We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and OPNsense 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 highly regarded for its extensive security functions, centralized control, and ability to virtualize. OPNsense is appreciated for its ability to scale, provide guest access, offer user-friendly dashboards, and provide a free version for users. Check Point NGFW needs enhancements in integration, hardware upgrades, cost, stability, load balancing, technical support, and reporting capabilities. OPNsense, on the other hand, requires improvements in its interface, bandwidth management, multi-provider internet protection, integration with Azure, a timeline for new features and updates, IPS solution, reporting capabilities, SSL inspection, and learning curve.
Service and Support: The service for Check Point NGFW has varying feedback, with certain customers appreciating its assistance and quick response, while others believe there is room for improvement. OPNsense boasts an exceptional community support network, although a few users encounter challenges in directly accessing support.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Check Point NGFW can be complex and challenging, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the product. It requires expertise and experience for certain configurations and migrations. The initial setup of OPNsense is described as straightforward and easy, even for clients without IT experience. It can be completed within a few hours, with slight variations depending on individual circumstances.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Check Point NGFW is deemed to be expensive, whereas OPNsense falls into the moderate range. Check Point provides flexible licensing choices, although some individuals find the procedure complex. OPNsense is a license-free open-source solution. In addition to the basic expenses, OPNsense requires additional costs for hardware, installation, and training.
ROI: Check Point NGFW provides cost savings, simplicity, and reliable security enforcement, resulting in a favorable return on investment. OPNsense achieves a return on investment in less than three months and eliminates recurring fees.
Comparison Results: Check Point NGFW is the preferred choice over OPNsense. Users appreciate its comprehensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. It is known for its stability, ease of use, and scalability. Check Point NGFW is considered worth the price due to its superior security and reliability.
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"The most valuable feature of Check Point NGFW is it is a complete solution for protecting not only the network but the applications. Additionally, it provides a hybrid cloud solution."
"The activation of additional features is very easy and well documented."
"I use it as well as a VM. We use it a lot because we have all fiber optic connections, so we could use almost all of that. The federation is beautiful because I can transfer all traffic to my main site where I can use just one link to the internet, and I can use it as a proxy as well. It is good to keep control and security."
"The edge security posture has dramatically improved as we can now detect and prevent threats from the public internet."
"It provides end-to-end resolution."
"The technical services always replied in a very fast and effective way."
"All of the features are very valuable, but the most valuable features are the sandboxing and the advanced IPS/IDS."
"It's enabled us to move away from basic LAN to LAN segmentation to a more powerful user separation approach."
"The solution has high availability."
"The most valuable features are reporting, the Sensei plugin, and firewall capabilities."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to configure."
"What I like best about OPNsense is that, as a firewall, it's pretty good. I'm quite impressed with it. I had an excellent experience with OPNsense, which helped me achieve the targets I wanted."
"The feature I find most valuable, is that the program helped me to realize all the requested functionality that was needed."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"The technical support is very good."
"It's open source."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to 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."
"It's expensive, but its price is reasonable looking at its functionality and power"
"Internet load balancing provides either active/passive or active/active load balancing, however, I would like to see more options that provide SD-WAN capabilities while also allowing for more than two links."
"The level and availability of training should be improved."
"Some features, like the VPN, antispam, data loss prevention, etc., are managed in an external console. In the future, I'd like all features in the same console, in one place, where we can see and configure all features."
"Sometimes when they bring on new upgrades, they affect something else."
"The antivirus is less effective than its competitors' antivirus. The antivirus is good, but in other firewalls, such as Palo Alto, it's quite effective. Check Point should provide more output. Sometimes it provides comprehensive information and sometimes it doesn't."
"Although they have it now, we don't have a license for it, and I think mobile device security should be a standard feature. I cannot control someone bringing their device to my network and what they do."
"Given that OPNsense plays a pivotal role as a firewall, safeguarding against various threats, having a reliable backup ensures uninterrupted protection even if unforeseen events impact the primary virtual machine."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"The IPS solution could be more reliable."
"The solution would not be suitable for anything large-scale."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"Its interface should be a little bit better."
"The interface of the solution is an area with shortcomings."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 279 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while OPNsense 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 OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and KerioControl. See our Check Point NGFW vs. OPNsense report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.