The first benefit is that pfSense is feature-rich, robust, and very flexible software. Besides the essential firewall features, it has tons of additional features for network routing, remote connectivity, diagnostics, and reporting, along with many more. What's more, it is an extensible platform. You do not have to settle for the functionality provided out of the box with pfSense. You're free to write your own plugins and add-ons. Many members of the community have done just that. You will go over some of its key extensions later in this book.
With all the enterprise-grade features and security pfSense provides, it is incredible that it is a free and open source product. This is possibly its biggest benefit. You can download it from the pfSense website at https://www.pfsense.org/download/, and install it by yourself. For large implementations and complex configurations, you do have the option to purchase license support from professionals, but that is completely optional.
pfSense is very versatile and flexible. If you are a professional working out of a home-based office, you can use pfSense to protect your network. But if you are a large company running a global infrastructure, you can still use pfSense to protect various parts of your work. pfSense can run on a 10-year-old PC with limited resources, and it can also run on large multicore servers. This makes it quite scalable. You can easily expand the resources on your pfSense infrastructure in the event that your network needs an increase. And due to these benefits, and many other features which pfSense brings to the table, individuals, network administrators, security enthusiasts, and companies across the world are embracing pfSense. These are just some of the most recognizable names who have adopted pfSense as a core part of their network infrastructure. Needless to say, with organizations such as Google, the US Department of Homeland Security, Shopify, and NASA putting their faith in pfSense, this free open source firewall solution is here to stay.
