We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and OPNsense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers a range of valuable features including VPN, IPS, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade. OPNsense provides scalability, guest access capabilities, dashboards, IDS and IPS features, and easy configuration.
The feedback for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security suggests that it could enhance its support system, introduce features like cluster creation on AWS and a managed web portal, improve visibility on data protection, and upgrade its documentation and support services. OPNsense requires improvement in its user interface, bandwidth management, high availability feature, logging, integration capabilities, IPS solution, hardware updates, reporting, SSL inspection, and installation process.
Service and Support: While some customers have praised Check Point's technical support, there have been complaints about their response time. OPNsense has a combination of positive and negative reviews. Some users have found their support to be excellent, while others believe there is room for improvement.
Ease of Deployment: The initial setup for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is considered to be user-friendly and straightforward, although it may necessitate technical knowledge. Deployment time can differ, and proper guidance and support are essential. OPNsense's initial setup is simple and can be accomplished by non-technical clients. It typically takes a few hours to complete, but additional configuration might be necessary for certain environments.
Pricing: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is known for its high setup cost, but it provides excellent security and value. OPNsense has a moderate price for the appliance, with the hardware being the main expense. It is a cost-effective solution that offers unbeatable pricing when compared to other firewalls.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides a significant ROI of 80% to 85%, along with added advantages and simplified administration. OPNsense ensures a return on investment within a short span of less than three months and eliminates the need for ongoing fees.
Comparison Results: Based on user feedback, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the preferred choice when comparing it to OPNsense. Users appreciate the ease and simplicity of the initial setup process with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security stands out for its valuable features like VPN, IPS, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade, which are highly valued by users.
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"FortiGate improved our security. It's one of the best hardware 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 features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"Good load balancing feature."
"There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"The Capsule solution and application filters are the most valuable. It is pretty straightforward to implement, and it also has good stability and scalability. Their technical support is also really good."
"The scalability is very good; again, very user-friendly. I wouldn't even say "user-friendly" because, as long as you deploy it properly, you can kill an EC2 and it will spin up another one right away, within about a minute and a half. And it will be ready for production right away."
"The solution provides a centralized management console for easy administration and monitoring of security policies and events, making it easy for the security team."
"Check Point CloudGuard is quick to deploy and easy for the customer to use."
"The most valuable feature is that we can use the same manager server that we use on our own Check Point firewalls. We integrated CloudGuard on that manager and we can use the same kind of protections that we use on the on-prem firewalls, like the IPS and antivirus policy. We can have the same kind of protection on the Cloud environment that we have on-premise."
"This solution has good scalability and stability."
"The tool's most valuable features are firewalls and IPS."
"The VPN features in CloudGuard Network Security have been the most valuable for us."
"What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control."
"The graphic user interface is very good and it is user-friendly which makes the product easy-to-use."
"One of the most valuable features is the network checking. Additionally, the firewall and web filtering functionalities are highly useful."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"I feel that its valuable features are that it is simple and free."
"It is a very good solution. I like the dashboard. I can see what is going on and manage it as I like it."
"URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me."
"The feature I find most valuable, is that the program helped me to realize all the requested functionality that was needed."
"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"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."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"The solution needs to improve the interruptions that happen during gateway upgrades."
"The solution’s technical support, DNS security and training could be improved."
"The stability of the solution could be improved, but this is the problem of all the solutions in the market. This isn't just a problem specific to Check Point."
"We are at the place where we are looking at better integration with the management system. We use an MDS today, and it is self-deployed. We want to get to the Smart-1 Cloud, but we do not know what that looks like today because it does not support a multi-domain setup. Smart-1 should either be able to do multi-domain or there should be some form of taking a multi-domain environment and putting it in Smart-1."
"In future releases, I would like to see the data loss prevention (DLP) feature could scale along with the virtual machine scale sets."
"The solution needs to support more hypervisors."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."
"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could improve by making it easier to configure."
"Given that OPNsense plays a pivotal role as a firewall, safeguarding against various threats, having a reliable backup ensures uninterrupted protection even if unforeseen events impact the primary virtual machine."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"OPNsense showed me some problems when using it in different environments. The problem is integration with a virtual server."
"Its interface should be a little bit better."
"On the customer-side, because I'm a small business, I need a cheaper or free solution option."
"The support for OPNsense is good because we have documents available on the internet. The support could improve a little."
"While they do have paid options that actually gives better features, for most of the clients, if they tend to take a paid option will instead opt for Fortinet."
"There is room for improvement in SSL inspection."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 119 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while OPNsense is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security writes "The solution has good threat emulation, threat extraction, and reporting features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. OPNsense report.
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