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.
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"The dashboard I have found the most valuable in Fortinet FortiGate."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"The main benefit is the grouping of our security monitoring."
"The online documentation is complete and easy to read and understand."
"Check Point has a really cool GUI."
"The IPS protection is the most useful feature that I found from Check Point."
"It is easy to use, and its management is the best. Check Point has a great unified management solution for firewalls and security products."
"Its functionality is highly satisfactory."
"The user interface is very cool and easy to use."
"The Check Point architecture and packet are very good."
"Being able to access almost everything in one location manage all your gateways and get all your logs is great."
"Good basic firewall features."
"A very stable product that lasts over time, easy to understand, and administer."
"It's a good solution for end-users. It's pretty easy to work with."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"The initial setup was straightforward, therefore I wanted to continue using the product."
"It works. I put pfSense in, and it works. I can't think of any trouble I ever had with it. It runs on heat-sensitive appliances. They don't need a fan, so they don't overheat. It is affordable, fast, and very high-speed. It is built on BSD Unix, and it pretty much runs on any Intel processor."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"I would like to see improvements with the antivirus and IPS as they are not working properly all the time."
"The UI could be improved."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"The scalability could be better."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"Heavy load causes a higher CPU to peek which causes us to need to reboot the device. Malicious activity database corrupts the directory or path and restoring it takes a lot of time."
"The perimeter antivirus can be improved. It's not as good as other leaders."
"Pricing for the gateways is too high as compared to the other vendors."
"We would like to see constant improvement in anti-malware functionality and anti-threat protection."
"The product or services can be improved from the cost and the pricing perspective."
"Check Point's study materials should be provided by the company directly and be of very good quality. This is not provided right now and something that the company can improve."
"The setup is a little complex compared to its competitors."
"I hope for product simplification. It would be better to use one security console, instead of many of them (for licensing and monitoring). The solution is hard for newcomers and takes much time to deep in. Also, I want a historical graph for throughput and system resources usage. Maybe it will be great to make easy step-by-step installation and configuration cookbooks as Fortinet did, and integrate the documentation within the solution."
"The integration of pfSense with EPS and EDS could be better. Also, it should be easier to get reports on how many users are connecting simultaneously and how sections connect in real-time."
"I would like to see pfSense integrate WireGuard. Currently, pfSense uses OpenVPN, and there's nothing wrong with it, but WireGuard is a lot leaner and meaner."
"There are some bias issues and some intrusions in our network that have to be addressed. So, we're thinking of changing this firewall to something like a professional hardware-enabled firewall."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
"It would be great to add more to security."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 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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