We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Meraki MX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"Fortinet FortiGate protects against internet-based threats, both internal and external. It is scalable, stable, easy to use, and easy to install."
"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"The documentation is simple to understand and is easily available."
"I was impressed by how easy it was to activate blades and implement them on a security gateway, with the process taking less than five minutes."
"Its usability is the best for me. As compared to Palo Alto, Juniper, or Cisco firewalls, Check Point firewall has the best user interface for management, reading logs, looking for some objects, and looking for policies."
"It is a very friendly platform and easy to configure."
"I haven't had any data leaks or vulnerability situations."
"The technical services always replied in a very fast and effective way."
"Within the organization, the inspection of packages has given us great help in detecting traffic that may be a threat to the institution."
"It has various features, like Threat Prevention and Antivirus. It is easier to use and have knowledge of a single device rather than multiple devices/technologies when doing an installation. It is also easy to use because of having Antivirus and Threat Prevention features within the same firewall."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"Meraki makes it easy to be secure and know where the holes are to fix them. We have been fixing anything that we have ever found for 20 years. We keep up-to-date with firmware upgrades. We just try to stay on top of everything for security, like maintaining updates and getting rid of old systems. I feel like we're on top of it."
"It has very good features; it's easy to use, configure, set up, and deploy."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"MX is easy to manage, configure and install."
"What I like best about Meraki MX is that it's easy to deploy remotely. The product works. It has automatic updates. I also like that Meraki MX is a brilliant device. You turn it on, stick the key in there, activate it, and then you're done. Meraki MX does what my customers need at the end of the day, so I also like that."
"Point-to-point VPNs can dynamically follow IP changes with no need for static IPs."
"When you try to create an IP or when you have an alert about when a website is banned, these features are helpful."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
"Currently, upgrades are quite cumbersome."
"It depends whether the problem is known to Check Point. If they are aware there is a problem, quite often it will then depend on which tech you finally land on if it's easier or harder to get to the root cause. The last issue was in India so that was pretty bad. It's easier if you get directly through to Tel Aviv or Ottawa, but you can't choose. Once they know what the issue is, it's pretty good. It pretty much depends on the engineer that you get. There are pretty good engineers and there are many engineers who are at just the starter level at Check Point who are not really into the stuff. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, depending on the problem and the tech engineer you get."
"The source package is a bit more expensive than its competitors."
"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."
"There is nothing more that I need in terms of improvement."
"When I was creating the VPN on it and the client side through the portal, that feature was very annoying. I could not use it. It was much more usable after downloading it to the laptop. That was very good compared to using it directly from the browser."
"Check Point's study materials should be provided by the company directly and be of very good quality. This is not provided right now and something that the company can improve."
"Check Point NGFW needs to run marketing events. They have also to set up a support center in India."
"You cannot use switching behaviors as you see on the Meraki switch."
"In general, the SD-WAN feature needs to be improved. The load sharing and load balancing of the traffic should be improved. I have had some problems with these features in the past."
"Could possibly use deeper configurations."
"The solution's pricing should be reduced."
"The security is not as strong as it could be"
"Meraki MX can come across as an expensive solution."
"Direct logging is something that can be introduced. In the absence of cloud management, the possibility of local configurations and on-premise logins becomes restricted. This limitation stands as a primary concern. When it comes to resolving issues, the inability to access login options hampers troubleshooting efforts. The stability is noteworthy; but when compared to alternative products, its stability is comparatively lower. Additionally, certain limitations are observed in terms of remote control. Price-wise, the solution stands out for its competitive and cost-effective nature compared to other alternatives. Operationally, it is user-friendly and requires minimal effort from administrators, making configuration hassle-free."
"It would be great if the Meraki devices let us see, in real time, the internet demand on a single device."
Check Point NGFW doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 275 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Meraki MX is rated 8.2. 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 Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Juniper SRX Series Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Meraki MX report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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