We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard XTM [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls.
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"The security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"The management interface is easy to operate and is a standardized way of managing different firewall modules in the same client application."
"The Blades work fine and the performance optimization is great."
"The Check Point API let me make 100 net rules in just 10 minutes, which saved us time."
"When applying application control, we can ensure user access to the internet in accordance with company policy and easy implementation if some users need exception access."
"Its auditing features are good for checking who did what changes and when."
"The solution is easy to use. I like the monitoring the most."
"While not being cheap, their pricing models are competitive."
"I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten."
"WatchGuard XTM is fairly basic. We use it as the perimeter firewall. The main point is to protect from attack software and hacking."
"After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse."
"We have used technical support for WatchGuard many times and overall, we are satisfied with it. They are always listening and there is a good reaction time to our findings. When there are issues, they really try to resolve them."
"SNMP status monitoring and the Central Management Software."
"Application Control is fantastic with over 2,500 applications and the granularity that we can either allow people to view but not be able to log on to Facebook; or view it and log onto it if they're in the marketing department, but not play Facebook games. There are all sorts of different options like that. So it's highly granular."
"They have a reporting system which can store data over a very long period of time. Not many other firewall vendors provide a reporting system, but if they do, like Fortinet does, then you've got buy that as an additional product and that can be more than twice as expensive as the initial investment in the firewall. And without reporting over a long-term period, you're just about wasting your time."
"It is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time."
"Reputation Enabled Defense indicates that some websites are so infested that it's not even worth visiting them, and therefore saving the bandwidth of going through the detection process."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"The scalability could be better."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"The reporting in Fortinet FortiGate could improve. Customers are having to purchase additional reporting components. When I have used the Sophos solution it is a complete solution, in Fortinet FortiGate you have to use additional tools to have the features needed."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"The area where Check Point can improve is the antivirus, as it only provides a small number of updates for it. Updates should be more frequent."
"It will be good if the product is rack-mounted."
"If you have a long ruleset, you may experience performance issues on the GUI, and installing rule changes on gateways can take a comparatively long time."
"I feel the only thing that I see as a possible improvement in Check Point software is the lack of ability to create "static discard routes" which makes it difficult for NAT ranges to be advertised via BGP to neighbors."
"Scalability should be improved."
"One of the main features that need improvement is the rule filter export."
"It's my understanding that the initial setup is a bit complex. There's a bit of a learning curve if you're trying to set it up for the first time and you aren't familiar with the product."
"The pricing could always be more competitive."
"The initial setup is neither simple nor complex. If you know the base in networking and how the firewall works, you will be able to figure it out."
"The VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting."
"Sometimes we have had issues with stability of the product."
"One huge issue with WatchGuard XTM is that I'm not getting reports in a readable format. Readable means, I don't want Excel online. We repeat auditing when we trigger the report or setup calendar. That functionality is what we are looking for from WatchGuard XTM here."
"Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer)."
"The setting policies need improvement. It needs an easier way to do static NAT and check on what policy is being used for that specific traffic."
"I would like them to improve the product's overall protections. This would be good for all product users."
"WatchGuard doesn't have a product that allows them to get into the data center. And that's just because there is no hardware to do the job. The software could do it, but there's no hardware that allows that to happen at the moment. So it doesn't scale as well as some other products, that's for sure."
Earn 20 points
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while WatchGuard XTM [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Firewalls. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is rated 8.0. 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 WatchGuard XTM [EOL] writes "The multi-layer security of the products are the primary reason we use these appliances, however, the gateway wireless functionality for managing access points leaves much to be desired". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is most compared with .
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