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."It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The solution has very good threat and content filtering switches."
"The technical support is great."
"The feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"It's very easy to configure."
"It is always on the top of the list of best firewall solutions."
"We used Check Point for implementation, and they are top-notch. They know the hardware and software better than anyone."
"The product offers a robust and intuitive experience, catering to the essential needs of users."
"Advanced logging capabilities: Check Point generates extensive logs which may be very useful to figure out the issues. Its logs also contain too much information which can be used to modify the policy as per user need and organizational security environment. The same can be used to figure out probable attack surface or necessary steps for mitigation."
"Its auditing features are good for checking who did what changes and when."
"The sales, pre-sales, professional services, and tech support are all very nice."
"Check Point has strong security features as well as some decent monitoring and management capabilities."
"It creates granular security policies based on users or groups to identify, block or limit the usage of web applications."
"WatchGuard has a very easy VPN and branch office VPN setup, so we use those pretty extensively."
"I like that this product has very few issues."
"WatchGuard Firebox is the most powerful firewall for Wi-Fi security."
"WebBlocker has the best URL category database ever."
"The solution has increased productivity with our outside salespeople being able to connect into their computers and use those remotely."
"Easy to change the model if you need more performance, with good cohesion in the whole lineup of devices."
"Simple to move settings between WatchGuard boxes."
"It saves us time in the respect that we now have the template built for it so we can get in and get it done. We've had much less problem supporting Voice over IP technologies from different companies. Because our client base has grown over the years, we're probably saving 20 to 30 man-hours a month now that we've got this on a good stable level."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"The scalability could be better."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"Check Point is not a cheap solution and it's always painful to see exactly how much we need to spend on this."
"There is room for improvement in application-based filtering, as with other firewalls available in the market today."
"Scalability should be improved."
"The study material for Check Point needs to be improved, as well as the cost for certification."
"Geo-blocking would be very useful. There are too many attempts to infiltrate by non-country users. I can block access by IP address or IP network, however, a country-level blocking would be more useful and much quicker to implement."
"The management of memory in the hardware needs to improve. They have had a lot of issues with memory leakage."
"There should be better integration with our current NAC solution to increase the granularity of policies that we implement."
"Error logs can be more specific."
"The UI is not as user-friendly as the model that I had used before, which was from Check Point. The design of the Firebox UI is restricted and needs an experienced network guy to understand the format and settings."
"We would like to see granular notification settings and more advanced filtering in traffic monitoring."
"The software in it could be a bit more friendly for an amateur user. I look at it and don't understand what half the stuff is. Looking at the interface, it is all mumbo-jumbo to me. It's not a simple interface. You have to be an IT guy to understand it. It is not for your average person to use, then walk away from it. It is much more entailed."
"If they could make the traffic monitoring easier that would be great. I don't use it that frequently, but I would like to see some improvements in the ease of use of that component, so it makes more sense. I know it's a technical component so there's going to be some difficulty trying to make that easier."
"They are working on cloud-based options. However, they do not have the options fully functional in their solution at this time."
"We bought Firebox four or five years ago, and with the first version I had to reboot it every two or three months for no apparent reason. We upgraded last year to the M370 and it's been running, but it is rebooting from time to time. I don't know why."
"This solution needs the option to add an external hard drive."
"Due to their lack of investment in marketing, channel development, and certifications, WatchGuard faces challenges in gaining visibility and market share, especially in regions like Pakistan."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. 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.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors, best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors, and best Firewalls vendors.
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