We used Fortinet. We opted for pfSense because of budget limitations. pfSense was a more affordable solution for our requirements.

pfSense is easier to manage and offers modularity for features. With FortiGate, everything is there, but we might not need everything, and too many features can be challenging.

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I have used Fortinet previously and the installation took a lot less time to install. Additionally, I have also used SonicWall before but I switched to the current solution because it was getting too expensive. 

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I also use WatchGuard Firebox. It is different from pfSense. I have Firebox on a rack mount server on a cabinet, whereas pfSense is on my computer, so it is quite different because I can use any kind of hardware to implement the firewall.

Firebox can make an open-source version, but that is not the target of the company. pfSense is doing a great job because they have covered both situations. They have an open-source version with community support, and if we purchase the license for hardware, we can also get support from their side. In the long run, pfSense has more advantages.

If I go to a company and they ask me to implement something, I would most definitely go with pfSense. Its price is lower. I have a great knowledge of pfSense. I can very easily find support in the community, and if the company buys a license, I can get support directly from pfSense. I believe it is a win-win for pfSense and for the customers.

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The main difference between Fortinet and pfSense lies in their integration with different vendors. While pfSense offers integration with multiple commercial antivirus solutions, Fortinet primarily provides its own antivirus offering. However, the effectiveness of the antivirus provided by pfSense may not be as high as some other options available in the market. In terms of cost, pfSense offers a one-time payment for cloud services, providing continuous service without ongoing fees. On the other hand, Fortinet's pricing structure may seem appealing initially, but if you wait until close to the license expiration date, the renewal cost significantly increases, which could result in unexpectedly high expenses.

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I have merged pfSense with other products, but I have never chosen another product over pfSense unless I was unable to convince my client that free doesn't mean shoddy.

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I have several reasons for choosing Netgate pfSense. Firstly, it serves my purposes effectively and is entirely free. Secondly, when I search on Google or inquire about past experiences with firewall workloads, its reliability and cost-effectiveness stand out.

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The choice of whether to use Netgate pfSense often depends on the company's preferences. In some cases, particularly in Switzerland, there is a strong preference for open source solutions. This choice is sometimes motivated by the desire for open source alternatives and can also be related to cost considerations.

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Comparing pfSense with other vendors, I appreciate Fortinet for its all-in-one device with ALi involvement. However, for a country like Pakistan with limited resources, pfSense is suitable for small offices due to its cost-effectiveness.

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At my previous company, we used a Cisco firewall and a router, but they kept having issues with the firewall and the device.  When I joined this company,  we introduced pfSense and haven't had any issues since. 

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I've used TMG by Microsoft, and it's much easier to manage domains and websites. For example, pfSense has IP-based blocking, but websites like YouTube and Facebook keep using different IPs. TMG blocks the actual domain name. That is one downside to pfSense I've noticed as a basic user.

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We're still using Linux servers that are running IP tables, et cetera. Prior to that, we were using, something called IPCop. Before that, I can't remember what it was. We've always used sort of Linux old BSD-based solutions for our firewalls. That's just what we've always done.

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I have used the SonicWall solution. 

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I previously evaluated eSoft by Untangle. Untangle is an open source company but you have to buy custom add-on's to get it to work. I bought eSoft and it's very good.

I am also the CEO of my company. This technical part, it's not my profession, but I get less and less time to invest, and more time playing around with this stuff. 

When we were growing, a small company, eSoft was small, so I needed a bigger one. I had to reset eSoft every week because of the growing traffic over it. I wanted a bigger one and it was not available. 

What I wanted to do was not possible with Untangle. Untangle was basic stuff. I bought the pfSense appliance and it's open source, but I support the project. 

I bought it and I got disappointed because I again wanted a bigger one. My first choice would be Cisco because of my background but Cisco is expensive.

eSoft was good. Before switching from eSoft to pfSense, Cisco at that time was not an option. 

Every software in our company, every desktop, every server, is open source. If it isn't CentOS then it's Red Hat or Ubuntu. 

Open source was preferred and pfSense was number one on the list.

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I have used SonicWall, Sophos, FortiGate, and Cisco Meraki. The choice of product depends on the context. Netgate pfSense is suitable for small businesses and homes. It is not the best solution for large deployments or branch offices. Sophos and FortiGate would be suitable for large companies.

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I have also worked with Netgate appliances in the past. Both Netgate and pfSense are very stable.

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I have used other firewalls, such as Cisco and Netgate.

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We previously used OpenBSD, a Linux solution. 

We switched to this product as it is free and open-source. It also increased the level of security we had on hand, even though OpenBSD was more user-friendly. 

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I have a lot of experience with pfSense but not much with OPNsense. Both OPNsense and pfSense are very easy, but pfSense is a bit more friendly. pfSense is simple to use with a nice web interface. OPNsense is more tricky.

OPNsense has the remote access functionality, which is the main functionality that I need. OPNsense is very easy to set up and very easy to manage. It is also very fast.

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I didn't use any other solution previously. I didn't have a need for it. Only in May, I had the need to deploy my own service.

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We originally used this solution way back in 2011. We used it for about 18 months. Then we then migrated on to a system called Kerio Control. We realized that we needed something a little bit more robust than Kerio Control. So we then moved back to pfSense as of last year.

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We also use MikroTik, Barracuda, and StoneWall.

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Fortinet, SourceFire, etc.... the cost... oh the cost! Why pay these guys when I can use pfSense for free AND only pay for support when and if I need it?

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I used Fortinet previously, and I used Ubiquiti prior to that. We switched partly because of the cost. It also gave me the ability to do the clustering. I can still maintain my VPNs, connections, and other things. I can take down one of the firewalls for maintenance and bring up the other one and not take down my whole user base.

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Previously, we used Dell SonicWall. There was just a high cost of licensing all the time, and, with having someone go in and troubleshoot for issues as well, it just wasn't cost-effective anymore. pfSense is simply a better solution.

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Old and outdated infrastructure procured before I joined the company.

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We did not use a previous solution. I recommend pfSense because it's free, open source software.

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Yes, I have used many other routers but nothing offers the options pfSense does without spending a fortune. pfSense is constantly being improved on.

I switched due to router limitations and vulnerabilities.

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I've been switching back and forth between pfSense, OPNsense, and Untangle in the last five years or so.

OPNsense and Untangled are more integrated, however, more and more of the plugins are becoming paid offerings. OPNsense misses a plugin that pfSense has, Untangled it's adblocking is easy but not free.

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Back in the day, I was using Fortinet, and it was very tricky to get it working without spending more money. pfSense is exactly what we paid for, and it's still working very well. We've been working with it for two or three years, and it's a very good solution, and I didn't have to spend any more money on it.

Cisco VSL and Fortinet are tricky when it comes to improving the firewall rules or creating rules above older rules. In pfSense, it's very logical. It's simple.

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I am also using IPFire. It's also open-source.

It's very stable, and it meets my business needs.

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I have used Sophos and Cyberoam solutions.

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We used to use Fortinet in our office in Dubai. But where I am right now, I thought an open-source was the option for me because I'm very involved in open-source projects. It came down to pfSense and OPNsense — the first one we downloaded was pfSense and I stuck by it.

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We came from OneStart. OneStart was out of data and at end of life. Thus, we had to switch. pfSense was originally proposed to us by the dealer and our external IT help.

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We have mostly used Cisco products. Their products feels like we are back in the stoneage when compared to pfSense. We switched as we needed more power (as traffic, bandwidth and user accounts grew). pfSense was one good clear substitute, and Cisco is too expensive if you want real throughput power, and it was too hard to administrate when we compared it with pfSense. also, anyone can learn pfSense pretty fast because of the intuitive web interface), and there is never trouble with invalid licenses. The features like IPS (snort/suricata) are well developed and can be used for free or at a small cost for extra security. The most valuable of all though, is that we could recycle old hardware to make our perfect firewalls, reducing the hardware cost.

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We currently resell products from both pfSense, Sophos and Cisco. In some areas, pfSense is better than Sophos. I have been a bit disappointed with Sophos because I know their history, and I don't think that they have advanced as well as they should have in that time. Also, they have two different products, XG and UTM. This is another reason that I prefer pfSense, at least a little bit, over Sophos.

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I also have an understanding Cisco, which is a bit harder to understand. This product is more straightforward. 

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I've previously used vendor-based firewalls, like Sophos. They have Sophos XG and Sophos XG, UTMs. Those are the firewalls that I have the most expertise with and I also have some experience with Fortinet. pfSense is normally installed on x86 hardware which uses CISC architecture, a complex instruction set that runs on laptops and computers. They generally make calculations much slower than what we call risk architecture. As a result, firewalls with a risk-based architecture or reduced instruction set architecture are preferred because they provide better throughput. That's the case with FortiGate. They are very well known in the market to have the highest IPS throughput and that's one of the major factors for choosing a firewall.

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I have used FortiGate previously and this solution is cheaper and more reliable.

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One of our clients wants to switch from FortiGate to another comparable solution because FortiGate is not stable when it comes to pricing. Over the past three years, they've increased their pricing to almost double. For this reason, our client wants to explore some other options which will be more predictable in terms of costs.

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We have used FortiGate in the past and they tend to be more stable, but lacking in other areas.

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We were one of the first companies here making UTMs (before they were known as UTMs). We were the first partner of Cobalt, the first appliance creator. When Cobalt was bought from Sun, we made our first network defender line. It was the first appliance that had a firewall, content inspection, constant protection, intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, antivirus, and mail and web server in one box. Our line was mainly distributed all over the Middle East, Asia, and some parts of Europe. We expanded and worked with companies such as Palo Alto, Cisco, Sophos and pfSense. In some areas pfSense is better than Sophos which didn't make the advances they should have. They now have XG, so they have two totally different products in the same area which is one of the reasons I prefer pfSense.

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I previously used a solution from Cyberoam but we had issues with the licensing. That's the reason we mainly stick to Pfsense open source.

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We used to use Empalis. We actually started to replace our Empalis with pfSense first to do testing, and see if it would actually work for us. This was just a test phase, before we went over to Meraki. So far, pfSenses outperform Merakis.

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We used to use a lot of different solutions.

After comparing a lot of solutions, the choice was Netgate pfSense.

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Some of my businesses just use the built-in firewall in the ISP modem. I replaced an old SonicWall that couldn't keep up with a faster internet service. I've replaced a couple of Cisco solutions that were just getting old to run modern software, but the hardware was working. They just died of old age, and I replaced them with pfSense. It has been great. I'm sure a lot of people know how to configure Cisco solutions, but I don't. pfSense is very easy to configure.

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Previously we've used hardware firewalling solutions like SonicWall, Zyxel and others but they're not powerful like this solution. Also, they are hardware so the cost is much higher than software. I've also used IPtables which is a software Linux solution but it's complicated to setup when you need to manage several rules.

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FreeBSD box was an old setup from 1998, so it was time to upgrade without it being costly.

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NETGEAR or Cisco. Switched because NETGEAR didn’t always offer the functionality and Cisco was very complicated and expensive.

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We used Watchguard and Endian, but pfSense is the most complete for layer 3 firewalls. We split the roles. We use pfSense only for the layer 3 and other products for proxy and reverse proxy (Diladele, Nginx) so we are not dependent of a constructor and easily update each part.

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Fortinet, TMG Microsoft, SonicWall, scalability, cost

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No previous solution was used.

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Prior to pfSense, we used Cisco.

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I was using FortiGate and other firewall and VPN solutions. They were all ou0dated and too complicated to maintain. The change was made due to the ease of use of pfSense and the features that it provides.

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I have used other solutions but I chose pfSense because it's easy to use and configure.

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Actually, PfSense replaced a Watchguard firewall, mostly due to costs. But I haven't missed it since.

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Earlier, I was using FortiGate. Due to budget issues we moved to pfSense.

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We previously used Monowall and switched because we needed more functionality.

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Before pfSense I had in the company an old Cisco router, but it had problems with stability so I was looking for an alternative and I found pfSense.

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No previous solution was used.

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Previously, I worked with Fortinet FortiGate, Linux, and OPNsense.

I have tested all that are available on the market and pfSense is more.

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I previously used Microsoft's TMG solution. I switched because after some research when I got stuck configuring a physical machine with many VMs, I decided to use pfSense.

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Before pfSense I was using a different solution, but I like this product due to the low cost of hardware, its stability, web interface, and the fact its open source etc.

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We use a few different firewalls. We use SonicWall and Huawei firewall along with pfSense.

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A long time ago, the company did use a different solution. They switched to pfSense. However, now they are moving away from it as well. 

We're also using Palo Alto, however, right now, it's just in the demo phase. The solution seems to be better at centralization, which is a big selling point. We have three school campuses and we'd like to configure a solution from one central location that would work for all three campuses. With Palo Alto, it looks like we can achieve this.

On top of that, with Palo Alto, there are more user control products. You can log everything that you are doing on the internet with it.

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We did previously use a different solution before switching to pfSense. We originally switched to this solution due to the fact that it was so cost-effective.

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We didn't have a previous solution.

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No, there was no firewall implemented.

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I used Kerio and Microsoft. I switched because I was looking for something with better security and for someone who could fix bugs faster.

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• Sonicwall
• Cisco ASA

We switched due to licensing costs and scalability.

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I've also used Untangle and Sophos firewalls

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I used different routers, but because I wasn’t happy, I was trying different solutions and I found this one which was the most effective of all those I tried.

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I was using another product, but it didn't have a bandwidth controller and monitoring tool like this product does. I switched because I can find everything in one window.

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Cisco, Microsoft and when TMG progressively died it was necessary to switch to unix technology, many corporations require low budget and high performance. View full review »

Yes

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We used -

• Debian IPtables
• Squid
• I7 Patch

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We have WatchGuard Firewall and pfSense firewall.  They are used together and not as a substitution.

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PFSense sounded like the de-facto standard for simple SOHO solutions. We just did not like its QoS interface. For us, it seemed very "rigid" compared to Zeroshell. So we went back to Zeroshell because we considered that its QoS interface had much more flexibility and its latest version now even included nDPI too.

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