Pfsense Comercial Support level not what it used to be…..
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Hi, Paul,
I sent you an e-mail this morning asking you to detail the concerns you have. I have yet to receive a response. Also, I looked at the tickets/chat session you had, and I saw nothing that jumped out at me that would indicate a problem. If you'd like to discuss further, or of you'd like to specifically outline the issues you had, you can reply to the ticket. It's in my queue.
P.S. Jim's last name is "Pingle", and "PFsense" is not pfSense.
Thanks.
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Whenever we've needed help from the pfSense Team, their response has been AWESOME. I've never had bad service and have always learned something from the call. One time I had kinda stumped the tech support guy, they put me on hold for a bit and then CMB himself popped on the line….Needless to say I couldnt stump him! Good fucking luck getting that outta Cisco or Palo Alto! ;D
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CMB is very helpful in these free community forums. I assume he's much more so when doing his job.
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i would tend to agree. The pricing for the product in comparison to support is not as good as Cisco. Cisco products might be more expensive but when you take into consideration that Cisco includes unlimited configuration support and hardware replacement with 4 hour response to hardware… Cisco Wins!
I cannot afford to resell pfSense. Profit margin is too small. 2 support incidents is not enough especially when that also covers any issues including bug!
I also hope they improve support options!
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2 support incidents is not enough especially when that also covers any issues including bug!
Not true, we don't charge incidents when the reason is a bug.
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Well maybe that has changed. But I had an issue with a newly deployed it I purchased for a client and had major issues with getting openvpn working and config was fine. They took away one of the incidents and then later gave it back after I complained.
I ended up dumping a ton of hours into it and could not make the client pay for it as it was a new deployment. I admit that this was the only time that I had such a big issue but being the fact that I made no money on the hardware it was a hard pill to swallow. I ended up formatting and reinstalling and problems went away.
The cost of becoming a reseller and the small margin of profit makes it a very undesirable solution. It makes more sense for me to continue to build and sell them myself. I hope things change and I would be happy to return to purchasing direct from pfSense.
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We're a MSP and sell a lot of boxes, all of which are bought directly from pfSense. While I'll agree that the profit margin is razor thin, if you sell at MSRP, the support is there if needed and its GOOD. Now….Don't compete with internet and stop selling at list...Selling on price is just a race to zero. Remember the words of Jack Welch: "Price is only an issue in the absence of value".
Sorry to thread jack....
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configuration support and hardware replacement with 4 hour response to hardware… Cisco Wins!
I am pretty sure if pfSense is selling such devices as the CRS-3 for something around ~470.000 € for each
fully featured and taking 15.000 € for 3-5 years of support they will act in the same time.To compare a NASDAQ notated company against an OpenSource project is not really making sense in my eyes.
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Also, when buying hardware such as CSR routers or even ASR routers, usually, you usually have all the technical know-how already in house to fully manage/operate these devices.
But when you do hit a bug, unfortunately, Cisco is not always quick to admit it or even understand. My colleague once had a TAC case open for an ASR router that took cisco's engineers almost 3 weeks(and 5 wrong theories from the TAC engineers) to understand and confirm! It was not so much a bug as it was a design-fault in the ASR for a particular use-case.
My point is, if you think that Cisco's support is so infallible, you're wrong.
And the advantage of pfSense is that you have very close contact with a team that actually has inhouse knowledge of the product.
But comparing pfSense and Cisco in terms of support is pretty ridiculous considering the resources Cisco can potentially muster up.
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It was not so much a bug as it was a design-fault in the ASR for a particular use-case.
"design-fault for a particular use-case" translates to "bug" in my dictionary ::)
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It was not so much a bug as it was a design-fault in the ASR for a particular use-case.
"design-fault for a particular use-case" translates to "bug" in my dictionary ::)
A bug is anything that doesn't work as designed. Otherwise you can call anything you don't like a "bug". I don't like how PFSense crashes when using faulty hardware. Bug? The term needs a strict definition that is not open to opinion of interpretation, otherwise you get feature creep labeled as "bugs".
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A long time ago, we had a quality specialist in to give a talk. His message went like this:
Software engineers are engineers who design and implement software. They need to think like engineers. When software doesn't work as intended it doesn't have "bugs." Bugs are cute, bugs are quirky, even funny. When software doesn't work as intended, it has defects, just like any other engineered solution. Think of it this way: if the anti-lock brakes on your car fail, it's not a bug, it's a defect. It doesn't matter if the root cause is hardware or software. People die either way.
Dramatically worded, but a great message nonetheless.
