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pfSense Firewall/VPN/Router

Netgate | 2.3.4

Linux/Unix, Other FreeBSD pfSense 2.3.4/FreeBSD 10.12 - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

Reviews from AWS Marketplace

12 AWS reviews

External reviews

313 reviews
from G2

External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.

5-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Miguel Angel H.

Great option of perimeter firewall

  • January 15, 2019
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
The pfSense is an Open Source project that is being supported by Netgate and offers great perimeter security for small businesses that do not have the money for an ASA, FortiGate or other similar device. The application of traffic policies is very easy to do and personalization of these is very useful with the tools available to the system. It is great the system of packages that extend the functions, for example the package for IDS / IPS Snort is great, the OpenVPN for VPN is very easy to use and so other options that can be incorporated for free.
What do you dislike about the product?
In the last version the support to the unofficial packages was removed, this decision is very annoying because there are many very good packages that are not included in the pfSense library. Another point not so remarkable is the traffic monitoring options that pfSense has, however it fulfills its function for non-demanding users.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The main advantage of pfSense is the cost, which is 0 and thanks to this, contracts were obtained with external clients that did not have enough funds for a commercial perimeter firewall. The function of VPN with OpenVPN and the application of Snort are the best features that have significantly improved the performance and productivity of our customers' networks.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Consider the pfSense in case your network needs port security and minimal protection from the outside. If an active and more granular management of the threats and the traffic that passes through it is required, think about accumulating more resources to acquire another superior product.

    Jamie M.

Very easy to install out of the gate and a robust routing platform.

  • October 30, 2017
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
Can't believe how easy it is to set up out of the box. Fire up the server, install the platform and then you assign a LAN/WAN interface... DONE!
What do you dislike about the product?
I would like to see more analytics or an easier way to get to client based data from the dashboard.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I am looking for a secure, but easy and highly configurable platform that just plain WORKS. This seems to fit the bill.

    Jonathan H.

Pfsense a worth while firewall

  • October 19, 2017
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
The best things of this product is how modular it can be and the community support it offers.
pfsense has a range of modules/plugins that can be added in order to shape pfsense to your needs, there is a wide selection and you are sure to find something to do the job. If for any reason you are unable to find a module to do what needs to be done, more than likely a question has been asked on the subject and an answer is easily found, if not you can pose a question on the forums and you will be met with a very patient community.
One of the main benefits is the capability for multiple WANs, allowing you to route traffic how you see fit or even load balance.
You can add squid guard and block/allow websites on a whitelist/blacklist.
Aliasing allows you to add multiple IP's/networks/hosts under a single alias and make firewall rules based on this, so rather than creating 250 firewall rules for 250 nodes, simply alias all 250 and make a single rule for that alias.
There are pages devoted to graphs so you can monitor your network traffic, your physical NICs and the server itself.
There are a ton of features and all the basic/advanced networking needs are met.
What do you dislike about the product?
There is very little I have found I do not like about pfsense, although I have not tested every single possible feature, my experience has certainly been very positive. There are two things however that do spring to mind.

I was unable to achieve port forwarding for a VPN. The VPN was PPTP (admittedly I never tried any other methods) on a Windows server. Despite countless hours searching and reading the results and numerous attempts of changing settings, I was unable to use the VPN (had worked previously with a paid firewall solution), whether this issue still stands or was entirely my fault still remains unsolved.

After approximately three years I have found pfsense to become slightly flaky. I have only experienced this with one box (the longest running). Whether this issue boils down to the physical server and/or components or whether this is due to changes over the course of time/corruption of configuration files, is again undetermined.

In reality I have not experienced any real downsides of the solution I cannot link back to me.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The product has personally helped to act as a firewall protecting and controlling both internal and external traffic on the network.
It has allowed me multiple WAN connections. With aliasing I can quickly group servers, computers, security equipment etc. Using the aliasing I have been able to dedicate WAN connections for specific purposes ensuring the bandwidth is distributed as necessary with a single firewall rule.
Modules like bandwidthd help me check the hosts consuming the most traffic, squid to help me monitor traffic and squid guard to help me block or allow traffic, make this a great solution.
After moving from one paid licensed solution to another I have found pfsense to not only be free, but completely wipe the floor with anything paid for previously.
My experience with this product is extremely positive and I would definitely recommend it as a great solution.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
It's got a great fully fledged gui and it's linux for shell users. Install it, try it, any problems the docs or community will come through.

    sprintf32768

Fantastic as always

  • September 28, 2016
  • Review verified by AWS Marketplace

At the last minute, I needed to move part of my AWS solution to multiple external dedicated server providers (bandwidth costs!). So, machines that used to live in the private cloud with all their friends suddenly had to live in a faraway place. How could they talk to their friends? Netgate pfsense to the rescue. It was easy to set up a VPN on pfsense, and easy to configure the remote hosts with openvpn. It just worked. It was easier than setting up AWS's Virtual Private Gateway, and can handle multiple clients! I am a huge pfsense fan, so no surprise that this solution was perfect for me.

    Jack-Benny P.

pfSense is the my favorite firewall distribution

  • July 12, 2016
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
It's absolutely free and it's in my opinion better then many of the enterprise class firewalls I've been in contact with. It's easy to manage, easy to update to newer versions, and best of all it's easy to extend. For example you can extend it with IDS/IPS (Snort), reverse proxies, various tunnel services, network landing sites etc.
What do you dislike about the product?
I shouldn't say everything about pfSense is a walk in park, there have been hick-ups along the way. For example, not to long ago (3-4 years ago) there was a problem with Snort rules not being saved or overwritten with every update of the database. Also it's IPv6-support was a bit late (but on the other hand, so was a lot of other firewall vendors as well). Some services you'll have to tweak manually by editing files, but for most of the time (99.9%) you won't have to do this.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
pfSense it my goto firewall solution when either friends or customers is in the need of a firewall/router solution. Since it can run of old or cheap hardware (beware of the throughput though) it saves both myself and my customers money. And besides, it's great for security.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
A tip of advice, if you are to run pfSense on a flash drive, don't forget to enable a RAM-disk for the logs or you'll end up with a dead flash drive within weeks. Trust me, it happen to me. Go to System -> Advanced -> Miscellaneous and scroll down to RAM Disk Settings and the "Use RAM disks". Then pfSense will use your RAM for /var and /tmp. This prevents the system from constantly writing writing log files to the flash drive, which can me many thousand entries per second, which will wear out the drive very fast.

    Mark C.

pfSense

  • July 08, 2016
  • Review verified by G2

What do you like best about the product?
What I like the best is how versatile it is and it performs as well as other name brand routing platforms. It is easy to customize for my client's needs.
What do you dislike about the product?
I am completely satisfied with pfSense and it has met all my expectations. I have not experienced an issue with pfSense.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Making custom routers for my diverse clients. The benefit of pfSense is that it is quality software for a fraction of the cost of the competitors.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Make the switch to pfSense and use reliable hardware. It is worth it. I have had less problems with pfSense than any other product I have used.

    KevInCalgary

Good product, but phenomenal support

  • July 07, 2016
  • Review verified by AWS Marketplace

We're migrating away from NAT instances and six Virtual Private Gateway connections to a single instance running pfSense. So far, everything works well and we'll cut our VPN costs by more than 50%. Good stuff. But wow, what support! I opened a ticket to get some help configuring IPSec tunnels, and was instantly into a live session with their support rep – and it turned into a multi-hour marathon with a highly capable tech on the other end. We wound up debugging a whole bunch of things beyond the simple IPSec problem, and he stuck with it until we had everything up and running smoothly. So yeah, the product is good, the pricing is good, but the people behind it are awesome!

    McCourt C.

Open Source Enterprise Grade Firewall

  • April 27, 2016
  • Review verified by G2

What do you like best about the product?
This is easily the most configurable open source firewall project I have come across.
If you want to build your own rather than buy rack based commercial products then i highly recommend.

We have full control and transparency over our perimeter with this solution.
The array of plugins available is great and integration of proven IDS and IPS solutions is very good also.

Over all its very good.
What do you dislike about the product?
Its very hard to configure, and sometimes getting the right instruction for your version can be a nightmare.
Very steep learning curve but worth it.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
As a smaller business PFSense has enabled us to comply with legislation and ISO certification without breaking the bank.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Stick with it, but do some test builds and hardening before going live.

Lots of gotchas to work out.

    Stefan P

Works like charm.

  • April 15, 2016
  • Review verified by AWS Marketplace

I have been using pfSense for many years. Its amazing project/product having more 200 000 users globally. I have build own AMI for AWS and understand a lot of work put in to pfSense to run on AWS. New version coming 2.3 will brings a lot that helps to upgrade process on AWS with Repositories etc.

If you understand how AWS network plumbing works then you will have no problem to use pfSense. It is reasonable price for all features it offers. If you can take advantage of many features you will save a lots of money using pfSense compare to other products. Its all about to be able do design it all well.

We use pfSense on AWS and is great to forward AWS DNS records using DNS resolver. Multi global IP address allocation per single interface using Virtual IPs functions with Elastic Global IP. Provide internet access to many servers and much more.

I recommend this product for AWS.

    DPaW Applications

Consistent decent performance after tuning

  • December 01, 2014
  • Review verified by AWS Marketplace

We sit close to 300mbps over our OpenVPN link after we used the system tunable mentioned here: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,47567.0.html

Performance is decent and the product is great for the rest of our private networking and NATing needs - we still use elastic load balancers for publishing content to the net.

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