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 solution is stable."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"The next-generation firewall is great."
"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."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"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 firewall rule writing and object creation are the best and simplest I've seen on a firewall."
"We found a very successful implementation of the virtual private network client, since, for some time now, everyone has been working from home."
"There is a lot of legacy traffic from other vendors that has been migrated to Check Point which has resulted in a lot of stability in our environment."
"Check Point's most useful feature is threat prevention and extraction. It was tough to manage seven firewalls and a perimeter solution for IPS, anti-malware, anti-bot, and sandboxing."
"I think the VSX has been the most valuable feature for us."
"I love the interface of R.80.30. The R.80 interface is very nicely thought out with everything in one place, which makes Check Point easier to use."
"The most valuable feature of Check Point NGFW is the unparalleled distribution of the network traffic. The central management station they have allows you to manage everything from one place."
"It's very easy to set up, even for more junior developers."
"Initial setup was quite straightforward, as we can simply head to the required sections to apply the planned network."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM is easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are its flexibility and scalability. This solution is available as a license, which allows us to activate it based on the specific needs of the customer. This gives us and the customer a great deal of versatility and customization options."
"It is a complete package, and it has complete offerings. It fit the needs, and our customer is happy with it."
"The most valuable feature is the WAN optimization."
"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 technical support is very good."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"Application management can be improved."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"The smart console is heavy."
"The tool must improve its support."
"VMware is not supported by the platform."
"Check Point should quickly update and expand its application database to have what Palo Alto has."
"Complex and not very easy to use."
"One of the biggest disappointments is the GUI."
"There needs to be a Mac version of the Smart Console."
"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."
"We are experiencing a failed login issue. There should also be improvements in functionalities we store to enhance our services."
"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The interface needs to be updated and simplified."
"Improvements are needed for the responsive UI and JIT traffic reporting."
"There should be more options to use lower-end models in a high availability configuration."
"There are certain GUI features that should be present but are not."
"The GUI could be improved."
"There should be integration with an active directory — with Microsoft."
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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