if i’m not wrong NethServer IPS is based on Snort like pfSense 
I did’nt hang on the CLI version of snort into Neth as suggest the expert mode
but to compare with pfsense the webui still pretty basic.
exemple if you want to block a country, you need to enter one by one all these CIDR
again i’m pretty new with Neth and I’ll take a look soon into the CLI side.
for further reference : http://docs.nethserver.org/projects/nethserver-devel/en/latest/ips.html
- pfsense is a dedicate firewall distribution
- nethserver is a versatile server distribution with some firewall functions