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 security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"This product is definitely scalable."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"The edge security posture has dramatically improved as we can now detect and prevent threats from the public internet."
"The central management makes it easier, and is a time-saver, when implementing changes."
"I haven't had any data leaks or vulnerability situations."
"The firewall rule writing and object creation are the best and simplest I've seen on a firewall."
"Check Point is more expensive but easier to manage, and their presales and after-sale support are way better than Fortinet's."
"The most valuable features are application control, regulation, and threat prevention."
"The threat emulation blade and user identity awareness feature has helped us a lot in terms of perimeter security and have given us granular visibility of user access."
"Check Point provides dedicated blades to monitor network traffic, which helps while troubleshooting network and packet-related issues."
"The interface is decent."
"High network throughput while providing leading edge network security technology for a competitive price."
"The dashboards are a good feature."
"The solution can scale well."
"FortiGate integrates well."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"The functionality provided is very good."
"Operations have been flawless."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"Currently, FortiGate is providing SSL VPN. But they're missing some features that are available in Palo Alto's SSL VPN."
"The price is middling. It's much more expensive than Fortinet, although not so expensive when compared with Palo Alto."
"I have had some issues in the past with the desktop client being slow to come up for logging in, and then slow to respond to screen changes, however, overall, it really hasn't been too bad."
"The antivirus Check Point offers could be better when compared to competitors' firewalls. Updates should be more frequent."
"I would like less CPU-intensive features to be introduced to replace the existing heavy-duty processes."
"My customers complain that the interface isn't user-friendly."
"The Antivirus feature is something that could be improved. We don't get much from the Antivirus update in comparison to their competitor's firewalls. It needs to be more advanced because Check Point is nowadays sent all over the world. Therefore, the Antivirus feature should be of very good quality and cover all virus checks. I would also like the Antivirus updates to be more frequent."
"It should be user-friendly from an implementation point of view. Its setup is a little bit difficult."
"We would like to see constant improvement in anti-malware functionality and anti-threat protection."
"With FortiGate, we sometimes encounter bugs in various operating systems."
"I have had a data issue with physical devices that could improve."
"The user interface (UI) and the performance of interface both need improvement."
"The costs could be lowered."
"The key activation is very complicated at times."
"The block, the clarity, the quarantine command, is not very user-friendly. You would have to do everything through the command line and I would have preferred if it wasn't a CLI."
"In terms of improvement, there have been some problems with the bandwidth of the security layer."
"The product is satisfactory. I haven't identified any features to improve, and based on the number of deployments I've handled with FortiGate-VM, there haven't been any complaints from the customer's side."
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 Netgate pfSense. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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