We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Fortinet Fortigate based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Fortinet’s lack of an option to deploy firewalls on multiple endpoints is a definite downside. Although Fortinet received better feedback for its support, Check Point is the winner in this comparison.
"The Check Point API let me make 100 net rules in just 10 minutes, which saved us time."
"The Blades work fine and the performance optimization is great."
"The failover from one device to the other has been seamless and we find that we do not lose ongoing SIP calls or Teams chats."
"The most valuable feature is the centralized management, which gives us control over all of the Check Point gateways."
"Everything is easily managed through their Smart Console dashboard. It's a very easy-to-understand dashboard that provides a detailed view."
"We have between five and ten firewalls on-premises, and if we want to configure or push the same configuration to all of the firewalls, then the centralized management system is very helpful."
"The Smart Dashboard allows for rule creation and administration and management and is user-friendly."
"The initial setup was very straightforward. You can customize it and change it as you need."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"It's very easy to configure."
"Bug Fixes and enhancement requests should be remediated earlier, as we have multiple dependencies and auditors are forced to have the latest possible environments."
"I have had some issues in the past with the desktop client being slow to come up for logging in, and then slow to respond to screen changes, however, overall, it really hasn't been too bad."
"Check Point NGFW needs to run marketing events. They have also to set up a support center in India."
"Although they have it now, we don't have a license for it, and I think mobile device security should be a standard feature. I cannot control someone bringing their device to my network and what they do."
"Although the GUI is simple to use and fairly comprehensive, more support via CLI would be beneficial for bulk operations."
"Check Point should add additional management choices."
"The speed of technical support is very slow and is something that should be improved."
"Lately, Check Point seems to be pushing new products too early."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 276 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and SonicWall TZ. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
First of all, Check Point checks the rules to be configured before installing them in the firewall and this prevents the user from making mistakes and putting the company at risk.
Check Point is no longer expensive. It has many models and competes in performance and price vs. Fortinet.
Now web interfaces, like Fortinet, may have more bugs per top 10 OWASP.
We are using both but the GUI and clustering on the FortiGate side look better/easier/more comfortable.
And I do agree with others - Check Point is expensive and Fortinet FortiGate has many models offering less expensive implementation.
I have experience on both from Disti and channel experience. Please find below my comments (nothing new as such).
-Check Point GUI is a bit complicated,
-Application and Web filtering are better than Fortigate.
-IPS and AV are more effective than Fortigate. Overall more stable than any other firewall
Support: not up to the level like Fortigate and lack of trained resources (in the gulf).
Check Point is expensive.
Fortinet has many models and is more affordable than Check Point. It also provides outstanding support. GUI is more user-friendly.
We had this same discussion recently with my organization. It came down to the security of the platform.
Fortinet has had a number of breaches over the last 2 years and this was a key factor in our decision.
The challenge with Check Point will be the transition from our existing firewall and taking advantage of the various features across our organization.