We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and SonicWall TZ based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point NGFW is highly regarded for its extensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. SonicWall TZ distinguishes itself with its unified threat management, VPN capabilities, web security, and intuitive interface.
Check Point NGFW needs improvements in integration with other infrastructures, hardware upgrades, cost and pricing perspective, stability and security, setup process, load balancing capabilities, technical support, and reporting capabilities. SonicWall TZ requires improvements in rated throughput, secondary DNS hosting, cloud management, user interface, integration and flexibility, marketing and branding, reporting and licensing, additional ports, GSM and Sonic Analyzer features, advanced features and pricing, load balancing and data filtering, DLP integration, reporting analytics and user support, affordability and competition, and support and automation.
Service and Support: The feedback on Check Point NGFW's customer service varies, with some customers appreciating its helpful and responsive nature, while others believe there is room for improvement. SonicWall TZ's support is deemed satisfactory, although there have been instances of language difficulties and delays in assistance.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Check Point NGFW can be complex and may require specialized knowledge and experience for certain configurations and migrations. The initial setup for SonicWall TZ is described as simple, direct, and user-friendly, with a seamless out-of-the-box experience.
Pricing: Based on the feedback, Check Point NGFW is known for its high setup cost, however, it provides flexible licensing options. SonicWall TZ has mixed reviews regarding its pricing and setup cost. That said, it is considered fairly priced for medium-sized companies. There are extra fees associated with its cloud management capabilities.
Comparison Results: Check Point NGFW is the preferred product over SonicWall TZ. Users appreciate Check Point NGFW's comprehensive security features, centralized management, virtualization capabilities, stability, ease of use, and scalability. They also value its ability to protect against next-generation attacks and its strong security features. Users consider the customer service and support for Check Point NGFW to be superior.
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"The virtual firewall feature is the most valuable. We have around 1,500 firewalls. We did not buy individual hardware, and the virtual firewalls made sense because we don't have to keep on buying the hardware. FortiGate is easier to use as compared to Checkpoint devices. It is user friendly and has a good UI. You don't need much expertise to work on this firewall. You don't need to worry much about DCLA, commands, and things like that."
"The CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"I like the SmartEvent feature. When we see a threat, SmartEvent can create a rule for that. SmartEvent works with the SmartCenter to block a threat attack with a block monitor. The SmartCenter has the management for all the firewalls and data centers in a single dashboard."
"Check Point has a really cool GUI."
"The detection rate for any cyberattacks/suspicious activity is very high (more than 90%)."
"It is giving us a greater reach for greater prevention and is proactively protecting our employees."
"The activation of additional features is very easy and well documented."
"The Check Point API let me make 100 net rules in just 10 minutes, which saved us time."
"The packet inspection capabilities are great."
"The most valuable features are application control, regulation, and threat prevention."
"The product’s filtering and URL-blocking features are valuable."
"It's a very cost-effective solution."
"It is very user-friendly, and there is no problem in using its interface."
"It does exactly what it says on the tin. It is good for protecting the business from being compromised. Its port protection is very good."
"It is very stable with no issues. The firewall's been up for the past 35 days non-stop. It's performed great. It has performed as it should perform."
"We like the central interface and we like the security features. Additionally, we use SonicWall with VPN connectivity and we have had no problems with SonicWall all these years."
"It's a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly navigation."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"Lacks training for new features."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve if it had a cloud-managed solution."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"It could be easier to access the installation of the Hostfix for VSX solutions. The CLI commands help us understand how virtual firewalls behave in terms of processor, memory, and other aspects. More graphic visualizations of CPUSE commands would be a welcome improvement, and Check Point could expand scripts to run within the solution for multiple tasks."
"One of the main features that need improvement is the rule filter export."
"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."
"Sometimes there are security bugs, which is frustrating."
"IoT should be considered in future development."
"Support cases have been generated several times, and it takes time for the case to be resolved."
"They could make the licensing a bit easier to deal with, especially for enterprise-level options."
"Improvement regarding the expansion of the SMS's compatibility to include various virtualization environments would be beneficial."
"Sonic Analyzer could be improved. It's difficult to manage and not very intuitive."
"The log sections could be done more clearly."
"Sometimes there is a glitch between the network connection. Last time, something happened on our IP phone, the SonicWall team did some updates to fix the issue. However, glitches happen very rarely. I did not experience any other types of problems."
"There is a point I don't like about SonicWall in the past and now. Most of the destinations we look at when we're detecting some user using too much bandwidth or something like that, SonicWall just gave us destination IP address, instead of the full qualified domain name. I think that's the most important part that is still missing. I think that's the most important for us."
"The areas we would like to see improvement include more features available similar to the equivalent FortiGate appliance, e.g. SSL encryption and inspection. Two-factor authentication capability would be another additional feature that could be included in the next release."
"We have experienced some issues with SonicWall TZ and they are lacking some advanced features other vendors have."
"I would like the solution to build in more redundancy. I"
"It could be made more user friendly."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. 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 SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Check Point NGFW vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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