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.
"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"The CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"The multiple virtual firewalls on one box are extremely useful and the interconnection with virtual switches is simple and easy to understand."
"It really is a pretty complete solution."
"The central management feature is a big plus, allowing us to manage both local and cloud gateways from one platform."
"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."
"The program is very stable."
"The scalability is very good; again, very user-friendly. I wouldn't even say "user-friendly" because, as long as you deploy it properly, you can kill an EC2 and it will spin up another one right away, within about a minute and a half. And it will be ready for production right away."
"The most valuable feature for us is the simplicity of creating this environment. Even though our current cloud usage is limited, the process of setting up machines in the product and establishing an HR system was straightforward."
"We have complete visibility of attacks originating from email including spear-phishing, spoofing, etc."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"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."
"Technical support is perfect, excellent."
"The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems."
"It is a stable solution."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"I mostly like all of it. Whatever we use is valuable."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"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 sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"The solution is very expensive."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"People don't know about the tool's features. There's a lack of skill. Users require more knowledge on how to integrate it into the cloud environment and orchestrate routing. So, it's not necessarily a CloudGuard Network Security or Check Point issue but more about integration, knowledge, and understanding."
"From the policy optimization point of view, they can do better. This is not just for CloudGuard. CloudGuard is one little piece managed by Check Point. They can also integrate a third-party policy management solution to improve that. For example, Tufin is focused on policy optimization and management."
"Our biggest complaint concerns the high resource usage for IDP/IPS, as we cannot turn on all of the features even with new hardware."
"The solution lacks the capability to scale effectively."
"At the cost level, the solution is somewhat expensive."
"The only pain points we have had with it were when we did major version upgrades. Rather than being able to do incremental upgrades on those, we had to completely redeploy. I know that has changed recently, but we had some hiccups when we did the upgrades. This is the only issue we have had."
"A threat categorization system can be added to give users the authority to define vulnerable attacks and classify areas that can threaten the workflow system."
"We miss full blade support for all blades that are compatible with the cluster. Especially notable is the lack of support for Identity Awareness in active standby environments for customers. In our setup, transitioning to Connective clusters would be preferable for maintaining connections during failover situations."
"The security could be improved."
"I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"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."
"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."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"I believe improving integration with various antivirus vendors could be beneficial."
"A malware blocker should be included. I do not know if it is included yet. However, until now, we have not experienced a large malware invasion."
"If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson."
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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