Check Point Remote Access VPN vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Check Point Remote Access VPN
Ranking in Remote Access
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (6th)
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...
Ranking in Remote Access
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Application Virtualization (1st), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (4th), Desktop as a Service (DaaS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Remote Access category, the mindshare of Check Point Remote Access VPN is 2.1%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 3.2%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Remote Access
Unique Categories:
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
4.6%
Application Virtualization
14.4%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
0.7%
 

Featured Reviews

MW
Feb 24, 2023
Compatible across devices, reasonably priced, and secures confidential information
The remote VPN enables us to connect our devices under a controlled network infrastructure. It protects the channels for transferring data and confidential information.  It connects our managers with remote employees to enhance efficiency in the implementation of projects and tasks. Check Point…
MA
Jul 15, 2022
Support had multiple people intervene who provided different incorrect answers, then stopped responding
The VDIs are very easy to set up. The NetScaler Gateway is very complex to set up, if you want to get to the right level of security. If you just want to set it up and make it run, then it is easy and takes 30 seconds, but it doesn't do anything. It is crap. If you want to really set it up, it is very complex. The primary steps are pretty much forced. You install the Director and Studio, then you install the deploy machine, which makes it run. I'm not an enterprise, so I don't need to worry about all the preplanning. I just deploy machines and provide some cyberware. I just put it on the machine and let it run. In this case, that is very good. It allows you to do this with no real proper pre-thinking about how many machines you need to deploy, etc.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The VPN hides your IP address and encrypts your online traffic and it essentially ensures that your fingerprints cannot be traced on the Internet."
"Check Point Remote Access VPN provides strong security features, including encryption, authentication, endpoint security, access control, and centralized management."
"The security of the solution is a good feature, the stability is a valuable feature, and the customization is also a nice feature."
"Thanks to all these security processes, our users can access our infrastructure with the certainty that we will not be compromised."
"A single login based on a second authentication factor is giving us the possibility of integrating third-party services for authentication based on a security scheme."
"One of the features that I like most about this software is that it has a very intuitive, simple, and versatile interface that makes it easy to use and configure."
"I found the MEP feature the most valuable. This has improved users' latency allowing the users to connect to the nearest Azure Check Point VM."
"It can improve an organization by providing secure access to resources for traveling employees, which can help to reduce the risk of data breaches or other security incidents."
"The most valuable feature is the automatic software upgrades because they take place on only three or four servers, rather than on 50 or 60 machines."
"It virtualizes the application on your desktop."
"You can connect to any printer, and from anywhere you can print documents using a compressed channel. It is easy and the bandwidth is very low."
"First of all, the manageability of the applications for publishing is valuable. Second, it is about being able to run the applications on all main platforms. Third, its licensing is valuable. You can either switch to the cloud and keep on-prem. You can work with this hybrid scenario."
"I found the ease of deployment, scalability, and security to be to our benefit when supplying virtual applications to our clients."
"It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The ROI for us has been that when we had Hurricane Harvey last year, Xendesktop came in very handy for us. Even though people had electricity in Texas, many networks were down. Our offices could still get into our network and do work that was needed. It is an excellent virtual office that works anywhere, anytime and anyplace. It is worth our investment."
"Before we adopted a VDI storage solution, our customers' personal information was leaked. This happened a lot. But since we adopted a VDI solution, these kinds of issues have happened rarely."
 

Cons

"I would like this service to be easier to manage when you integrate it with third parties."
"As everything is moving to cloud environments, it would be beneficial if Check Point Remote Access VPN could provide on-demand services related to remote VPN. Users with proper authentication should be able to easily deploy VPN on their devices with just a click, perhaps with the help of plugins."
"For Linux machines, they don't have a full client to install. For the users that utilize Linux, there needs to be an equivalent."
"A characteristic to improve is the communication service under the SMTP scheme."
"The fully-featured security module is only supported on Windows and Mac systems, which means that organizations with Linux will face issues providing secure access."
"The provisioning of VPN users has room for improvement."
"The maximum it is giving us is only 5 licenses and if you need more, they must be purchased separately."
"When you want to deploy a new Check Point agent, it is really a pain in the butt. For example, Windows 10 now has updates almost every couple of months. It changes the versioning and things under the hood. These are things that I don't understand, because I'm not a Windows person. However, I know that the Check Point client is installed on the Windows machine, and if the Check Point client's not kept up-to-date, then it's functionality breaks. It has to be up-to-date with the Windows versions. Check Point has to update the client more often. Now, the problem is that the Check Point client is not easy to update on remote computers and it's not easy to deploy a new client."
"I think improvement around the Analytics piece is super important. There has been a lot of maturity over the last year in that area, though a lot more needs to be done. Also, a lot more of the value of those Analytics needs to be sold to end users. Citrix is working on a lot of things that are ahead of the curve and a lot of organizations aren't quite there yet with implementing those technologies and capabilities."
"I think Citrix's support is good, but sometimes it is a little slow."
"We encounter compatibility issues related to hardware, scanners, and other devices."
"We have had issues with certain aspects, which is why we are looking for alternatives. For example, the firewall solution from Citrix is a bit complicated. Integration is hard."
"Licensing service installation and configuration was the biggest challenge for all Citrix solutions, but now they have fixed a lot of issues."
"As an end-to-end solution for implementing Zero Trust principles I would rate it a six or a seven out of 10, because it doesn't cover all aspects of Zero Trust. There are quite a few aspects you need to cover."
"There are a lot of shortfalls with supporting printing over XenApp."
"Where improvement could be driven is in terms of clarity as to the functionality of some of the solutions. If you go back to the older Citrix Xen products that we had, we understood those really well. As we've come into the new workstation premium suite, there is a lot of additional functionality that we perhaps have not yet fully exploited. It is not because we can't, but simply because we don't yet understand the depth of functionality that's offered."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I can say that the licensing costs are charged annually."
"The price of this product is good."
"Check Point Remote Access VPN is not expensive and the cost is annual."
"My understanding is that the pricing and licensing are very competitive, and it's not one of their more expensive products. We buy licenses for the solution and have licenses for the endpoint servers."
"My company makes yearly payments only towards the licensing costs attached to Check Point Remote Access VPN, as there are no extra costs attached to the product."
"Organizations that already have the Check Point NGFW need to purchase an additional license to have access to the VPN functionality."
"The product is expensive. I rate its pricing a ten out of ten. For the cost of one product, we could purchase two or three Fortinet solutions with the same amount of money."
"The solution is pretty expensive. The rating is an eight."
"The licenses are affordable, but the support is a bit expensive, though worth the value.​"
"The cost of the Citrix software reflects what I would expect a product of that nature, in that market, to be. Understanding the licensing is quite a bit more complicated, because one of the things about Citrix is that you can buy licensing at different levels... Yet I still like the idea because it means that if all you need is a basic load balancing solution, then you don't need to buy an advanced or premium license."
"The pricing is a little bit high, but it's good value for the product's stability and efficiency."
"Their licensing model used to be on a per-year basis, where you would negotiate the cost per user for a year. For instance, if you had 25,000 users, you could negotiate the cost accordingly. However, they are transitioning to a subscription-based model where the cost is incurred monthly."
"You can buy an on-cloud or on-prem license. You can switch between on-cloud users and on-prem users. Its licensing is cheap. It is from $8 to $15 per user. It is not that expensive when you compare the cost of buying new hardware with the cost of the license. For example, at $15 per user, it costs around $180 for a year, which is cheaper than buying a $600 PC that at a certain stage, you will again have to change because its hardware is not supported. It may also get damaged or stolen. So, you can compare the cost of the actual hardware that you have to buy and the time spent in supporting the clients with the cost of its license."
"It is a bit costly, but enterprise class features come with a cost."
"We're paying for a standard license and, in my view, the price is too high. I would be satisfied with it if it were reduced by about 20-30%. Right now, I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"Based not only on the cost of Citrix, but additional costs like firewalls, IPS, and other solutions, the total cost of switching users from using normal laptops with VPNs to connection via Citrix were so huge that the CEO of our company decided to postpone the deployment process."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Check Point Endpoint Remote Access VPN?
We use it to connect our sites. We have a couple of sites that need to interconnect. They are in our cloud and our premise data center.
What do you like most about Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?
My focus has primarily been on publishing virtual applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?
I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?
The Citrix DaaS application is a bit heavy when it comes to mobile access, and it should function more smoothly. For example, the Citrix mobile app takes a long time to log in and should work even ...
 

Also Known As

Check Point Remote Access VPN, Check Point Endpoint Remote Access VPN
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Osmose, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)
Exelon, Aeronamic, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Alameda County Medical Center, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Aloysius Stichting, Amarchand Mangaldas, AmBev, Amnet Technology Solutions, Arval
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Remote Access VPN vs. Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) and other solutions. Updated: June 2024.
787,779 professionals have used our research since 2012.