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.
"Offers good security and filtering."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"The solution is scalable."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"The security configuration features have enhanced the reliable coordination of programs and data safety."
"CloudGuard Network Security provides unified security management across hybrid clouds as well as on-prem. It's very important because when I have unified security, I have better control of the situation. If there's an attack or something like that, we can react faster. It's easier for everyone in the organization to work with the Infinity platform."
"The VPN features in CloudGuard Network Security have been the most valuable for us."
"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."
"Additionally, the centralized reporting and management, accessible through a single pane of glass, offer consistency and efficiency across multi-cloud environments."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its scalability. You will only have to pay less for scaling up. Its notable benefit is deployment complexity. Regional deployment is simpler compared to on-premise setup."
"The visibility, the one-pane-of-glass which allows me to see all of my edge protection through one window and one log, is great. Monitoring everything through that one pane of glass is extremely valuable."
"All the features that we subscribe to from CloudGuard NGTP are valuable. All the threat prevention and access control features give us the network security that we expect."
"A free firewall that is a good network security appliance."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"It is much simpler than other solutions such as Fortinet."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"The features I have found best are ease of use, GUI, and performance."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"Documentation might become too complex or too spread out, especially for newcomers."
"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."
"We utilize logging systems, and geolocation is crucial for us as some applications must only be accessible from our country. However, there have been occasional issues with this feature."
"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."
"Micro-Segmentation functionality for EAST-WEST traffic is not native and requires integration with a third-party OEM."
"This application can be more integrated with web application firewalls. Better integrations would provide more granularity, which would be helpful for focusing on the application itself and preventing attacks. It would be good to include the cross-domain search. If you have multiple firewalls that are managed on the same platform and you want to check who is using some particular objects or where a specific ID is being used, it should provide an option for this kind of search instead of having to check one by one on each firewall."
"The SD-WAN could be better."
"Its price is fair, but it can be more favorable."
"It would be great to add more to security."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"My only observation is about the quality of the IPSec logs, which are difficult to interpret and are poor in filters."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"In an upcoming release, the reporting could be more user-friendly. For example, the reporting in graphs and charts for the host can be cumbersome."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"Could be simplified for new users."
"One concern I have with Netgate pfSense is related to packet filtering. Specifically, issues can arise with certain functionalities like GP, and, at times, there may be bugs."
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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