You seem to be confusing the built in VPN server for a VPN provider. I do not see a "free VPN" mentioned anywhere on the website or in the app. All this enables you to do is access your home network remotely, your data isn't being funneled to a third party server because the server is your router.
The DNS defaults to Cloudflare if I remember correctly. You can replace it with Unbound or DNS over TLS with your provider of choice.
The ad blocking is done with locally downloaded blocklists.
And you can do much more than VPN/DNS, so I'm not sure why you walked away with the impression that this is all you can do. You can configure VLANs, you get IPS/IDS, push alerts to your phone, tons of other features that put it more than on par with OPNSense/PFSense for my use case.
Regarding price, the value is in the software. Firewalla's UX is so far ahead of OPNSense or a UDM that I can't fathom going back to one of those. Seriously, both feel positively prehistoric in comparison. And I'm fine with paying for that, because software is expensive, and apparently no one else has managed easy to use software that supports a prosumer featureset, and I was sick of spending hours configuring my UDM or OPNSense router.
I get your concern about closed source, but that's not a problem for me personally - most of my devices run closed source code, including my Ubiquiti gear, and it's not like anyone compiles OPNSense or PFSense from scratch when installing onto their router anyways.
The thing cools fanlessly/passively, can do IDS/IPS + WireGuard server and client at 1Gb speeds, and is trivially easy to configure even with a smartphone, which neither my OPNSense DEC-840 or my UDM Pro could do (at much greater price points.) If you can find similar functionality and ease of use at a lesser price point, I'd love to know.
You seem to be confusing the built in VPN server for a VPN provider. I do not see a "free VPN" mentioned anywhere on the website or in the app. All this enables you to do is access your home network remotely, your data isn't being funneled to a third party server because the server is your router.
The DNS defaults to Cloudflare if I remember correctly. You can replace it with Unbound or DNS over TLS with your provider of choice.
The ad blocking is done with locally downloaded blocklists.
And you can do much more than VPN/DNS, so I'm not sure why you walked away with the impression that this is all you can do. You can configure VLANs, you get IPS/IDS, push alerts to your phone, tons of other features that put it more than on par with OPNSense/PFSense for my use case.
Regarding price, the value is in the software. Firewalla's UX is so far ahead of OPNSense or a UDM that I can't fathom going back to one of those. Seriously, both feel positively prehistoric in comparison. And I'm fine with paying for that, because software is expensive, and apparently no one else has managed easy to use software that supports a prosumer featureset, and I was sick of spending hours configuring my UDM or OPNSense router.
I get your concern about closed source, but that's not a problem for me personally - most of my devices run closed source code, including my Ubiquiti gear, and it's not like anyone compiles OPNSense or PFSense from scratch when installing onto their router anyways.
The thing cools fanlessly/passively, can do IDS/IPS + WireGuard server and client at 1Gb speeds, and is trivially easy to configure even with a smartphone, which neither my OPNSense DEC-840 or my UDM Pro could do (at much greater price points.) If you can find similar functionality and ease of use at a lesser price point, I'd love to know.