We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and SonicWall NSa 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."Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"Their interface is very easy to use, it is without bugs."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"We have found the central management (Smart Console) to be very helpful in managing all the firewalls and keeping the software/hotfix versions up to date."
"The most valuable feature is that we are protected against zero-day threats."
"The Check Point API let me make 100 net rules in just 10 minutes, which saved us time."
"All of the features are very valuable, but the most valuable features are the sandboxing and the advanced IPS/IDS."
"One ability that Check Point has is that it is the first to provide us with the ability to use identities instead of using the traditional IP-based format, which allows way more flexibility in what we can do with the rule base."
"The management interface is easy to operate and is a standardized way of managing different firewall modules in the same client application."
"Its management web interface is very easy and user-friendly."
"It offers services like navigation, control, and filtering, which ensure that all users stay connected to business applications."
"SonicWall NSa has a user-friendly firmware"
"It is a brilliant product. It is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) system. It has got about 11 security services that take care of your perimeter security. It takes care of any kind of cyber threats that could come in. It takes care of creating VPNs between two SonicWalls instantly and very easily. It has got spyware in it as well as a firewall. It has also got a gateway antivirus and an application firewall that can block things from outside."
"SonicWall NSA is easy to deploy, easy to maintain, and easy to configure."
"The most valuable features of this solution are intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, and the advanced capture client, which provides live traffic analysis."
"Content Filtering and sandboxing are valuable features."
"Deep packet inspection and intelligent application control are the most valuable features. It is a very updated solution. It is very current as compared to other brands and vendors."
"With the deployment of the SonicWall NSA solution, we never suffered a problem due to invasion or contamination of any kind."
"The technical support is very good."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"The support system could be improved."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"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."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"With the version we're on, it's a bit time-consuming if you have multiple IP addresses to add. But in the later versions, which we're moving to, it makes it a lot easier to add IP addresses with dynamic objects, as they call it."
"The current model is predominantly hardware appliance-based, which can incur substantial costs"
"Check Point's support, at all levels, needs a complete overhaul."
"I would like there to be a way to run packet captures more easily in the GUI environment. Right now, if we want to read packet captures, we have to do so from the command line."
"Check Point should quickly update and expand its application database to have what Palo Alto has."
"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."
"Pricing needs to be lowered from start, this would be more effective than lowering it during negotiations."
"The user interface for management could be improved."
"We're not particularly fond of the way it generally performs. We are finding ourselves rebooting often. There are freeze-ups and that kind of thing. The stability needs to improve exponentially."
"One area for improvement in SonicWall NSa is the GUI. It isn't easy to understand. The support for SonicWall NSa is mediocre, which is another area for improvement."
"The dynamics needs to be improved. The solution is not very compatible compared to the market products."
"Port forwarding could use streamlining."
"The ongoing service fees are high."
"The reporting and monitoring are a bit complex and should be easier in SonicWall NSa because other firewalls I have experienced have been more simple, such as Palo Alto. We are able to receive a clear view of our network. As a general user with little experience, it would be difficult for them to handle."
"SonicWall needs to work on SD-WAN."
"Vendor support needs improvement. The frequency of time and support should be increased."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 279 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. 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 NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Sangfor NGAF, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Check Point NGFW vs. SonicWall NSa 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.
