We performed a comparison between Perimeter 81 and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Perimeter 81 offers single sign-on, multiple networks, a user-friendly interface, fast and secure VPN, reliable connection, privacy, efficient customer service, mobile and desktop support, a lightweight mobile app, and implementation of SD-WAN and zero trust access. pfSense is praised for its ability to block IP addresses, user-friendly dashboards, open-source nature, scanning and filtering capabilities, stability, customization abilities, cost-effectiveness, availability of plugins and add-ons, simplicity, flexibility, and scalability. Both options provide a range of useful features for users.
Perimeter 81 has room for improvement in terms of specifying various sites, incorporating a separate login option for bypassing website logins, allowing customization of interface colors, enhancing the user interface, providing notifications for session timeouts, and enhancing network traffic distribution. pfSense could benefit from the addition of instructional videos, a more user-friendly web interface, stability improvements, integration with a mobile app, and enhanced reporting and graphing features.
Service and Support: Perimeter 81 receives positive feedback for their efficient and useful customer service, while pfSense's support garners mixed opinions, with some users praising it and others noting its limited assistance and reliance on online communities.
Ease of Deployment: Perimeter 81 is praised for its straightforward and user-friendly initial setup, although it may become more complex in a hybrid environment. pfSense is generally easy to set up, but some users recommend clearer guidance or a configuration wizard for improved usability.
Pricing: Perimeter 81 has a flexible setup cost based on specific needs. In contrast, pfSense provides a free open-source solution and offers paid support. The pricing for pfSense varies depending on the setup.
ROI: Perimeter 81 offers the opportunity for a favorable return on investment through various benefits such as lower supply expenses, enhanced engineering, decreased repair costs, and improved product stability. pfSense is highly regarded for its cost efficiency and significant savings, making it a valuable option for businesses operating with limited financial resources.
Comparison Results: Perimeter 81 is the preferred product over pfSense. It is praised for its easy and intuitive setup process, single sign-on capabilities, multiple networks feature, user-friendly interface, fast and secure VPN, and efficient customer service. Perimeter 81 offers a more user-friendly and efficient experience according to the reviews.
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"I am "headache free" that I don't have to categorize all the websites and that security has been pre categorized by the people, and that the services are getting updated. At least one part of my problem is over."
"It is easy to use and performs very well."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"Stability has been excellent. We have experienced no issues; it never fails."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"The documentation is very good."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"It has a good web cache. I used to use a DHCP server and DNS server. For my company, I use pfSense as a load balancing application."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"I'm the expert when it comes to Linux systems, however, with the pfSense, due to the web interface, the rest of the staff can actually make changes to it as required without me worrying about whether they've opened up ports incorrectly or not. The ease of use for non-expert staff is very good."
"It is a very good solution for enterprises that need a VPN for their employees. It is the best way to provide a remote work facility to employees at a very low cost. Other solutions that I have had in the past were very expensive. Enterprises don't always have that kind of money to invest."
"SD-WAN is one of the primary solutions offered by Perimeter 81."
"The setup is really easy...I rate the support team a ten out of ten."
"Scaling Perimeter 81 was easy to do."
"It connects quickly and stays connected. The user interface is pretty neat too. The app has in-house support with user guides that give you step-by-step walkthroughs on navigating the app. In addition, there is a live chat feature that offers prompt assistance on the go."
"The ease of use not only translates to quick adoption rates - it also ensures that our employees remain compliant with our cybersecurity protocols, enhancing the overall security posture of our organization."
"It keeps us all accountable and ensures secure internet connections while we all work remotely."
"Perimeter 81 is very pretty."
"The solution provides us with an easy way to configure and join the VPN with Perimeter 81."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"The solution could use better reporting. They need to offer more of it in general. Right now, the graphics aren't the best. If you need to provide a report to a manager, for example, it doesn't look great. They need to make it easier to understand and give users the ability to customize them."
"The user interface can be improved to make it easier to add more features. And pfSense could be better integrated with other solutions, like antivirus."
"There are several levels of firewall configuration such as beginner, advanced, and expert configurations. At each level, it becomes more complex and more tricky to set up the firewall. For example, if you want to install the firewall on your computer system, it would be a lot easier if it just tells you that this is the internet NIC and this is the Wi-Fi NIC."
"If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"I've never tried it in large environments. All my clients are small businesses with a handful of employees, so I am not sure how it works in large environments. I keep up with recent versions, and there's nothing I'm waiting for, and nothing breaks when I get a new version."
"It would be nice to have a notification sound when Perimeter81 disconnects, as I sometimes don't notice when the icon shows that it's disconnected, and I end up wasting time waiting for my browser to load a page that shows an error, usually error 404."
"In the future, maybe P81 can improve the network traffic balancing and redundancy."
"I don't know if it is technically feasible, however, if the Desktop App could be used as a Web App or a Chrome Extension it would be very nice."
"If I were to be nitpicky, I would ask that Perimeter 81 offer the option for us to change the color of the graphical user interface, like maybe pink or green or so on."
"There is a very small amount of downtime."
"What would be useful would be a notification/warning that a session is due to timeout after exceeding the default connection limit."
"The overall UI could be improved and updated to bring a simpler feel to the application."
"One of our challenges is ensuring the security of our cloud-based operations."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Perimeter 81 is ranked 11th in Firewalls with 22 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Perimeter 81 is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Perimeter 81 writes "Great SAML and SCIM support with the ability to deploy site-2-site tunnels with specific IP restrictions". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Perimeter 81 is most compared with Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Cato SASE Cloud Platform, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare Access and Cisco Umbrella. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Perimeter 81 report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.