Actually though, if you look at devices with comparable performance #s, it’s pretty affordable / a great value. For example, the Watchguard Firebox M590 is currently $6,486.14 on Amazon, and that’s with only 1 year of their basic security software. They’re stated firewall and IPsec VPN performance is 20 Gbps and 6.84 Gbps, respectively (both less than the Netgate 8300). And it has less ports, too. That’s not even getting to Cisco, Juniper etc ($20-50K for less performance and comparable port density).
If you compare this to other vendors like Fortinet, Palo Alto, Cisco, Juniper, etc … its definitely more affordable. If you look at a Fortigate 200F that has similar specs as this, its around 5-6k list price. Put a year of support on that and it becomes 7-8k. Add some NG features (given, I still don’t think pfSense has any real next-gen features, regardless of which packages you bolt on) and you are looking at 9-10k.
Yes, no business pays list price but you’d need a ~60% discount to be at the same pricepoint, which requires you to have bought a lot of Forti’s previously
I’m not saying the use-case is the same when deploying a pfSense vs a Palo Alto or a Forti (again, especially if you need NG features). But if budget is a thing and basic firewalling is sufficient, Netgate appliances are solid alternatives.
And thats ignorning TNSR since I don’t have any experience with it, but if you look at the numbers, finding a Cisco router that handles ~100 Gbps you are in the 6-figures range.
I started using a SG-3100 in 2019. The biggest box netgate had was the sg-4860. The audience was the prosumer with WFH projects. Most WFH workers have upgraded to fiber now. WFH users just need a box that doesn’t brick and not in the multi grand price tag and brings in 2-5gb. Hats off to Netgate for all the work they did with pfsense.
Thank you!