We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and OPNsense 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 highly regarded for its extensive security functions, centralized control, and ability to virtualize. OPNsense is appreciated for its ability to scale, provide guest access, offer user-friendly dashboards, and provide a free version for users. Check Point NGFW needs enhancements in integration, hardware upgrades, cost, stability, load balancing, technical support, and reporting capabilities. OPNsense, on the other hand, requires improvements in its interface, bandwidth management, multi-provider internet protection, integration with Azure, a timeline for new features and updates, IPS solution, reporting capabilities, SSL inspection, and learning curve.
Service and Support: The service for Check Point NGFW has varying feedback, with certain customers appreciating its assistance and quick response, while others believe there is room for improvement. OPNsense boasts an exceptional community support network, although a few users encounter challenges in directly accessing support.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Check Point NGFW can be complex and challenging, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the product. It requires expertise and experience for certain configurations and migrations. The initial setup of OPNsense is described as straightforward and easy, even for clients without IT experience. It can be completed within a few hours, with slight variations depending on individual circumstances.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Check Point NGFW is deemed to be expensive, whereas OPNsense falls into the moderate range. Check Point provides flexible licensing choices, although some individuals find the procedure complex. OPNsense is a license-free open-source solution. In addition to the basic expenses, OPNsense requires additional costs for hardware, installation, and training.
ROI: Check Point NGFW provides cost savings, simplicity, and reliable security enforcement, resulting in a favorable return on investment. OPNsense achieves a return on investment in less than three months and eliminates recurring fees.
Comparison Results: Check Point NGFW is the preferred choice over OPNsense. Users appreciate its comprehensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. It is known for its stability, ease of use, and scalability. Check Point NGFW is considered worth the price due to its superior security and reliability.
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"Its performance in fulfilling our requirements has been satisfactory."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The way in which it manages the nodes within a cluster architecture is excellent, offering fault tolerance which is, in my experience, practically imperceptible when one of the nodes fails."
"It is giving us a greater reach for greater prevention and is proactively protecting our employees."
"The most valuable feature of Check Point NGFW is it is a complete solution for protecting not only the network but the applications. Additionally, it provides a hybrid cloud solution."
"Newer versions are much more stable."
"If there is a critical issue observed, the Check Point support team can create a custom package that we can deploy on the gateway to mitigate critical issues/bug fixes."
"It is easy to deploy or upgrade. There is no need to do this manually with commands. This solution can be set up online."
"The Smart Dashboard allows for rule creation and administration and management and is user-friendly."
"By far, it's the best security solution one can adopt for their organization."
"It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"OPNsense is easy to use and open source."
"The solution has high availability."
"It is a very good solution. I like the dashboard. I can see what is going on and manage it as I like it."
"The IDS and IPS features are valuable. From the usability perspective, there is a lot of good documentation. As IT professionals, we found it very easy to configure the firewall. It was easy to configure and use."
"URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me."
"The most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility."
"They've become quite expensive."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"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 inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"The upgrading process takes too much time."
"Check Point products have many places that need to be improved, but they are constantly upgrading."
"The URL objects take significant time in processing compared to other products like Cisco FTD; it would be better if they could improve it."
"Sometimes we need to find a resolution by ourselves as the solution's knowledge base is not enough."
"For the user or anyone else who is using Check Point, they are more into the GUI stuff. Check Point has its SmartConsole. On the console, you have to log into the MDS or CMS. Then, from there, you have to go onto that particular firewall and put in the changes. If the management console could be integrated onto the GUI itself, that would be one thing that I would recommend."
"It should be user-friendly from an implementation point of view. Its setup is a little bit difficult."
"We have run into an interface expansion limitation, and thus it would be helpful if products lower in the stack would offer more interface expansion options."
"We'd like an option that can convert other vendors' NGFW configurations to supported Check Point NGFW config for ease of migration."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"The only thing that I would like to see improved is the Insight or the NetFlow analysis part. It would be good to have the possibility to dig down on the Insight platform. Right now, we can easily do only a few analyses. If this page becomes more powerful, it surely will be a well-adopted platform."
"An area for improvement in OPNsense is the hardware, which needs to be updated more frequently. DNS blocking is another good feature I want to be added to the solution. pfSense has a peer-blocking feature that I also want to see in OPNsense."
"Given that OPNsense plays a pivotal role as a firewall, safeguarding against various threats, having a reliable backup ensures uninterrupted protection even if unforeseen events impact the primary virtual machine."
"I think the most important thing is that it should be easily accessible, but currently, that doesn't seem to be the case. We need a hardware platform that's based on common standards and open computing principles, which would be like a commodity and benefit us greatly."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"The solution could be more secure."
"I would like better documentation concerning the provided packages and their integration."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while OPNsense 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 OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and KerioControl. See our Check Point NGFW vs. OPNsense report.
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