We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides valuable features like VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade. pfSense is appreciated for its capacity to block IP addresses, user-friendly dashboards, and open-source nature.
Check Point could enhance its support system, cluster creation on AWS, data protection visibility, DLP feature, user interface, integration with other security solutions, cost reduction, documentation, and on-prem deployment flexibility. pfSense could improve instructional videos, stability, mobile application, GUI usability, updates, threat handling, FIPs compliance, log analysis, VPN capacity, documentation, user-friendliness, configuration processes, and SD-WAN integration.
Service and Support: Some customers appreciate the technical support provided by Check Point, while others express dissatisfaction with response time and global support. pfSense's customer service garners both positive and negative reviews. Some users commend the technical support they receive, while others rely on community resources for assistance.
Ease of Deployment: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is praised for its easy, simple, and straightforward initial setup. Users find it interactive, user-friendly, and effortless to configure. However, it may require technical expertise and proper guidelines from customer support. pfSense is generally regarded as easy and straightforward to set up, with a simple installation process. The timeframe for completion varies from as little as 15 minutes to a few days, depending on the user's familiarity with firewall and network concepts.
Pricing: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is recognized for its high price, however, it provides strong security measures and good value. pfSense is an open-source option that offers reasonable pricing and no extra expenses. However, there is a lack of available information concerning the exact costs associated with pfSense's licensing.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides improved performance and benefits for organizations, resulting in a higher ROI range of 80% to 85%. pfSense is highly regarded for its cost-effectiveness and affordability, enabling substantial savings.
Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the preferred option when compared to pfSense. Users find the initial setup of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to be straightforward, and user-friendly. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers more valuable features including VPN, IPS, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade, which are highly appreciated for their compliance, intrusion protection, and productivity enhancement.
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"FortiGate improved our security. It's one of the best hardware firewalls."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"The feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"I like how straightforward it is and simple it is to implement in the cloud."
"We primarily secure our network using CloudGuard Network Security's next-generation firewall features, including anti-spam, IPS, and URL filtering. Our chosen package for the go-to-market strategy is NGTP. For customers seeking more features, we provide options to upgrade to the tool's advanced packages."
"The most valuable feature for us is the scale set, which allows us to scale horizontally, vertically and dynamically depending on the traffic load."
"The comprehensiveness of the CloudGuard’s threat prevention security is great, especially once they integrate Dome9 in the whole thing. That really ties the whole thing together, so you can tie your entire cloud environment together into one central location, which is nice. Previously, we had three or four different tools that we were trying to leverage to do the same stuff that we are able to do with CloudGuard."
"We have found the overall functionality of the product to be exactly similar to the physical product. The one good advantage is that it is cloud-based and can be deployed either as a part of a scale set or one can shut down the virtual machine and adjust the physical parameters of the virtual machine easily and bring it right back up."
"We have complete visibility of attacks originating from email including spear-phishing, spoofing, etc."
"The main benefit of the Check Point Virtual Systems solution is its ability to split up the hardware appliances that we have into several logical, virtual devices with separate traffic handling policies, as well as the switching and routing."
"The IPS, application and URL filtering, as well as Identity Awareness, are all very valuable features."
"The interface is straightforward and easy to use."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"The initial setup is easy."
"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."
"It's a good solution for end-users. It's pretty easy to work with."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"There is room for improvement in addressing bugs and support issues."
"The solution needs to support more hypervisors."
"We did not use the AWS Transit Gateway, and that's one of the things that we're currently using. I believe we will be working with Check Point again, in the near future, to implement it, once they start having proper support for a single customer with multiple accounts. When we were using them, we had to install Check Point on each and every single account."
"Check Point could show us use cases that would help us in Czech and could help us with security threats in our specific country."
"The operations require skilled manpower with extended experience of working with networking systems for better results."
"From the policy optimization point of view, they can do better. This is not just for CloudGuard. CloudGuard is one little piece managed by Check Point. They can also integrate a third-party policy management solution to improve that. For example, Tufin is focused on policy optimization and management."
"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could improve by making it easier to configure."
"I think they have pretty much mastered what can be done. There are some nuances like when you fail over from one cluster member to the other, the external IP address takes about two minutes to fail over."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"Needs services on additional features, such as managing inventory and generating reports."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"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."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 117 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security writes "The solution has good threat emulation, threat extraction, and reporting features". 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 CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Cisco Secure Firewall, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and Cisco Secure Workload, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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