We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Fortinet FortiGate-VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point NGFW is praised for its extensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. Fortinet FortiGate-VM receives appreciation for its stability, reliability, and user-friendly interface.
Check Point NGFW needs enhancements in integration, hardware upgrades, cost and pricing, stability and security, setup process, load balancing capabilities, technical support, and reporting. Fortinet FortiGate-VM requires improvements in key activation, log management, cloud management, IPsec failover, monitoring tool, setup and configuration, performance, firmware updates, log settings, GUI capabilities, costs, technical support, and integration.
Service and Support: The customer service for Check Point NGFW has garnered varying opinions, with some customers appreciating its helpfulness and responsiveness, while others believe there is room for improvement. Fortinet FortiGate-VM's support has received a mix of feedback. Certain customers commend its prompt response times and expertise, while others highlight concerns regarding delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: Check Point NGFW's initial setup can be complex and may require expertise and experience for certain configurations and migrations. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers a generally straightforward and easy setup process, aided by Fortinet's support and assistance.
Pricing: Check Point NGFW has a high setup cost, yet offers flexible licensing options. Fortinet FortiGate-VM has competitive pricing and includes support without extra charges.
ROI: Check Point NGFW provides cost savings, simplicity, and strong security enforcement, resulting in a favorable ROI. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers stability and enhanced security, guaranteeing a positive ROI when purchased initially.
Comparison Results: Check Point NGFW is the preferred choice when comparing it to Fortinet FortiGate-VM. Check Point NGFW stands out for its extensive security features, such as URL filtering, intrusion prevention systems, identity and access management, and application control capabilities. Additionally, it offers centralized management and virtualization options, as well as stability, user-friendliness, and scalability.
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"The interface is very good."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"Fortinet FortiGate protects against internet-based threats, both internal and external. It is scalable, stable, easy to use, and easy to install."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"If you want to share traffic loads to both cluster members you can use the active-active feature, if you don't want to share traffic loads you can prefer active standby."
"The different hardware models focus on a wide spectrum of the market, so any company can choose a model that makes sense for them from the range."
"The solution is easy to use. I like the monitoring the most."
"Check Point NGFW has helped us to significantly reduce our risk of cyberattacks by providing comprehensive protection against a wide range of threats, including malware, viruses, ransomware, phishing attacks, and zero-day threats."
"I like the GUI."
"We have not had any issues with the firewall."
"The Smart Dashboard allows for rule creation and administration and management and is user-friendly."
"Management integration is holistic as centralized management has been core to the solution for decades."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"Operations have been flawless."
"The solution integrates well with other Fortinet products."
"The most valuable features are site-to-site connections and UTM."
"FortiGate-VM's firewall is excellent."
"The most valuable features are the IPS and Antivirus."
"The standard features, including the filtering, are quite good. All the basic features are pretty useful for us."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"Stability issues. I built out this firewall in a cluster, and I had stability issues day one. Needs to be rebooted frequently. Tunnels need to be bounced frequently. Their hardware compatibility guide, when I built out the servers to host them on, was not accurate."
"Check Point should include additional management choices; for example, Check Point does not offer full management support via browser."
"Until you have some experience, the installation and configuration are difficult."
"There's a significant area for improvement when it comes to pricing."
"The technical support is really poor. We have to wait for approximately 48 hours sometimes for a simple solution."
"It would be ideal to manage everything from one central place."
"Without any training, it is very hard to administrate the whole Check Point NGFW."
"It can be expensive, especially for small businesses."
"It should have the SD-WAN feature. This would increase the number of features that are available in the box."
"In the next release, I would like to see integration capability with SIEM tools, such as QRadar, and LogRhythm."
"The solution is fairly complex."
"I have worked on some of the largest and smallest solutions that Fortinet sells and they all scale really well."
"Customization needs improvement."
"They could simplify the troubleshooting process."
"It would be better if it could provide you with options before completely blocking anything through the web filter. If you are doing a deep SSL inspection on the site if it says it's expired, it doesn't give you the option to continue at your own risk. I can't say that it's bad, but SSL internally isn't really a requirement. However, its security features can help. Right now, we have people going out and spending on purchasing the SSL certificates for internal sites."
"The technical support is not very responsive and is an area that needs to be improved."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 276 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM 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-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". 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-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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