We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The customization potential is quite impressive."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"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 ease of configuring VPNs can be very useful especially for companies with lots of remote locations."
"Check Point has a centralized console that makes it possible to manage all the deployed equipment. It also has a built-in VPN service that lets users connect through VPN to our organization, which facilitates teleworking while cutting off unauthorized access to the organization's internal network."
"I have not had an infected machine behind the firewall since I first installed and started using NGFW."
"Configuration and deploying are easy."
"The firewall and IPS are the most valuable features of the solution."
"We can build the new firewalls with minimum efforts."
"It is user-friendly and straightforward to manage, which simplifies our overall network security management."
"The management interface is easy to operate and is a standardized way of managing different firewall modules in the same client application."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the FireWall features. The management side of WatchGuard is quite easy because it supports two ways to manage it - by the web and the other one they call WatchGuard systems manager. I used to be familiar with WSM only, but they improved their GUI in the web browser and now it is much easier to do it within the web browser."
"The most valuable feature is the NAT-ing, the IP addresses... We can direct the traffic where it needs to go. We can control the traffic."
"The ports that I have assigned appear to be unattainable to outside 'mal-actors,' unless they have an address registered on the internet that this thing is expecting. That's a layer of security."
"The most valuable are the VPN and proxy features."
"I like that this product has very few issues."
"They've done a lot of work with their SD-WAN, which we do use, to have our old internet service with our new internet service. If anything goes down on a particular interface, I can have different rules applied. Most of my users don't even know when our primary internet goes down anymore... I don't have to be here to do anything to switch it to our backup internet or to switch it back."
"The most valuable features of the WatchGuard Firebox are all the security and updated features. You are able to configure the solution from the cloud platform and the application and web interface are very nice."
"It's very easy to use, especially compared to similar products. A lot more users use the WatchGuard appliance now than use the SonicWall appliance because of the ease of usability."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"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."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"I could not configure sFlow from the FortiGate graphical user interface. I realized that the sFlow configuration is available only from the CLI, and discovered that sFlow is not supported on virtual interfaces, such as VDOM links, IPsec, or GRE."
"I would like some automated custom reporting."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"It can be expensive, especially for small businesses."
"There is no email security."
"It will be good if the product is rack-mounted."
"It would be best if the security management server console access is simpler for ease of management."
"It could be more stable and scalable. Check Point price and support could be better."
"In our particular case, we have different web applications developed by the same organization, however, that requires a specialized protection element such as a WAF. Having this service or feature within the same solution would be very valuable."
"Identity Awareness has been a massive source of problems for our deployment and the ability to debug it has been lacking."
"I would rate the technical support as a seven out of 10. Sometimes, it's difficult to get them to understand what the issue is. Sometimes, the issue is not resolved, then we solve it by ourselves with Check Point's documentation, which can be useful. When you open a case with Check Point, they can be a little slow. Sometimes, they don't solve things."
"The software base, the management piece that goes onto a server, is not as user-friendly as I would like. There are three different pieces that you have to manage, so it's a little bit convoluted, in my opinion."
"The performance of the solution's processor needs to be faster."
"I would like to have a little more control over access points and the ability to see the bandwidth that is passing through a specific access point. We are not able to see that. We can see what traffic is passing through the Firebox itself, but we can't identify if it is coming from a particular access point or not."
"It's sometimes not easy to understand and can require specialist assistance."
"WatchGuard Firebox could improve the speed of updates, such as new features or improvements. However, they are frequently improving the solution in many areas, such as geo-locations, definitions, and web blocking."
"Some of the configuration options are somewhat confusing."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
"It's very hard to get information from their website, for exactly what I need to do. Sometimes I end up having to open a lot of support tickets... It's a navigational issue which makes it hard to find what I'm looking for and it's just so broad."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and SonicWall NSa. See our Check Point NGFW vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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