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."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"Auto Scaling is one of the features that make me want to choose CloudGuard over actual HW."
"I like how straightforward it is and simple it is to implement in the cloud."
"The solution provides a centralized management console for easy administration and monitoring of security policies and events, making it easy for the security team."
"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 solution's most valuable feature is scalability. We can increase the number of CPUs, memory, and firewall throughput easily. Using CloudGuard Network Security for managing cloud firewall rules is considered easier than using the normal security groups provided by Azure or AWS."
"I find it really useful that CloudGuard supports all the main players on the Public Clouds market including AWS, GCP, and Azure, as well as some exotic ones like Alibaba Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and IBM Cloud."
"What's most valuable to me is that it's a contiguous solution that aligns well with the components that we've relied on and trusted from a traditional hardware, firewall, and unified threat management system. My engineers and analysts don't have to learn another platform. We have already entrusted our security controls to Check Point for perimeter and physical security, and now we can do so at the virtual layer as well, which is key to us."
"It is dynamic and agile, and its features and utilities continuously improve and evolve."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"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."
"I use pfSense because it gives me the flexibility to greatly expand basic firewall features."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"The documentation could be much better."
"The business and product development team should introduce a high-end feedback collection mechanism and analyze the customer requirements constructively."
"The solution needs to support more hypervisors."
"Sometimes, if you aren't familiar with the solution, it can be a bit complex, but it does become easier to use with time. However, every time they launch a new version, it becomes more complex and you need to take time to get familiar with all the changes. For every version that they upgrade, you need to upskill yourself."
"The product needs to improve technical support."
"The solution needs to improve the interruptions that happen during gateway upgrades."
"The relationship between AWS and Check Point could be better. We had issues related to the type of instance and how it interconnects with AWS or cloud-native solutions. We overcame the pain points that we had, and now, AWS is evolving in a way that will facilitate how Check Point works. Our pain points were minimized, but they were there."
"Check Point could show us use cases that would help us in Czech and could help us with security threats in our specific country."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"I would like to see SD1 integration into the software. That would be fantastic."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"The solution’s interface must be improved."
"The user interface can be improved to make it easier to add more features. And pfSense could be better integrated with other solutions, like antivirus."
"There are some bias issues and some intrusions in our network that have to be addressed. So, we're thinking of changing this firewall to something like a professional hardware-enabled firewall."
"Their support could be better in terms of the response time."
"It needs to be more secure."
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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