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.
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use."
"It is a safe product."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"The features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"The features of the solution which I have found most valuable are its flexibility and agility. It's a fully scalable solution, from our perspective. We can define scaling groups and, based on the load, it will create new instances. It's truly a product which is oriented toward the cloud mindset, cloud agility, and this is a great feature."
"This solution has good scalability and stability."
"The visibility is most valuable. It allows us to see all of our devices from one place, and it gives us the ability to manage push updates and things like that from one place."
"It's possible to sync the Check Point Management with the cloud portal, therefore allowing automated rules to be set in place whenever creating a new VM."
"The IPS, application and URL filtering, as well as Identity Awareness, are all very valuable features."
"Now, we can filter which websites users can access and block categories that are a risk. For example, we can block social media and gambling sites. This has helped to decrease the risk of access to malicious content on the internet."
"The ease of deployment has been nice. It is like managing any of our on-prem firewalls."
"The Identity Awareness blade and dynamic tagging in Azure are valuable because they make access management automatic. Instead of manually setting up access for each new resource, it happens automatically based on the same access policy. This dynamic setup is scalable."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"The solution is very easy to use and has a very nice GUI."
"I handle the scanning for the finance department. I recently encountered an issue with the PCL bills, our company bills. I resolved the matter, cleared the bill, and received calls regarding it using pfsense.The user interface is extremely user-friendly, which is why we use it across various plant sites. Our IT representatives at the plants find it easy to use and manage because of its straightforward interface."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection."
"This solution has increased the level of security, given us more control, provided a deep insight into network traffic, and is a great VPN solution."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"The documentation has been rough. Being able to do it yourself can be hit or miss given the constraints of the documentation."
"For major upgrades, it's still necessary to destroy the VMs and re-create them again. Doing that would mean new public IPs as well."
"While Check Point does offer some VWAN offerings, they appear to be more static and less tailored to cloud-native environments compared to Palo Alto's dynamic and flexible approach."
"In the past year, I noticed that the challenging part, especially in the cloud, is upgrading to the next release of the firewall. Unlike on-premise upgrades, it's not as simple in the cloud. You need to recreate the machine, which makes the process more complex."
"CloudGuard functions just like any other firewall. It functions very well. The only thing that could maybe be improved would be to integrate some tools that are not integrated with the SmartConsole, like the SmartView Monitor that we need to open on a different application to access."
"The connection to the on-premises management requires using the CLI. It's not just a click, and you cannot edit in the management to prepare everything. You need to do it online and in real time. After that, you must execute a script, and then you should be happy that it appears in the management."
"The deployment phase takes too much time."
"The business and product development team should introduce a high-end feedback collection mechanism and analyze the customer requirements constructively."
"It should integrate with LDAP, Active Directory, etc, to improve the way in which the traces and connections of each IP, or user connected through the firewall, are shown."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"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."
"I would like to see SD1 integration into the software. That would be fantastic."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 119 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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