- I like that Uinfi has the cyber security feature and I plan on paying for that. PF does not have that.
- Easier management of policy based routing for VPN.
- PF can’t do zone based firewall.
- PF doesn’t have central management. I know they are working on it but it will have to be licneced. I’m not paying for that. I manage family members firewalls flawlessly.
- I plan on investing in other devices in their eco system (NVR and cameras)
To be clear, I don’t mind spending money on a project I believe in and support. I think negate should make money or pfsense would die. I don’t really care for their business model and their devices are pretty expensive compared to the devices that unifi has. I posted about this a while back HERE. I can get a LOT more performance with unifi. I tried OPNsense and it was ok. I tried vyos and it was pretty good. Huge learning curve for vyos if you don’t understand networking. I am involved in the development for VyManager (Vyos Frontend). It is in beta at the moment and not feature complete but it is coming along. GitHub - Community-VyProjects/VyManager at beta
I would have bought a 1 time license for pfsense+, but I am not paying $130 a year for that. A one time purchase was WAY more than they were getting before. But making users spend that every year is too much.