I want to build a firewall and i’m still torn between pfsense, untangle and sophos.
At first i liked untangle cause it seemed good for noobs. But the price tag has me leaning away. I don’t need any web filtering at my home. Especially now after Lawrence review seeing they don’t even include wireguard in home version, although thats not something I desperately need. But it also seems threat detection and virus scanning are also not included in home version?
Now i’m leaning towards sophos and pfsense. I hear sophos is better for newbs and pfsense is more complicated because of the ui? Supposedly sophos blocks everything by default which makes it safer to install but more a pain to set up.
If you dont want much of filtering then pfsense is easy to deploy. Dont worry much about UI, its pretty straight forward, follow Tom’s Video and you will be done setting you your pfsense in no time.
I heard sophos is good too and if you want to do some filtering its laid out in a easy way. But if you are not planing at filtering then go with pfsense,
Hi, Having used Sophos XG and UTM before moving to PFsense I can say that the experience while being a bit different at first is worth it. If you follow the videos Tom has in the libraries or the very well kept documentation then I highly recommend in your case the PF approach.
Having said that I did move recently to Untangle to expand my knowledge base and find Untangle and its Home user price tag to be well worth a look.
Ok quick retraction on Untangle. I notice that with recent changes in the Home Pro licensing options that I can no longer confidently say it is good value.
First they have split the Home Pro option to basic and pro removing some features from basic and limiting IP’s to 50. Pro has the missing features and wireguard + virus pro and also appears to be IP limited but to 150
Basic is $50 and Pro is $150,. I can’t say I’m comfortable with the stripping of features and IP limit in basic.
SO for above you are best placed to go PF
Easiest way is to just try both and see. Personally I felt the sophos interface was slow - moving between sections or committing saves. Granted, it’s been a few years now.
pfSense’s addons are really well done and supported. I also think you’re more likely to find help with pfsense given the size of the community and people who use it.
Sophos, ubiquity, pfsense, untangle all have there pros and cons
For those on a journey of finding “the right solution” is a matter of timing
Mostly a matter of timing of where you are on your journey and let’s not forget that the right choice for smb and above is a balancing act of price, quality and implementation and ongoing support complexity
The best fit may not be the most expensive nor the worst choice the cheapest
I myself admin a fortinet at work ( I don’t recommend it)
At home I’ve tried Sophos utm and xg, unifi usg, pfsense and currently untangle
Each has a different way to do things and method for rules and filters
There was a reason I moved from sophos to unifi usg to pfsense and onto untangle
That is on my journey I have realised there is only one way to find the best fit or compromise, and that’s to try them
None will be a perfect fit and if that’s what you are looking for your search will never end. And perhaps that’s a good thing
Try and learn