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.
"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."
"The base firewall features are quite valuable to us."
"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."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"Check Point NGFW generates very helpful reports based on the logs of the activated features."
"The activation of additional features is very easy and well documented."
"With the outstanding capabilities of Check Point, we managed to have stable site-to-site VPNs with all our partners and with every other vendor's devices."
"The most valuable feature is the highly integrated NGFW features such as the IPS or Check Point Identity Awareness, which makes Check Point the best choice on the market."
"The product is flexible."
"The Check Point firewall features for Next Generation Firewalls are excellent."
"We have found the central management (Smart Console) to be very helpful in managing all the firewalls and keeping the software/hotfix versions up to date."
"The most valuable features are the security blades and the ease of managing the policies, searching log for events, and correlating them."
"An enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured."
"The product can scale."
"The setup is simple."
"It's a relatively simple product that is easy to use. It's not overly complex."
"The most valuable features are the SD-WAN and the web filtering applications control."
"The user interface, stability, and scalability are the most valuable features."
"We like FortiGate-VM's IPS features and its ability to create multiple virtual firewalls."
"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues at all while using the product."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"Their technical support can be better. In addition, when we need to use it in a government environment, we face a lot of legal issues related to different types of certifications. It would be better to improve it for these issues. Check Point doesn't have a SOAR system. They work with Siemplify, but it is an integration with another vendor. It would be great if Check Point has an integrated SOAR system."
"The web UI for VSX could be better."
"While not being cheap, their pricing models are competitive. In the pricing structure, however, they need improvement."
"It could greatly improve our customer experience by centralizing management."
"No product is perfect and there is always room for improvement."
"I really want to see geo-blocking as a feature of NGFW."
"Several security modules are based on HTTPS inspection, losing a relevant security capability if you don't implement it in your network."
"Although the GUI is simple to use and fairly comprehensive, more support via CLI would be beneficial for bulk operations."
"The interface needs to be updated and simplified."
"The product needs to focus on cloud-nativeness and pricing."
"In the next release, we would like to see full integration with VMware NSX virtualized networks."
"Deployment can be difficult and they could dispense with reliance on FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"There should be more options to use lower-end models in a high availability configuration."
"There should be integration with an active directory — with Microsoft."
"FortiGate should be more customer friendly and budgeted better."
"The costs could be lowered."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 8th 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 "It's a solidly stable device with minimal downtime". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Cisco Secure Firewall 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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