We performed a comparison between Check Point UTM-1 [EOL] and Netgate pfSense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."This is an easy solution to deploy."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"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 important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"The UTM platform has been the most valuable."
"The filtering was very good."
"It safeguards against cyber attacks."
"The solution is very robust."
"We can create a domain to separate and segregate some functions, some services."
"The most valuable feature for us was to implement negligent functionality, to direct functionality to viewer control and application control so we could disconnect, and at the same time, we installed checkpoints. We disconnected our proxy."
"It provides visibility and drives organizational security."
"The databases and its signatures are its most important features."
"I had some outages in the network and we provide services for our company. We sell mobile credits. The terminal gets access to our own server inside the network and if one internet fails, then the other one is still up and we have a back-up link on the devices."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"It is a very good solution for enterprises that need a VPN for their employees. It is the best way to provide a remote work facility to employees at a very low cost. Other solutions that I have had in the past were very expensive. Enterprises don't always have that kind of money to invest."
"The documentation is very good."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"I mostly like all of it. Whatever we use is valuable."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"NGN, reporting and controls."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"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."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"Its price could be better."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"Specifically on the user experience, sometimes the set up of things, such as the VPN SSL, takes a lot of time to load and a lot of time to get up and running on every session."
"As we don't have a representative of Check Point in Mozambique, this makes it very difficult when we have some issues to resolve."
"While the technical support is good, the Indian level technical support could use an upgrade."
"Some features that could be improved are advanced threat protection, sandboxing, and vulnerability management."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
"I am not able to see a demo."
"Technical support was very bad because the supplier who sold it to us, wasn't very supportive, and he wouldn't giving us direct links to the OEM."
"The solution could be improved if there was a better way to report. The reporting functionality is not really good. Even though it's not the major function. Maybe adding a way to make a custom report."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
"If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"The GUI. There are TONS of plugins for pfSense, as such, if a user wants to add quite a bit of functionality, the GUI will feel a little congested."
"The GUI could use more “bells and whistles”. It's got plenty of info for a Sysadmin but some people like shiny things."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"Also, simplifying the rules for the GeoIP. Making it simpler to understand would be an improvement."
Earn 20 points
Check Point UTM-1 [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Firewalls with 19 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Check Point UTM-1 [EOL] is rated 8.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Check Point UTM-1 [EOL] writes "Great firewalls, VPN, and Intrusion prevention 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 UTM-1 [EOL] is most compared with , whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall.
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