pfSense vs UniFi Firewall: May 2024 Edition

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Chapters
00:00 UniFi vs pfsense firewall 2024
03:12 Comparison Chart & Models
04:05 Central Management
05:11 License Fees
05:53 Automatic Updates
06:30 Change Control and Roll Backs
07:48 High Availability and Failover
08:34 VLAN and QinQ
08:51 BGP & OSPF
09:08 OpenVPN IPSec and Wireguard
11:44 IDP IPS Threat Protection
12:57 Traffic Filtering and DPI
14:11 DNS Settings
15:09 Traffic Shaping
15:29 Multi WAN Support
16:36 SNMP Monitoring
17:05 Active Directory
17:43 Policy Routing
17:57 Netflow and Diagnostic Tool
19:26 Reverse Proxy
20:03 Firewall Rules

[DPCTechnology]

Great stuf man, really apriciate the time you take to put these together!

[weholmes]

I'm a VERY satisfied new user of UniFi Network 😊 Started with Cloud Gateway Ultra and a few switches and APs for home. Hardware prices are reasonable and all the tutorials on YT from you, Chris, Cody, and others made setup quick, easy and fun! Excited to add Protect functionality next and also set up and remotely manage UniFi Express at homes of parents and children. Thanks Tom for all you do to help us newbies!

[ekken]

Gotta love the auto populated "you" site search at 13:40 :D

[skorpion]

pfSense and Controller at home and UniFi APs SWs and GWs at remote locations is the way to go. Works like a charm.

[stratigary]

I was using pfSense for about 2 years now and, while it mostly worked, updates frequently broke things and it just became a pain to keep up with. I just switched to UniFi and it was a seamless transition and everything just worked right out of the box without having to spend hours on forums trying to figure out how to do something.

[cptnkewl]

I suggest using the PFSense as DMZ Firewall and the Unifi Stuff more on the Internal Site. You Increase alot of security when using 2 Zone FW and you are less effected by 0-Day Issues.

[ayden]

Thanks for making this :) I run UniFi at home and it’s been great. The firewall rules are definitely a little backwards feeling sometimes but once it’s setup it’s solid. Policy based routing for sending VLANs or certain clients out of either WAN or a VPN interface are also good. Haven’t tried load balancing though.

I’m also going to do a deploy at my dad’s small business as it will be the perfect solution. I’ve also seen quite a few chain business use UniFi as well.

I would definitely like to try pfSense eventually but it is totally overkill for what I need currently

[bdlii]

Appreciate the spoon feeding for both platforms. Bummer that pfsense offers no content filtering. Only component missing with exception of centralized management. Unfortunately they are both big ones.

[notsrynot]

Love these takes you do on this setups ❤

[Polkster]

Great review of these two systems. I liked the video so much I posted a link to it on my discord server for my clients and other members to view. Personally, I do not need the in depth granularity that pfsense has. I am quite happy with what UniFi offers for my small home business/smart home. I have been using UniFi for a couple of years now and it works great for me. It meets my needs and is pretty easy to use and set up. I do wish UniFi has some better in-depth articles on what the different options do and when it is appropriate to use them. They have made great strides in the past 12 months since getting the UDM Pro and the UDM SE on the same operating system. I hear that OS 4.0 is going to bring a ton of new features and I am really excited to see what Ubiquiti brings to the table in the next 12 months, both hardware wise and software wise. Looking forward to more of these types of videos from you.

[Eric.Hansel]

Good comparison. I kinda figured that PFSense was better suited to business and Unifi for home and purchased accordingly.

[benoitcloutier]

Nice comparison as always. I really love the tabular comparison between the firewalls. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this video seems to be written for small/medium companies, and I get that. That is your bread and butter. But I suspect that most of your audience are prosumers… anyway. You asked for what other solutions we would like to see so here goes: Sophos Home (the one you download and install on your own hardware) and Omada firewalls. And for the record, I’m a PFsense fanboy.

[itandgeneral]

Excellent comparison. Many thanks, Tom.

[BossManC]

Appreciate the video. One little thing though, I've been running my VM thru a WG policy based route without issues on a UDM pro for months. So it is definitely possible.

[NetITGeeks]

The pfSense has a lot of configuration options. Even for home use, you don't have to use all the options/features right away but nice to know that is there if you decided to use it on a later date. For HA and reliability, from netgate you can either buy the appliance or you can build it your own with a dedicated small/mini computer or server. One thing I would warn for home users and home labbers is that setting up your router/gateway on a VM or lab environment for the whole house means that you are responsible for your family's Internet connection. If you are playing around and it goes down, would you be willing to spend hours fixing it overnight to everyone has Internet sooner than later? This is why I rather separate my home networking equipment from the home lab equipment. I don't like running pfSense on a VM for that reason.

[usuariocabreado]

3:00 RAID is not a backup (T-Shirt), what if you use a RAID 5 to store only all other 4 tiny drives with Unison? for example:

R: = RAID 5 (4 x 4TB)
C:, D: = 256GB SSD each
E:, F: = 1TB SSD each
G: = Google Drive FS

Unison profile to sync C:\ to R:\Computer
Unison profile to sync D:\ to R:\Downloads
Unison profile to sync E:\ to R:\Engineering
Unison profile to sync F:\ to R:\Files
Unison profile to syn G:\ to R:\GoogleDrive
etc...

In case RAID fails have original disk data to retain. This is an "acceptable" aproach?

[xavierbernard]

the combination of both is also a good opportunity, advanced functions of the pfsense firewall, in particular for the VPN and Wireguard functions...and the entire UI part of Unifi for the advanced management of switches, access points and other equipment of the job anyway !

[mauriceatkinson]

what is really annoying about people pushing Unifi products is that they never mention they are more than likely out of stock. Point in case is the UDR which has not been in stock for weeks. I do worry about choosing a supplier that can not manage its stock and manufacturing process correctly.

[mithubopensourcelab]

Appreciate the video.

Wish to add a few things .
1. ZFS snapshot are available even on CE [ using cli ] .
2. Content filtering and contol is possible even on pfsense - using free third party app named Nxfilter which can be installed on pfsense firewall itself.
3. Using shellcmd and cron extention, one can setup auto update on pfSense.

Secondly, a comparison with Sophos and Fortiget firewalls with pfsense - makes more sense.

[mannyvelez]

Thank you for your time and informative videos as always!!