We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Fortinet FortiGate-VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point NGFW is praised for its extensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. Fortinet FortiGate-VM receives appreciation for its stability, reliability, and user-friendly interface.
Check Point NGFW needs enhancements in integration, hardware upgrades, cost and pricing, stability and security, setup process, load balancing capabilities, technical support, and reporting. Fortinet FortiGate-VM requires improvements in key activation, log management, cloud management, IPsec failover, monitoring tool, setup and configuration, performance, firmware updates, log settings, GUI capabilities, costs, technical support, and integration.
Service and Support: The customer service for Check Point NGFW has garnered varying opinions, with some customers appreciating its helpfulness and responsiveness, while others believe there is room for improvement. Fortinet FortiGate-VM's support has received a mix of feedback. Certain customers commend its prompt response times and expertise, while others highlight concerns regarding delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: Check Point NGFW's initial setup can be complex and may require expertise and experience for certain configurations and migrations. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers a generally straightforward and easy setup process, aided by Fortinet's support and assistance.
Pricing: Check Point NGFW has a high setup cost, yet offers flexible licensing options. Fortinet FortiGate-VM has competitive pricing and includes support without extra charges.
ROI: Check Point NGFW provides cost savings, simplicity, and strong security enforcement, resulting in a favorable ROI. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers stability and enhanced security, guaranteeing a positive ROI when purchased initially.
Comparison Results: Check Point NGFW is the preferred choice when comparing it to Fortinet FortiGate-VM. Check Point NGFW stands out for its extensive security features, such as URL filtering, intrusion prevention systems, identity and access management, and application control capabilities. Additionally, it offers centralized management and virtualization options, as well as stability, user-friendliness, and scalability.
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"It offers a range of models to enhance network security and it can be customized to secure endpoint client machines or user devices by deploying features like malware detection, antivirus, and mail security blades."
"It's enabled us to move away from basic LAN to LAN segmentation to a more powerful user separation approach."
"We have found the solution to be scalable."
"If you want to share traffic loads to both cluster members you can use the active-active feature, if you don't want to share traffic loads you can prefer active standby."
"One ability that Check Point has is that it is the first to provide us with the ability to use identities instead of using the traditional IP-based format, which allows way more flexibility in what we can do with the rule base."
"It is user-friendly and straightforward to manage, which simplifies our overall network security management."
"Admins and executives are more at ease with the compliance engine within the software as it measures how many of the security requirements we're compliant with, making their work much more accessible from that standpoint."
"The solution is easy to administer thanks to its dashboards. The monitoring is really useful."
"The most valuable feature is geofencing, where we can block all access from all non-domestic locations."
"While the stability maybe isn't quite to the level of Cisco, it is a very cost-effective solution. It's cheap compared to Cisco."
"It's almost perfect. It's very stable. We don't have many hardware issues."
"The solution offers good documentation."
"It's very easy to set up, even for more junior developers."
"The product can scale."
"The interface is decent."
"The tool improved the security in our company's virtualized environment, as it was helpful in creating an additional layer of security for the organization and for the use of the internet."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet."
"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."
"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 support from Fortinet FortiGate could improve. They are not easily accessible when we need them. They could improve their response time."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"The way everything is set up could be easier. Currently, people need a lot of experience and knowledge to administer it and to link it to devices."
"One area for improvement in Check Point NGFW is the support process."
"Right now, with a larger user database and a high number of rules, it takes a bit of time for policy installation."
"The antivirus Check Point offers could be better when compared to competitors' firewalls. Updates should be more frequent."
"Stability issues. I built out this firewall in a cluster, and I had stability issues day one. Needs to be rebooted frequently. Tunnels need to be bounced frequently. Their hardware compatibility guide, when I built out the servers to host them on, was not accurate."
"The current reporting capability needs to be parsed and edited to be appreciated by leadership."
"It could greatly improve our customer experience by centralizing management."
"The software licensing model is too complicated with all the various tiers of SKUs (i.e. per software blade). They need to simplify this for easier purchasing and renewing."
"Error logs can be more specific."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM should improve its asset identification, wherein the device can identify assets on the network, like computers."
"Fortinet devices are acknowledged as highly potent and come with a notable cost. These devices offer extensive visibility, an array of configurations, and a range of security features. However, there's room for enhancement in their routing and switching security aspects, akin to Cisco's offerings. A noteworthy aspect here is Meraki, which offers cloud controllers. If FortiGate were to introduce a similar cloud management solution, it could strongly compete with both Meraki and Cisco products. Cisco operates in two sectors: enterprise and SMB. Particularly in the SMB market, they hold sway due to their convenient cloud management features. For instance, Meraki's cameras and wireless access points can be easily controlled through their cloud management portal. If FortiGate were to provide cloud-based management solutions for SMB customers, it could cater to a significant portion of the market, considering that a substantial number of customers fall within the SMB and mid-level enterprise categories."
"Sizing can be challenging for customers interested in using Fortinet FortiGate-VM."
"The price and licensing of the solution can be better."
"SD-WAN could be enhanced to provide a clear division between control and data planes, utilizing controllers to manage tasks within the network."
"The licensing needs to be improved. We need longer licensing periods, especially for POCs and trials. It should be for six months. Right now, it's too short of a timeframe."
"Right now, we have two data centers that are a thousand kilometers apart. It would be nice to be able to string them together."
"VM should be more optimized."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM 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 Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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