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."FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"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."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It safeguards against cyber attacks."
"The solution is very robust."
"It provides visibility and drives organizational security."
"Firewalls help us a lot in controlling traffic on our network and preventing unauthorized access."
"The databases and its signatures are its most important features."
"The filtering was very good."
"We can create a domain to separate and segregate some functions, some services."
"The most outstanding feature is being able to centralize each of the functions in a single device."
"pfSense is a nice product, and I find that there's a lot of information out there. There are some good tutorials on YouTube and other websites with helpful information."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"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."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"The "OpenVPN Client Export" package is really helpful in exporting the VPN client software on most popular devices: iOS/Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and a handful of SIP handsets."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"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."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"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."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Its price could be better."
"What has been the issue of firewalls is they ask me for policies and content filtering application control and all these features that are now part of Harmony."
"While the technical support is good, the Indian level technical support could use an upgrade."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
"As we don't have a representative of Check Point in Mozambique, this makes it very difficult when we have some issues to resolve."
"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."
"The interface needs improvement."
"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."
"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."
"More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome."
"I've never tried it in large environments. All my clients are small businesses with a handful of employees, so I am not sure how it works in large environments. I keep up with recent versions, and there's nothing I'm waiting for, and nothing breaks when I get a new version."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"Network monitoring and device inventory could use some improvements. I'm using SpiceWorks for this because it never really worked in pfSense."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"The security could be improved."
"We have not had any problems with it, and we also do not have a need for any new features. If anything, its reporting can be better. Sophos has better reporting than pfSense. Sophos has more detailed information. pfSense is not as detailed. It is summarized."
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, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall.
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