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."The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"It is very flexible to use."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"The performance is good."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"It provides visibility and drives organizational security."
"The UTM platform has been the most valuable."
"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."
"Firewalls help us a lot in controlling traffic on our network and preventing unauthorized access."
"It safeguards against cyber attacks."
"The filtering was very good."
"The databases and its signatures are its most important features."
"We can create a domain to separate and segregate some functions, some services."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"It is very easy to use. The interface is quite understandable. There is a good community, and I can take over at any time I want. If there is anything wrong with it, I could just reinstall the whole thing and start all over again, and I'll be up again in less than a few minutes"
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"It has a very nice web interface, and it is very simple to use. The way policies are working is also good."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"At our peak time, we have reached more than 5,000 concurrent connections."
"I can manage it easily by myself."
"Currently, FortiGate is providing SSL VPN. But they're missing some features that are available in Palo Alto's SSL VPN."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"Application management can be improved."
"The solution is very expensive."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"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."
"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."
"While the technical support is good, the Indian level technical support could use an upgrade."
"The interface needs improvement."
"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."
"Some features that could be improved are advanced threat protection, sandboxing, and vulnerability management."
"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."
"I am not able to see a demo."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
"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."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"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."
"This solution is good for small businesses but it is not as stable as other competitors such as Fortinet."
"Layer 7 advanced firewall features are not included in the solution."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing."
"There could be a way to remote to it through a mobile app. You can always browse through your browser on your mobile phone or tablet, but it would be good to have a dedicated app. I understand that iOS and Android developers are expensive, but there should be a mobile app."
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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