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Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs Check Point NGFW comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Fortinet FortiGate offers favorable ROI with cost savings, efficiency, and ease of deployment, enhancing productivity and reducing ownership costs.
Sentiment score
7.1
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall enhances network security and performance with effective spam blocking, easy maintenance, and free upgrade options.
Sentiment score
7.6
Check Point NGFW decreases costs and enhances security, resulting in productivity gains and high user confidence with advanced features.
Clients are now comfortable and not wasting productive hours on IT support.
The automation part is giving us a cost benefit and speed; we can react faster.
It's a very useful tool to mitigate and protect your enterprise.
This is a time-saving measure because we don't need to deploy a cluster or a firewall each time; we just create a virtual system on the management server using the same appliance.
Incident response time has reduced significantly, and downtime due to network issues has been minimized, leading to an improved return on investment.
I have seen a return on investment with Check Point NGFW in terms of time saved and fewer people needed for operations.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Fortinet's support is generally responsive and helpful, though some users experience slow response times and complex issues.
Sentiment score
7.3
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall's customer service is accessible and knowledgeable, though support quality varies due to language and documentation issues.
Sentiment score
7.1
Check Point NGFW's support is generally positive, with praised expertise, but response time and initial experience vary.
They offer very accurate solutions.
The quick resolution of issues with Fortinet FortiGate is due to the support of the company and the fact that the equipment is easy to work with.
I would rate the technical support for Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.
Barracuda's partner support is better than the majority, and it stands out as one of their strengths.
The overall security has been satisfactory, with no breaches.
The technical support from Barracuda is very good.
The support team we engaged was knowledgeable and well-versed with the application.
We have escalated issues to Check Point technical support multiple times and have received timely and very good responses.
Even challenging issues like those with VPNs have been resolved efficiently with their help.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Fortinet FortiGate is praised for scalability, effective in both large and small businesses, but hardware scaling can be challenging.
Sentiment score
7.8
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall offers excellent scalability and management for various business sizes, though future capacity planning is advised.
Sentiment score
8.2
Check Point NGFW offers robust scalability with seamless upgrades and high availability, efficiently meeting diverse organizational needs.
They scale up really well from smaller models like the FortiGate 40 and 50 to bigger sites with the FortiGate 100 for more throughput - up to enterprise datacenters.
The variation comes in terms of the interfaces and throughputs, but from a security perspective, you get the same benefit, irrespective of whether you have an entry-level unit or an enterprise.
We determine sizing based on multiple factors: number of users, available links, traffic types, server count, services in use, and whether services will be published.
When positioning into customers, some larger enterprise customers tend to move towards one of the top three: either Cisco, Fortinet, or Palo Alto.
If specified correctly, even the smaller boxes offer high session and bandwidth rates, making the solution highly scalable, even up to telco-level requirements.
Scalability must be carefully planned for, considering future growth and user base increases.
They offer multiple solutions from SMBs to enterprise data centers, making it an easily scalable solution with no issues in scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Fortinet FortiGate is praised for reliability, with stability enhancements through updates, despite some firmware bugs and performance challenges.
Sentiment score
8.2
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is highly reliable and stable, with effective support and improved performance, despite minor bugs and past issues.
Sentiment score
7.9
Check Point NGFW is praised for stability, reliability, proactive updates, and high performance, despite occasional bugs and configuration issues.
We're experiencing 99.999% availability consistently.
I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.
Currently, we are experiencing a general outage of one of the main internet service providers of the Dominican Republic, and we have not been impacted in our operations because with SD-WAN, we have another internet service provider and we are working with the second WAN connection without any disruption.
We have very few issues with Barracuda Firewall, even in the case of zero-day vulnerabilities.
Version 8.0 had issues, but the newer version 9.0 seems to have improved performance regarding these issues.
While the solution is generally stable, there are complications, such as requiring SmartConsole for deployment and upgrades, which can be time-consuming.
I have worked with Check Point products for 15 years and haven't found any stability or performance issues.
The use of Check Point firewalls has helped improve our security posture without any downtime.
 

Room For Improvement

Fortinet FortiGate needs improved stability, intuitive support, cost-effective licensing, and better compatibility with fewer bugs and enhanced reporting.
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall suffers from complex usability, unclear manuals, limited reporting, challenging licensing, high pricing, and VPN issues.
Check Point NGFW faces stability, support, and integration issues, with complex GUI, high costs, and challenging policy management.
Investing in a solution that can accommodate such growth would be more cost-effective than repeatedly purchasing new hardware.
The constant daily revisions necessitate meticulous identification of the relevant documents to prevent the use of outdated information that could jeopardize our environment.
While Fortinet claims to offer a comprehensive network solution, it falls short in addressing computer application issues, particularly server security.
Integration with AI would be helpful as modern attacks often utilize AI.
It would be beneficial to merge the existing application policy with the main policy into a single unified policy to improve manageability.
Some licensing aspects are challenging; for example, if you're using an active-passive setup, you have to license both firewalls.
Other products, like FortiGate, are perceived as more intuitive because they are easier to configure from the start.
More granularity and control for threat prevention, especially on the OT side, would be beneficial.
I believe Check Point NGFW can be improved by making its initial configuration and deployment easier in the future because the first-time setup is really hard.
 

Setup Cost

Fortinet FortiGate offers cost-effective enterprise-level features with competitive long-term pricing, affordable licensing, and valuable support packages.
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is cost-effective with transparent licensing, offering significant savings and includes a four-year replacement program.
Check Point NGFW pricing is high but feature-rich, requiring negotiation and support; opinions vary on cost-effectiveness.
FortiGate is priced lower than Palo Alto.
Last year, I renewed the support for three years, which can sometimes be expensive but depends on the security benefits and how it helps us.
It is about 20% cheaper.
The license price of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is lower than others, and maintenance or support is included.
It is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive option available.
In comparison to Fortinet and other products, the pricing may be considered high.
Compared to other solutions, the pricing of Check Point NGFW is high.
The perception is that Check Point NGFW is expensive, especially when all software modules are included.
 

Valuable Features

Fortinet FortiGate is praised for its VPN, firewall, ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and versatile network management features.
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall offers robust security and seamless integration, ideal for efficient network management with advanced features and centralized control.
Check Point NGFW excels with VPN, IPS, centralized management, intuitive interface, and robust threat prevention, enhancing security and performance.
In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable.
FortiGate has helped reduce the risk of cyberattacks that might disrupt our client's production.
These features help reduce our downtime, manage the ISPs, and deploy SLAs for all the website traffic.
This integration helps secure our data and applications from attackers trying to gain access and detect malicious activity.
The most valuable features of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall include antivirus protection, anti-DDoS, and IPS.
The most valuable features of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall are its next-generation capabilities such as URL filtering and application control.
The firewall's default behavior of blocking all traffic, including a cleanup rule that blocks everything from external to internal sources, is highly valuable for protecting our network.
The most valuable features in my experience include perimeter firewalling, cloud and mobile security, application control, URL filtering, DLP, threat prevention, intrusion protection, and safeguarding against malware, botnets, and zero-day attacks.
Since implementing it, we have noticed a lot less getting through that maybe other antivirus within firewalls had failed to catch.
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
380
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
26th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (11th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (19th), IoT Security (6th), WAN Edge (10th)
Check Point NGFW
Ranking in Firewalls
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
324
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.2%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point NGFW is 3.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service
I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.
RobertSmith15 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures data security with advanced intrusion prevention and 24/7 monitoring
I rate the initial setup as ten out of ten. It is straightforward to set up a CloudGen file, taking a couple of hours. Once we have the configuration agreed with the customer, the setup and onboarding are completed within a few hours. We receive the box from Barracuda or from our stores, pre-stage it into our network for initial configuration and Soak testing to ensure functionality. The customer can install it at their location, or we do it on their behalf. We run the firewall in simulation mode to observe traffic and ensure service transition is effective. After confirming functionality with the customer, we transition to a live service.
Hailemichael Yigrem - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced security features enhance threat detection and prevention
Check Point NGFW provides granular application control and detailed visibility over application and user activity. It integrates with the ThreatCloud ecosystem, enabling real-time threat detection and prevention. The User Identity Awareness blade integrates with Active Directory, identifying user traffic sources. Check Point NGFW is highly scalable and has centralized management through SmartConsole, which manages policies, logs, and threat data. It reduced our incidents and decreased the time to analyze cyber threats by 70 percent.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
8%
Government
7%
Construction Company
7%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What do you like most about Barracuda CloudGen Firewall?
The encryption and the security standards are valuable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda CloudGen Firewall?
The license price of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is lower than others, and maintenance or support is included.
What needs improvement with Barracuda CloudGen Firewall?
The interface of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is not as user-friendly as others. It is a bit complicated and could be ...
How does Check Point NGFW compare with Fortinet Fortigate?
I have experience on both from Disti and channel experience. Please find below my comments (nothing new as such). -Ch...
Which would you recommend - Azure Firewall or Check Point NGFW?
Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall ...
What do you like most about Check Point NGFW?
Check Point NGFW provides essential security, featuring no-obligation access for secure connections, strong intrusion...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
Barracuda NextGen Firewall, Barracuda CloudGen Firewalls
Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
ARZ, Bauer, CBCX Technologies, Diamant-groep, Eissmann Group Automotive, European Youth Olympics, Exalo Drilling, FineLine Technologies, Geocell, Grimaldi, Infront Sports & Media, Odlo, Schenker Deutschland AG, Tilak, Verbandsgeneinde Zell, Conservas El Cidacos S.A., Institute for Emergency Medicine and Medicine Management, Erwin Muller GmbH, Info-Tech: NGF is Champion, Schoellerbank, IZB Informatik-Zentrum, RHI AG, Berglandmilch, Antenne Bayern, Sanochemia
Control Southern, Optimal Media
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.