We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between these two products is that Check Point users feel that the tool’s VPN is hard to integrate. In addition, Check Point does not have an open-source version like pfSense does.
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"With FortiClient, you can easily connect when you are home, check out what you want to do, and connect to your network when you are not at work. You can switch on servers and you can check what is wrong."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"Check Point offers excellent security."
"The tool provides great security."
"We are delighted with the powerful management console and diagnostic tools."
"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."
"It is easy to administrate and maintain."
"The small business hardware device was powerful and easy to set up."
"The way in which it manages the nodes within a cluster architecture is excellent, offering fault tolerance which is, in my experience, practically imperceptible when one of the nodes fails."
"The AntiSpam/Mail blade was also one of the main reasons we went with this product since we hosted our email server locally. This was an extra layer of protection on top of the existing solution."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"I handle the scanning for the finance department. I recently encountered an issue with the PCL bills, our company bills. I resolved the matter, cleared the bill, and received calls regarding it using pfsense.The user interface is extremely user-friendly, which is why we use it across various plant sites. Our IT representatives at the plants find it easy to use and manage because of its straightforward interface."
"The documentation is very good."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"Its reliability and cost-effectiveness stand out."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
"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."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"The antivirus is not as effective as it could be because updates are not that frequent."
"They have few predefined reports and it would be nice to increase them since the logs are excellent."
"Management: Check Point should move away from its current architecture wherein it mandatorily requires a management server to manage the gateways. They should develop A feature in the gateway itself so that no management server is needed for policy and gateway management."
"The main thing for a normal operations guy who is creating tools and firewalls, it is quite difficult to manage. It requires an expert level of knowledge in Check Point products to manage these scalable platform appliances and the virtual firewall that comes with it. We have to educate our guys and give them training on a regular basis to work on these products."
"It should be user-friendly from an implementation point of view. Its setup is a little bit difficult."
"One of the main features that need improvement is the rule filter export."
"Sometimes when they bring on new upgrades, they affect something else."
"For the next release, we would like to have better ruleset cleanup tools that are already included."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"I've never tried it in large environments. All my clients are small businesses with a handful of employees, so I am not sure how it works in large environments. I keep up with recent versions, and there's nothing I'm waiting for, and nothing breaks when I get a new version."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
"We have not had any problems with it, and we also do not have a need for any new features. If anything, its reporting can be better. Sophos has better reporting than pfSense. Sophos has more detailed information. pfSense is not as detailed. It is summarized."
"The integration could be improved."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 276 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. 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 Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Meraki MX. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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