Just to be clear, you’re upset with pfSense so your solution is to spend money on pfSense…

Move to OPNsense if you like but I’m unclear what that has to do with changing the function of your switch. Why are you considering that?

None, stop trying to hyper-converge everything. Synology makes nice storage boxes and their apps for backup are solid too. Leave it at that.

Check for firmware updates to the network card AND the UPS.

I had an issue recently where my 5PXG2 was claiming the batteries had failed after less than a year. I talked to support and they said update. As soon as I did, the errors cleared and the UPS started UPS-ing again.

Those are three separate products and the names haven’t changed. While there are multiple tiers of each and more stuff included in the bundles than I mentioned, the general breakdown is:

EO is email only

O365 is Office + Email

M365 is Windows + Office + Email

OP could probably use EO with 5 users and 10 shared mailboxes. Granting the 5 users Full Access to the mailboxes they need would meet their needs.

Very few people need a “router”, Cisco or otherwise. Unless you’re doing BGP with full tables, building a bunch of GRE tunnels, or have some advanced traffic shaping needs, it’s probably not the right tool.

If you’re studying for a CCNA, NP, or IE then you might want to look into renting a lab or virtualizing one. That will be far more cost effective.

If your needs are business-oriented with a budget but don’t fall into the list I gave above, consider Fortinet or Palo Alto. Without a meaningful budget, OPNsense is probably the way to go.

I would not, under any circumstances, recommend Ubiquiti.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say you don’t actually need or want a Cisco router.

Why are you asking about one? What are your requirements? What type of environment?