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.
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"It is easy to use and performs very well."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"We find Check Point valuable because they are 100% focused on security. It totally closes the potential vulnerability channel. We can check our mail and our attachments and we can scan everything easily. We get an immediate report about the situation of the attachments. We can discover if the target's security attack was started from phishing, etc. We also enjoy using the additional features that protect our internal customer from targeted attacks."
"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 features are the VPN Blade, IPS Blade, the URL filtering, and the Applications Control Blade."
"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has a beautiful threat emulation different from the market."
"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 query feature is going to be a game-changer for us as we move forward."
"The solution helps protect network security by offering threat prevention, addressing vulnerabilities, and utilizing blades."
"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."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"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."
"It has a very nice web interface, and it is very simple to use. The way policies are working is also good."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"The web-cache feature which was previously on the FortiGate device, but was deleted with the recent upgrade should be returned. It was a very valuable feature for us."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"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."
"If you compare the GUI with the Palo Alto and Forcepoint in the Cisco, they're very easy. Check Point, due to its design, is a little bit complex. They should make the GUI easy to use so that anyone can understand it easily, like Fortinet's GUI. Many companies end up using Fortinet because the GUI is very easy, and there's no need for training. They just deploy the box and do the configuration."
"The product can still grow."
"Documentation might become too complex or too spread out, especially for newcomers."
"I hope that Check Point continues to improve its technical documentation regarding the Check Point CloudGuard IaaS gateway and management system."
"CloudGuard Network Security's pricing is expensive. We have encountered issues with its licensing."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."
"Clustering in Azure is a bit different, not using the Check Point cluster but relying on load balancing. It's not as instant as I'm used to; in Azure, it might take around half a minute to a minute, and during this time, services could be down. The delay is attributed to Azure using its load balancing mechanisms instead of the Check Point cluster."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"Also, the GUI is helpful, but it's not user-friendly. It's complicated. It should be more intuitive for the average user and have an excellent graphical view. Of course, the user will typically know about network administration, but it still should be easy to understand."
"The solution requires a lot of administration."
"The main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"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."
"Layer 7 advanced firewall features are not included in the solution."
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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