it, usually only in case of some maintenance. As of today, it has been running 79 days since the last reboot. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Some functionality are not so easy to figure out how to configure for the first time, or not so easy to find in the menus. This applies e.g. to a bit more complicated routing. Over the years I had an issue that when load towards the internet was constantly high (well, relatively high - I have 100/100 Mbit/s connection), than occasionally it would freeze. After some googling I found the solution, it needed an updated NIC driver, the one it came with (allegedly the one built into BSD) was having a bug. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Home office internet router OpenVPN based remote access Site-to-Site VPN tunnel Implementing IP plan, by allocating DHCP addresses in a friendly UI Interface statistics ### 33. Great product, good support; Netgate doesn't fail to impress. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bill E. | IT Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 02, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Leaning on the open source community and having rock solid support who are aware of pretty much every issue in their Redmine is awesome, I always feel like if I have to go to TAC that the people who respond know their stuff. I like the modularity and the affordability of the appliances/software. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** There's no API, automation is moot because of this which seriously restricts its use in the enterprise. I can't deploy these at every site if I have to manually configure them or use some XML uploads. Another thing is vetting your versions for enterprise customers, I know Netgate can't predict everything, but these should be thouroughly tested or at the very least a PSA if there's a possibility of a large bug on upgrade. Lastly, another thing for enterprise customers, VPN usage. Every major firewall appliance builds off of a simple, existing VPN solution. It'd be nice to have more support for the OpenVPN addons for instance, things like SAML/OIDC for enterprise customers would be amazing. Even if you can't build an API into the current builds having some level of VPN automation would also help immensely. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Probably the biggest thing is I know the latest versions of pfSense are secure, the developers are diligent in finding vulnerabilities, quashing them, and informing the community when a new one hits the waves. ### 34. My first firewall **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Charles D. | Head Of Information Technology, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** pfSense's defaults are very nice, and I only need to customize it for my given usecase. Also, it has a large package library, making this excellent software exponentially more powerful. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** It uses OpenSSL instead of LibreSSL. I'm not expert in security, but it seems the 'security' community has a consensus that LibreSSL is just better than OpenSSL. It seems like this decision was made out of personal sentimentality from the heads of development for pfSense. I don't appreciate that. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** I want my own network completely under my own control. I've been stuck with XFinity routers in every house I live in. If anything drives me to madness, it will be my hatred for XFi software! I can't upgrade the entire house's network, but I can at least have my own private LAN in my bedroom, and pfSense does an excellent job for this. Also, with the wireguard package I have easy access to my LAN from anywhere. ### 35. Prompt, friendly and knowledgeable **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Supportive user community, updated product, competitive pricing **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Not really dislike but would be good if package manager can be more stable. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Securing the network and providing access to remote users. Time saving, low cost ### 36. Powerful and user friendly **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Doug L. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** I value being able to run sophisticated software in an easy to use interface. It's constantly being developed and the support is top notch in the rare event that I need to use it. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Debugging the firewall policies can be difficult as there is no great real time tool to do so. Finding the offending rule is a especially a challenge with the dynamic block lists. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Securing our office's internet access. We block users from being able to go to questionable destinations, which mitigate the risk of downloading malware and participating in bot nets ### 37. A great firewall with a thriving community and good documentation **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eren C. | Senior IT-Administrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** + Good plugin base + Good free documentation + Free and quality forum support + Broad community + Stable software Advantage to competition is customizability in my opinion, you have many features to choose from and on top of that, you can test out beta features which puts pfSense ahead of its competition. One example is DCO. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** The entrance/skill level is rather high, many features are there but need to be explored. I, for one, had difficulty understanding the switch module of my specific device. To clarify: There is another section called "switches" where additional switch modules are displayed. Getting the right config for it to work, especially with different VLANs, is very tricky. I made the mistake to fiddle with Port VID 4090 and 4091 and essentially locked myself out, good thing there was a documentation for that. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use pfSense for our whole neighbourhood (4 companies connected), VPN connections, our Active Directory Federation Services but needed the overall higher throughput. We switched from UniFi dream machine to two XG-7100s in failover and our overall network responsiveness as well as VPN thoughput. We also needed a more refined firewall ruling for our ADFS and DNS resolving/redirecting on different VLANs, which the pfSense fulfilled flawlessly. ### 38. Perhaps the most capable router software that is still manageable by a non-IT expert **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael J. | Principal Investigator, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** It can do anything that you might ask a router to do. And due to Open Source, you could even make it do things that no router has done before. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** You might learn some things while using this device. It requires some basic understanding of networking. I personally don't dislike that, but some people might. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** I bought the Netgate SG-3100 on the recommendation by Steve Gibson from the SecurityNow podcast. The question that Steve answered with this recommendation was how to have a hassle-free deployment of the pfSense router software. I use it at home as our internet-facing router and it connects internally to our wireless router, printer, NAS and Smart TV. It runs an ssh server in order to allow for port forwarding and also allows access to our NAS from specified IP addresses. For example, I connect via the pfSense from my workplace to our NAS, since I use our NAS as a backup server for my bioinformatics work (my university offers only a limited amount of storage space). I love that this small device is able to do virtually anything you ever might ask from a router. In the beginning, I used it to run an OpenVPN server for the connectivity from work to home and vice versa, but recently I have started to use WireGuard. My university will perhaps switch from OpenVPN to WireGuard in a few years. So much for the agility of big organizations... ### 39. pfSense - Reliable, fast, KISS, swiss army knife firewall **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David W. | Security Office and IT Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** One of the issues I like about pfSense is that Netgate keeps supporting all the hardware regardless of age. We live in a regulated environment where, if the hardware or software goes into End-of-Life, we are forced to upgrade to newer hardware/software. With pfSense, we can rest assured that as long as the solution meets our needs, we can keep using the same platform for years to come. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** non-Netgate hardware is not updated as frequently as pfSense running on Netgate hardware. pfSense is NOT available on the Google Cloud Platform, as it is on Azure and AWS. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Many problems. 1. VPN Wireguard and OpenVPN implementation is easy to set up and so reliable. 2. Very flexible DNS options that support every imaginable environment. 3. Geo-blocking 4. Super easy upgrade process 5. Just restore the configuration backup and voila everything is reconfigured as before, including all the software packages. 6. Simple easy-to-use interfaces for Suricata and Snort. 7. Handles high-capacity bandwidth with ease. 8. Hardware requirements are minimal. 9. Zabbix monitoring support. 10. Support for Lets Encrypt 11. Available at AWS and Azure. ### 40. Deploying pfSense in a network allows any level of granular security an administrator might choose. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Karl M. | retired, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** The user-base of pfSense is so large that a new user has vast resources available for any level of desired network integration; pfSense is scalable. I have not found a competitor that can offer this level of customization. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** With videos, newsgroups, and online tutorials, it is difficult to imagine oneʻs self in a situation that cannot be resolved. Open-source solutions are a dynamic way to keep a network current with ever-evolving security issues. I have not yet found a weakness in pfSense protection. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a retired (10+ years) IT professional from higher education. With a need to keep myself somewhat current with network security, I decided it was time to set up a home network as a redundant data location for all my data now "in the cloud." With the proliferation of international bad-actors successfully injecting ransomware into ever more serious locations, I wanted a safe haven that I have under my control. pfSense allows me to build as much security into my system as I want. ### 41. outstanding solution for those interested in building their own router **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rick B. | Chief Information Officer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** I appreciate very much the availability of a community edition, which people are free to install on their own hardware. Before building my own router, I used routers from various manufacturers, and there was always a compromise between features and price. I noticed over time the performance of router hardware would decrease. Perhaps this was due to middling quality components or inadequate cooling. With pfSense, I'm free to use good quality PC components, which greatly outlast the hardware of purpose-built routers. Plus, pfSense delivers a good value for the user while providing an environmental benefit. The PCs on which I've run pfSense were older PCs that were no longer adequate to use as a workstation, but they were fine for running pfSense. Thus, I acquired the hardware for free, while keeping these old PCs out of the landfill for a while. The pfSense software itself is outstanding. For example, the firewall rules are tunable in a much more detailed way than on consumer routers. I depend on pfSense's VPN server. The underlying BSD operating system is very stable and high-performing. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** I have nothing negative to say about pfSense. Perhaps I should mention that pfSense is a bit more complicated a solution than an off-the-shelf consumer router. This slight added complexity is appreciated by those who need a more advanced solution, bearing in mind that one has to have a moderate amount of networking knowledge in to configure and use pfSense. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** When I was running a home-based business, pfSense helped me make use of VoIP technology to handle phone traffic. I depend on pfSense's VPN server to connect to my home servers while I'm offsite. ### 42. Great **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Easy to manage securely, applying access and blocking rules, playing the ideal role of Firewall and connections between units, monitoring links and accesses, errors and failures. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** The interface is not pleasant, we could improve it with easier access to its options, like open-source software, it could allow specific customizations for companies. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reduce costs with servers and device connections, facilitating network access. Access devices via a web interface without needing to travel to the unit, saving time and money. ### 43. Open source is the way to go if you have a little patience **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yousif H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** The best thing about pfSense is its web UI, hands down. Nothing comes close. Also great: FreeBSD o/s, and open source nature. Proprietary vendors still have not caught up on GUI or price. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** It's not quite as reliable as some of the high-end vendors. Cisco IOS is basically bulletproof. I've had bad experiences with Netgate hardware, too. But you can't compare the value-for-money. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** all-in-one VPN, edge routing, general network appliance (DNS, DHCP). Eliminates the need to run dedicated VMs or machines for these services. It's made things more streamlined in terms of administration. ### 44. Excellent hardware, excellent support and service **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** DIGITAL F. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Certified hardware that I KNOW is going to run pfSense well. Sure, I could build my own, but I'd rather spend my time configuring security and moving on to the next client, rather than tweak hardware and continually adjust settings for uptime and performance. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Only downside that most would say would be the cost...but when I consider the hourly rate I charge clients and what my time is worth, I'm saving a ton! **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Edge firewall and routing. ### 45. Pfsense is the method if you would like to go crazy on networking **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hongtan C. | University Undergraduate Student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 28, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Customization: being able to implement almost anything imaginable in any kinds of computer networking environment without a ton of costs. Community: there's plenty of resources in the official forums and documentation that'll help you build your project, diagnose problems, and debug the system. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** The Netgate system isn't stable. When operating with a few essential packages such as pfblockerng, snort, wireguard and etc. The unbound package has tons of issues, and it's very unstable and will often crash when pfblockerng is undergoing a cron job. Even though the Service Watch dog could potentially restart services, unbound still wouldn't fix itself after a crash without a time-consuming human intervention. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Pfsense allows me to profile my home and office networks, interact with interfaces remotely through VPNs, filter advertisements and a wide variety of web contents of my choice, and mitigate attacks targeted to servers that are sitting behind the firewalls. ### 46. Trouble free over the last 10+ years of using pfSense **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adam F. | Manager/owner, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Wide community support, easy to use interface and a variety of supported hardware. If ever i get stuck theres a massive support base due to its popularity out world wide **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Very little. I guess the price of the hardware is a little bit much but ither than that im super happy with pfSense overall. Maybe more package support perhaps ? Currently zabbix 6.2 isn't supported. Lack of sync options across multiple firewalls. For wxample would be nice if i could sync a firewall alias across mutilple internal pfsense machines, but again this is super edge case stuff **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Its been the backbone of all my networks for 10 or more years. I use it both at home and on the corporate network that i administer. It aolves a lot of our issues internally by adding a layer of seperation between our separtments and its super easy to configure ### 47. Fully-featured and reliable firewall suitable for business use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mickey R. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Features, ease of use, open source, reliability, reputation, available on dedicated Netgate appliances **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** There is nothing I dislike about Netgate or pfSense **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Port and firewall management for remote access by IP whitelist; easily customized dhcp for my lan including local dns; network monitoring ### 48. Simple, powerful, greeat customer service **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** How easy it is to setup and use. The quality of the documentation and the broader ecosystem of help available. And Netgate's customer service is exceptional. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** The only UX issue I would suggest fixing is to keep the menu structure at the top pinned, like a frozen row in Excel, so longer pages can easily see the menu. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** Robust small to enterprise router, vpn, and other automations we need. ### 49. pfSense is ideal for any network demanding uptime and reliability. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Glenn J. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 01, 2023 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** Uptime is essential with networks we maintain, such as first responders, in addition to security. These requirements are met with no paywall for other features. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** Updates don't always go smoothly, sometimes requiring being physically present to reset, but support is excellent in those edge cases. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use pfSense to secure our networks, but it's robust enough to work well with almost any other device at endpoints we don't maintain. ### 50. Overly impressed. Both by the Appliances and PFSense software. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zac C. | Network Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2022 **What do you like best about Netgate pfSense?** I have been using the open source of pfSense for a couple of years now in a virtual environment. Last year, when it came time to replace routers for our customers, we ended up going with Netgate devices with pfSense installed on them. Since then, we have deployed around 50 devices to our small business customers. Most are using the basic routing functionality, but the big attraction was the VPN support that many small business routers lack. Easy set up of IPSec and OpenVPN makes pfSense a must have. Of the 50 or so devices we deployed, we only had one issue of file corruption. Netgate was quick to reply to the support request and provide a solution faster than we could get on site and fix it. **What do you dislike about Netgate pfSense?** The only issue we have with the pfSense software is the lack of central management. This is easily overcome though by forwarding an external port to its internal configuration page then using a firewall rule to limit source traffic to a single IP or network. **What problems is Netgate pfSense solving and how is that benefiting you?** The most significant push for pfSense was the work-from-home movement. Many of our business customers need devices allowing their employees to work from home. Using their fantastic documentation, we were able to use the built-in OpenVPN capability and RADIUS authentication to seamlessly integrate with our customer's current server environments. ## Netgate pfSense Discussions - [OpenVpn best report's?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/openvpn-best-report-s) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What is pfSense used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-pfsense-used-for) - 7 comments - [Can pfSense be used as a router?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-pfsense-be-used-as-a-router) - 11 comments - [Is pfSense any good?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-pfsense-any-good) - 3 comments - [Is pfSense still free?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-pfsense-still-free) - 5 comments - [View Netgate pfSense pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/netgate-pfsense/reviews?page=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-24+11%3A04%3A36+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=a18e8116-e487-49b3-a781-c74577d9b372&secure%5Btoken%5D=19ecc1b5efd6a5a20e95cb86ed064a6260ac67b77b0229be323dcff3be159f67&format=llm_user) ## Netgate pfSense Integrations - [AWS Lambda](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-lambda/reviews) - [FortiGate SD-WAN](https://www.g2.com/products/fortigate-sd-wan/reviews) - [Sophos Firewall](https://www.g2.com/products/sophos-firewall/reviews) - [Tailscale](https://www.g2.com/products/tailscale/reviews) ## Netgate pfSense Features **Administration** - Policy Management - Logging and Reporting - Application Gateway - Concurrent Sessions **Agentic AI - Firewall Software** - Autonomous Task Execution - Adaptive Learning **Usage** - Multi-Device Usage - Multiple Concurrent Connections - Protocol Choices - Unlimited Bandwidth - No Log Storage - Varied Server Locations - Unlimited Server Switches **Functionality** - Virtual Private Network (VPN) - Antivirus - URL Filtering - Availability **Miscellaneous** - Live Customer Support - Open Source Code - Multiple Payment Methods **Monitoring** - Load Balancing - Continuous Analysis - Intrusion Prevention - Intrusion Detection **Generative AI** - AI Text Summarization **Artificial Intelligence - Firewall** - AI Firewall ## Top Netgate pfSense Alternatives - [Sophos Firewall](https://www.g2.com/products/sophos-firewall/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (812 reviews) - [Check Point Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs)](https://www.g2.com/products/check-point-next-generation-firewalls-ngfws/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (511 reviews) - [WatchGuard Network Security](https://www.g2.com/products/watchguard-network-security/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (248 reviews)