We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"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."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"Good performance, stability, and virtual domain ability."
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"The level of security is excellent. It protects our organization well."
"Apart from it having very good features, I personally like the vulnerability assistance via report management which detects host and network vulnerability."
"The management interface is easy to operate and is a standardized way of managing different firewall modules in the same client application."
"I like the dashboard, redundancy, log analysis, threat prevention and ISP, and VPN."
"I have not had an infected machine behind the firewall since I first installed and started using NGFW."
"The most valuable features are the security blades and the ease of managing the policies, searching log for events, and correlating them."
"The feature I like the most is their central management, the Smart controller which you can use to manage all the firewalls from one location... Being able to access almost everything in one location — manage all your gateways and get all your logs — for me, is the best feature to work with."
"The packet inspections have been a strong point. Our identity collectors have also been helpful. In many ways, Check Point has been a step up from our SonicWalls that we had in-house before that. There's a lot of additional flexibility that we didn't have before."
"The main reason we went with it was the security protocols. They were more robust on this device."
"It provides us with Layer 2 and Layer 3 security."
"WatchGuard Firebox is the most powerful firewall for Wi-Fi security."
"The most valuable features are the VPN and web blocker security."
"Management and visibility are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable are the VPN and proxy features."
"Firebox operates effectively in the background, blocking potential threats without a need for constant monitoring."
"The solution has a useful traffic monitor."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"Fortinet doesn't provide multiple virtual firewalls which would facilitate end users and customers."
"I still don't have access to the reporting service."
"There is room for enhancement in the support system in India."
"The complexity involved in the solution's initial setup phase and deployment process is an area of concern where improvement is required."
"One area for improvement in Check Point NGFW is the support process."
"The API support is good. However, Check Point needs to focus on more prepared scripts for some tiresome actions."
"Hopefully, in the future, these will be much more plug-and-play and orchestrated from a single administration console."
"The SmartUpdate interface is a little bit crowded if your company has a lot of software items."
"The management of memory in the hardware needs to improve. They have had a lot of issues with memory leakage."
"We would like to see granular notification settings and more advanced filtering in traffic monitoring."
"The solution is lacking a professional website, they should be updated more often."
"Due to their lack of investment in marketing, channel development, and certifications, WatchGuard faces challenges in gaining visibility and market share, especially in regions like Pakistan."
"The software base, the management piece that goes onto a server, is not as user-friendly as I would like. There are three different pieces that you have to manage, so it's a little bit convoluted, in my opinion."
"We use WatchGuard to manage our failover for internet. If a primary internet goes down, it does a failover to the secondary the internet. However, what it doesn't do so well is that if the primary internet has a lot of latency but it's not completely down, it doesn't do a failover to the backup in a timely manner."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"They are working on cloud-based options. However, they do not have the options fully functional in their solution at this time."
"There's always room for improvement, especially if the threats are getting more sophisticated and the IT department cannot sufficiently meet this kind of sophistication with their own knowledge and experience. Knowing that this solution can get up to the level of addressing a lot of these threats is something that everybody wishes for. If we look at the dark web and the lawful web, they are two opposites, and if these two good and bad collide in the world of the internet, you want the best possible product—especially if you cannot get to that point of knowledge. I am just an individual and end user, with limited knowledge of usage. That's why I say there's always room for improvement, from their side and also from mine, because by knowing exactly what they can achieve and the knowledge that they can get on an everyday basis, and the portion that is understandable to me, it's an improvement for them as well."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 276 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while WatchGuard Firebox 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and SonicWall NSa. See our Check Point NGFW vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors, best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors, and best Firewalls vendors.
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