AWS Firewall Manager vs. pfSense

AWS Firewall Manager is well suited for cloud environments that have a lot to manage and maintain. If you have a smaller scale cloud environment or on premise setup this may not be for you.

Incentivized

pfSense is incredibly budget friendly and capable for organizations of all sizes. My specific scenario, working for a non-profit organization, requires budget consciences decisions without compromising security and function. pfSense has helped tremendously in accomplishing this. It specifically tackles advanced routing, static routing, remote access, intrusion prevention, in a single platform, mostly available for free.

Incentivized

• AWS Firewall Manager is very easy to operate it in the first place unlike other software of this type.
• I highly adore the ease it provides in configuration management by API
• It provides protection to the applications from diverse forms of attacks.

Incentivized

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

• User Interface
• Reliability

Incentivized

• There is no API for making changes. This can be a hindrance in environments where auto-deploying something needs firewall rules or HAProxy configs updated. Since all settings are stored in an XML file and then configs are generated from that, even manually updating config files cannot be done.
• Beware that some network cards can have issues. pfSense is based on FreeBSD, so it's best to look on their compatibility list before deploying.

Incentivized

pfSense can be a very elementary firewall but can also be as comples as you want, according your needs. I'd always reccomend a HA solution when used in a company and, for bigger companies, commercial license is recommended. It's also very adptable to everyone's needs.

Incentivized

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

For a
business that doesn't use any software or applications that will generate high
volumes of traffic, AWS Firewall Manager is the ideal choice. The method of
creating an initial configuration and user-friendliness is simple. Along with
other AWS services, we also created portals for the HR division, with a focus
on recruitment. we also created a User Interface and a set of tools. The AWS
Firewall Manager is the only thing we need.

PFSense is not a fully featured and supported enterprise-grade solution; however, it does offer a lot of similar functionality at a fraction of the cost for more minor requirements.

• It has provided enhanced protection for our organizations resources
• It has allowed for faster setup of new users

Incentivized

• pfSense has only had positive impacts on our company. We are not a huge company so not having to buy licenses to get all these features have been excellent.
• I was not around when our current sysadmin decided to use pfSense, but I am assuming from day one it was probably a 100% return on investment since it does everything we need it to and it was open source software.

Incentivized