Lifetime is not lifetime?
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Greetings,
I have been a long-time hobby/lab user of pfSense. When one of my clients' firewalls needed to be replaced, I advised him on two Netgate models. He purchased the Netgate 4200 directly from the Amazon Netgate Store. The product URL is https://www.amazon.com/Netgate-4200-pfSense-Software-Firewall/dp/B0CRG8PNRP.
One of my "pros" when making this recommendation was the "Lifetime TAC Lite Support" depicted below:
But while migrating him to the new firewall, I noticed that support showed start at 2024-08-09 and end at 2025-08-14. It appears to me that the TAC Lite is only going to be active for one year which doesn't qualify as "lifetime" at all. Even if the hardware warranty is only for a year, "lifetime" would be end of life for the model, not just the expiration of the hardware warranty.
So today I looked at the Amazon listing again and noticed a few other things. For example, here it says "1-year TAC Lite Support Included," which again is not "lifetime" at all:
And here it talks about (1) software updates included for product "lifetime", (2) TAC Lite included (for how long??), and (3) one year on the hardware warranty:
As you can see, this is all very confusing. Could someone from Netgate provide some clarity on this? I will be sorely disappointed if I have to walk back my glowing support for Netgate. :/
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@TitaniumCoder477 I’m not Netgate but…
Hardware warranty is 1 year.
Software upgrades will exist until it’s not possible anymore, e.g. FreeBSD is dropping 32 bIt ARM support so the 3100 has a limited life now.
TAC lite is basically “get started” anyway. They will provide software images forever, or did before the new Netgate Installer which downloads them.
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There are three levels of tac support. Tac lite is included at no charge when purchasing a Netgate appliance. Tac light is zero to ping. meaning they will help you get your appliance connected to the Internet and be able to ping an outside network.
The two levels above light are pro and enterprise. Pro and enterprise have yearly subscriptions. -
TAC Lite is for the life of the device. You can always contact support support for help reinstalling etc.
The support widget was created before that and the backend code (currently) assumes 1 year from purchase as the base support level. That should get updated soon but it's only cosmetic, if confusing!
Steve
