pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs. As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent…
$179
per appliance
SonicWall NSA Series
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
The SonicWall NSA Series is the company's mid-range next generation firewall (NGFW).
N/A
Pricing
pfSense
SonicWall NSA Series
Editions & Modules
SG-1100
$179
per appliance
SG-2100
$229
per appliance
SG-3100
$399
per appliance
SG-5100
$699
per appliance
XG-7100-DT
$899
per appliance
XG-7100-1U
$999
per appliance
XG-1537
$1,949
per appliance
XG-1541
$2,649
per appliance
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
pfSense
SonicWall NSA Series
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
pfSense
SonicWall NSA Series
Features
pfSense
SonicWall NSA Series
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
pfSense
7.6
Ratings
13% below category average
SonicWall NSA Series
8.3
Ratings
4% below category average
Identification Technologies
5.00 Ratings
8.80 Ratings
Visualization Tools
7.00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Content Inspection
4.00 Ratings
5.00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls
10.00 Ratings
9.90 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP
7.00 Ratings
6.90 Ratings
Firewall Management Console
9.50 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging
8.00 Ratings
8.90 Ratings
VPN
10.00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
High Availability
10.00 Ratings
9.90 Ratings
Stateful Inspection
7.00 Ratings
7.00 Ratings
Proxy Server
6.10 Ratings
7.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
pfSense
SonicWall NSA Series
Small Businesses
Sophos UTM
Score 8.1 out of 10
pfSense
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.6 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 10.0 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
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.
SonicWall NSA is best suited for small to mid-size companies or small to medium K-12 school districts. It's less appropriate for larger businesses and schools. This is due to their ease of use and well-rounded feature set but lacks in advanced configuration, performance, and reliability.
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.
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.
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.
The usability takes a bit of training, like any firewall, but I've found that showing even Tier 1 helpdesk how to do basic things has been easy. We have entry-level IT technicians performing white-listing, IP entries, VPN access and LDAP functions, to name a few tasks. The menus in the GUI are pretty straight forward.
Most of the time, calling SonicWall NSA Support, you get an expert who can help resolve your issues. RMAs are pretty easy once they determine there is an issue with the hardware. Support is available 24x7, which makes emergency calls easy. The only downside is the support engineers may have thick accents; however, their expertise more than makes up for any language barriers.
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.
The SonicWall NSA is a lot more fluid and much less clunky than a Watchguard firewall. The Watchguard is ok for a small business-- you can buy them at retail outlets. But as you can see above, this model of Watchguard Firebox has been discontinued. The NSA classes are a more high-end and functional business-class firewall.
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.
