We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between these two products is that Check Point users feel that the tool’s VPN is hard to integrate. In addition, Check Point does not have an open-source version like pfSense does.
"The product is easy to use and is stable. The SV1 functionality is a benefit."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"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."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"It is easy to manage, and it doesn't need much knowledge from the team. It is a stable device, and there are many features that are included out of the box."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"The scalability is very good."
"It is giving us a greater reach for greater prevention and is proactively protecting our employees."
"Advanced logging capabilities: Check Point generates extensive logs which may be very useful to figure out the issues. Its logs also contain too much information which can be used to modify the policy as per user need and organizational security environment. The same can be used to figure out probable attack surface or necessary steps for mitigation."
"It is easy to use, and its management is the best. Check Point has a great unified management solution for firewalls and security products."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"The Threat Management feature makes it very easy to detect the vulnerabilities and other factors. We can make new policy according to it. Policy creation is very simple in Check Point. Because the logs are very good in Check Point Firewall, this reduces our work with the reports that we are getting from the Threat Management. It is very convenient for us to use the reports to make new policies for security and other things."
"By deploying Check Point, it has made it easier to manage everything from a single interface. The management dashboard and policies are on its single pane of glass."
"Content protection, content inspection, and the application level firewall."
"It is a stable solution."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"The product’s documentation is good."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"Hopefully, in the future, these will be much more plug-and-play and orchestrated from a single administration console."
"The speed of technical support is very slow and is something that should be improved."
"The quality of the console should be improved in terms of aesthetics."
"I would like to see better Data Leakage protection options and easier-to-understand deployment models for this."
"Check Point products have many places that need to be improved, but they are constantly upgrading."
"I primarily work on the network side, so my expertise lies in configuring and working with firewalls. I have experience in firewall policies and know how to configure them within CheckPoint, including blocking URLs and specific website categories. However, I acknowledge that there's room for improvement, particularly in areas related to application-level control within the firewall. While I can't pinpoint a specific area for improvement, I am trying open to enhancing my skills and knowledge in various aspects of firewall management."
"It is a bit expensive according to the required blades but it is a platform that is worth having as security in a corporate."
"The study material for Check Point needs to be improved, as well as the cost for certification."
"Needs services on additional features, such as managing inventory and generating reports."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"The solution could always work at being more secure. It's a good idea to continue to work on security features and capabilities in order to ensure they can keep clients safe."
"Could be simplified for new users."
"Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. 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 Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, Cisco Secure Firewall and Meraki MX. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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