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 features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"There are lots of features and most of them are deployed for internet security. Users are protected if they accidentally go to some malicious sites."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features are ease of use, flexibility, and most of the configuration we can be done using the GUI. When we compare Fortinet FortiGate with other solutions the firewall policy are very easy to understand."
"The web filtering feature and the intrusion protection system are the most valuable. It is a resilient appliance. I never had an issue with it in terms of any security breaches."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"Check Point firewalls have significantly improved our ability to detect and prevent threats."
"I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten."
"In addition to the different security features that Check Point security solutions have, their integration with other technologies makes the security environment a complete security type."
"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."
"The Network Address Translation (NAT) will always be a valuable feature as it allows me to turn my private cloud to the public at the click of a button and have secure control over the accessible servers/applications."
"The firewalling feature and the VPN functionality are excellent."
"The Check Point architecture and packet are very good."
"A strong, reliable solution for small companies with little or no dedicated IT department."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"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 is very easy to use and manage. It is also very easy to scale."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"We work also with domain control (DC) from Microsoft or Amazon. We use a whole virtual appliance with Meraki."
"WAN optimization is the best feature of the solution."
"Point-to-point VPNs can dynamically follow IP changes with no need for static IPs."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"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 stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"Check Point NGFW could improve by introducing machine learning and more modeling dividing the way they manage the ports. However, they have evolved over the last year."
"The distributor support capability is quite lacking as the problem/incident is rarely solved on the distributor level and instead escalated to the principal."
"Although there is a lot of automation and pattern that can be classified automatically, the IPS systems are sometimes a little bit complicated, and doing the fine-tuning in over 20,000 patterns is hard to do."
"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."
"One of the biggest disappointments is the GUI."
"The quality of the console should be improved in terms of aesthetics."
"There needs to be more storage space for reporting."
"The virtual environment is not stable at all. We have some customers who are using the virtual environment feature, and sometimes it crashes. We have many tickets open and the response is not as good as expected. We have to wait months for a resolution."
"The IPS, the Intrusion Prevention System, can be improved."
"Right now, you can postpone the update but eventually, if you don't do the update, it will install the updates automatically for you and that's something that is not working for me."
"Meraki MX can come across as an expensive solution."
"You cannot use switching behaviors as you see on the Meraki switch."
"Expensive licensing and firewall stops immediately working if the license is not renewed at expiration date."
"We do not have account managers in our region for the solution. Some governments don't use the product since it is attached to the internet."
"The client-side VPN is weak. The product could be improved with deployment templates."
"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."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 279 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 59 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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