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.
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"We can use our devices to check all of the perimeters. It secures email websites."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The Capsule solution and application filters are the most valuable. It is pretty straightforward to implement, and it also has good stability and scalability. Their technical support is also really good."
"Identity awareness, URL filtering, IDS, DLP, Content Filtering, VPN, and Application Control are all excellent."
"The solution is reliable."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration with the cloud management extension and the cloud licensing model."
"CloudGuard's intelligent tools help us automate many manual security tasks, guaranteeing our customers' environments will be secure."
"A unique architecture makes this product stand out from other solutions."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that you can start off with a simple firewall and expand it to UTM."
"The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"It is easy to use and has integrity with other systems, such as proxies and quality of service."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"It has a good web cache. I used to use a DHCP server and DNS server. For my company, I use pfSense as a load balancing application."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"We would like to see better pricing."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"They've become quite expensive."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could improve by making it easier to configure."
"We faced issues while upgrading our CloudGuard Network Gateway. When we tried to use the template that Check Point offers on their site, it was not available for the second to the latest version, so I was forced to upgrade my management server. That was very challenging for us."
"Greater automation would reduce the need for manual configuration and management."
"We are at the place where we are looking at better integration with the management system. We use an MDS today, and it is self-deployed. We want to get to the Smart-1 Cloud, but we do not know what that looks like today because it does not support a multi-domain setup. Smart-1 should either be able to do multi-domain or there should be some form of taking a multi-domain environment and putting it in Smart-1."
"It is a very expensive program and there are additional costs despite the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is not that flexible when deploying on-prem."
"New features have been introduced recently, but they have not yet been integrated into CloudGuard Vsec."
"CloudGuard Network Security could be improved in the area of upgrading in place."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"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."
"The hotspot and the portal feature in this solution are not stable for WiFi access. We use it at least once or twice every day and it crashes. Some modules can be better by improving detection and having new updates. Additionally, we have some issues with clustering and load balancing that could improve."
"Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting."
"If a user doesn't have a large amount of experience in Linux systems, they will have problems using this solution. Users need to be highly skilled in troubleshooting competency. Users who do not have such skills will find the product difficult to use."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
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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