We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Meraki MX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It has improved our security capabilities."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"The most important features with FortiGate are the web filter and application controls. We can control our internet usage and use the web filter for application purposes."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The dashboard provides a quick overview of the security status, including key metrics, alerts, and recent events."
"Check Point's Quantum helps our clients in their overall cybersecurity practice."
"Remote access with a secure workspace provides a clear separation between the client and corporate network."
"It has various features, like Threat Prevention and Antivirus. It is easier to use and have knowledge of a single device rather than multiple devices/technologies when doing an installation. It is also easy to use because of having Antivirus and Threat Prevention features within the same firewall."
"It's really simple to set up."
"It is easy to use, and its management is the best. Check Point has a great unified management solution for firewalls and security products."
"Check Point provides dedicated blades to monitor network traffic, which helps while troubleshooting network and packet-related issues."
"I think that the most valuable feature is the prevention of known and zero-day threats because they are constantly trying to access your company and compromise its data."
"The cloud management system is really valuable."
"The initial setup for me was straightforward."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the Meraki dashboard, which is a single pane of glass."
"It is very easy to configure."
"It is very fast to implement."
"The dashboard is very intuitive and easy to understand."
"Simple to manage."
"The most valuable feature is that we didn't have any problems with Meraki MX."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"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."
"FortiLink is the interface on the firewall that allows you to extend switch management across all of your switches in the network. The problem with it is that you can't use multiple interfaces unless you set them up in a lag. Only then you can run them. So, it forces you to use a core type of switch to propagate that management out to the rest of the switches, and then it is running the case at 200. It leaves you with 18 ports on the firewall because it is also a layer-three router that could also be used as a switch, but as soon as you do that, you can't really use them. They could do a little bit more clean up in the way the stacking interface works. Some use cases and the documentation on the FortiLink checking interface are a little outdated. I can find stuff on version 5 or more, but it is hard to find information on some of the newer firmware. The biggest thing I would like to see is some improvement in the switch management feature. I would like to be able to relegate some of the ports, which are on the firewall itself, to act as a switch to take advantage of those ports. Some of these firewalls have clarity ports on them. If I can use those, it would mean that I need to buy two less switches, which saves time. I get why they don't, but I would still like to see it because it would save a little bit of space in the server rack."
"The quality of the console should be improved in terms of aesthetics."
"When we hit a bug, the support team recommends some hotfix, and if we upgrade to that, we have to uninstall it before we apply some newer jumbo hotfix."
"Reporting has to be improved."
"Although Check Point provides annual updates to the Gaia platform, integration with other OEMs is difficult."
"The only thing which I think should be improved is that training should be increased. In my position I also interview potential employees and I haven't found many people in the market, nowadays, who are familiar with the Check Point firewall. They are more familiar with Palo Alto and Cisco ASA and they are more comfortable with them."
"The level and availability of training should be improved."
"Check Point is not a cheap solution and it's always painful to see exactly how much we need to spend on this."
"The antivirus feature is a little bit weak and should be improved."
"Could possibly use deeper configurations."
"Meraki has some hidden features and information that is only privy to their engineers. If that information became available to us, then it would improve our ease of management, and we would be able to make certain adjustments instead of having to go to them."
"Meraki MX firewalls are great for small to medium-sized businesses, but other solutions are better for enterprise-sized companies."
"We have been having a problem with the VPN. When the energy goes down and is back again, the VPN link doesn't get established. We have to manually turn off the modems and other pieces of equipment and manually establish the VPN. It has been around one month since we have been having this problem, and we don't have enough support from Meraki to solve the problem."
"FortiGate is cheaper than Meraki. Even the license renewal is less than Meraki."
"More detail needed for configuration of the VPN."
"Pricing is an area where the solution lacks since it is an expensive tool."
"The current lead time is longer for Meraki MX, and it needs to be improved."
Check Point NGFW doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 277 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 58 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Meraki MX is rated 8.2. 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 Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Juniper SRX Series Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Meraki MX report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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