Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs McAfee StoneGate [EOL] comparison

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Check Point Software Technologies and McAfee are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Additionally, 96% of Check Point Software Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of McAfee users who would recommend it.

Check Point Cloud Firewall ...

Read 243 Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) reviews

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96% willing to recommend

McAfee StoneGate [EOL]

Read 3 McAfee StoneGate [EOL] reviews

66% willing to recommend

Check Point Cloud Firewall ...

McAfee StoneGate [EOL]

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 13, 2026

McAfee StoneGate [EOL] and Check Point Cloud Firewall compete in network security. Data comparison shows Check Point Cloud Firewall has an upper hand due to its superior features and cloud-native capabilities.

Features: McAfee StoneGate [EOL] offers comprehensive centralized management, robust intrusion prevention capabilities, and straightforward hardware-focused deployment. Check Point Cloud Firewall provides advanced cloud integration, sophisticated security policies, and cloud-native features suitable for dynamic environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: McAfee StoneGate [EOL] comes with a straightforward, hardware-focused deployment model and dedicated customer support. Check Point Cloud Firewall offers flexible deployment options due to its cloud-native architecture, simplifying integration with cloud services. Both provide reliable customer service, but Check Point's deployment flexibility enhances its appeal.

Pricing and ROI: McAfee StoneGate [EOL] aligns with budget-conscious organizations due to its relatively lower initial setup costs and traditional on-premise solutions. Check Point Cloud Firewall requires a greater initial investment but offers significant ROI through cloud flexibility and advanced security features, optimizing long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Firewalls Report (Updated: August 2026).

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Firewalls

August 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Check Point Cloud Firewall ...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

243

Ranking in other categories

Firewalls (8th), Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (1st), Vulnerability Management (5th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (3rd), Cloud and Data Center Security (3rd), Container Security (6th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (5th), WAN Edge (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (4th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (4th), Compliance Management (5th)

McAfee StoneGate [EOL]

Average Rating

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Oscar Nunez

Ingeniero en redes y Telecomunicaciones at K-IT

Centralized management has reduced policy time and provides reliable multitenant protection

What I would like, what I think they should improve a little is the management of objects at large scale. When you work with multiple domains, there are thousands of network objects. Detecting duplicates and consistency across domains is a very manual process that should be more automated. Another thing: the SmartConsole interface is very powerful and very good, but the learning curve, compared to other solutions in the market from other manufacturers, could be modernized. I think it does not necessarily have to be done from a client application; it could be done via web, because via web I know that not all the options you have in SmartConsole are available. So it would be good if it could also be done from the web and all the options were available. Another thing that I would really like is more automation with Ansible or Terraform. I know it has improved in recent versions, but I think it is still not mature enough. Compared to other manufacturers that do have a bit more in terms of automation capabilities in integration flows with Ansible or Terraform, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) could improve. Another thing that could be improved a little would be the TAC response time, because when there are very complex cases, I think there should be more speed initially, more ownership of those urgent cases, and not leave the customer waiting. This has happened to me: when I have cases open with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) TAC, sometimes they do not respond and I have to keep insisting, and I think that part should improve. I do not know if it depends on who takes the ticket or on the severity of the ticket, but sometimes I have had to insist a lot, and that would be the only problem. Once they attend to me and become involved in the case, the responses they give are very professional and really help directly resolve the problems when there is a bug or troubleshooting to do. As I said, I would like to see a specific improvement in SmartConsole. I think if they improved it—how to say it—gave it a facelift so you could access all the options directly from a browser, that would be great, because sometimes, for one reason or another, you cannot download SmartConsole or, for some reason, the SmartConsole client does not start correctly, and you could do it directly from the browser. I think that would be a good option to improve. Another thing would be that in multidomain environments, I would like a global search function for objects and rules. That is, you could enter and search across all domains at once, because right now you have to go domain by domain, and in environments with many customers, you spend quite a bit of time; you have to exit one domain and enter another. So those would be the improvements I would like to see.

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it_user935460

Computer Framework at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It works well with a highly-active cluster.

It is important for us in case of a disaster, or in case of a failure of one server. This means that the high availability is the most important part for us. It is important for us that the system is available and no connection is going to be lost if the system is restarting one note, or something like that. This is the main request for us for a good firewall protection product.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have developed a modern digital infrastructure that can access and give reliable reports based on real-time results."

"We can easily design, install, and configure everything from the cloud in a coherent way."

"It's a high-performance device. The network performance is also really good. We check how much time it takes for the servers. Our network performance has increased since using this solution."

"CloudGuard's best feature is real-time detection. We can detect incidents and vulnerabilities in our code with one click."

"Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has significantly reduced our organizational risk."

"It's helped with misconfigurations."

"People implementing this solution are concerned with addressing a significant risk, and within the AWS realm, this tool does de-risk substantially."

"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides us with unified security management across hybrid clouds as well as on-premise."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) pros

"We did not have issues with scalabiliy."

"It has given us better application control."

"The stability of the product is fantastic; it is a really proven system and I never had any type of problem where the system was unstable or had a software failure."

"It works well with a highly-active cluster."

"High availability is very consistent and provides good firewalling and stability."

Cons

"CloudGuard Network Security's pricing is expensive. We have encountered issues with its licensing."

"It should have some options to activate API calls to the platform in the cloud, another improvement would be that when the rules are colonized and they want to be published."

"The only thing that Check Point CloudGuard Network Security lacks is that for VPN, you need to buy a different model."

"Right now, I am not sure what improvements are needed. We are having occasional issues related to gateways, but we are still analyzing it."

"It should capture more information in metadata including communication detail. Also, Internal IP addresses should not be tracked as this might be having some compliance issues."

"The solution needs to support more hypervisors."

"It does not support on-premise deployments such as VMware Tanzu, and this has been a major drawback when it comes to integrations with some applications."

"Everything we do with Check Point must go through the vendor first, which is somewhat inconvenient. It would be easier to deal with Check Point directly, however, it depends on the vendor."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) cons

"After some experience with the solution, we had to do some redesign, but generally, we were happy with the product."

"HA failover is not stable."

"The hardware needs improving as we had a lot of problems with the hard drive reliability, both with the firewall and the intrusion protection system."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing and costs are straightforward, as they have a baseline of 100 workloads within one license and no additional charges."

"Although I don't have specifics for pricing, based on my overall experience, I can conclude that Check Point provides the best pricing when comparing to other vendors."

"The pricing and licensing have been good. We just had to do a license increase for our portion of it. We had that done within a couple of days. Given the fact that it's purely a software-based license, it ends up being even quicker than doing it for an on-prem firewall."

"The pricing is tremendous and super cheap. It is shockingly cheap for what you get out of it. I am happy with that. I hope that doesn't get reported back and they increase the prices. I love the pricing and the licensing makes sense. It is just assets: The more stuff that you have, the more you pay."

"The licensing model has since transitioned to a cluster-based variant."

"Pricing of CloudGuard is pretty fair when you have a single account. It's comparable with other cloud providers. But for our use case, it got really pricey when we had to deploy multiple CloudGuards on multiple accounts in different regions, because you can't have CloudGuard protecting multiple regions. That's the big thing."

"Check Point CloudGuard Posture Management is always known as a good solution but an expensive one. When you're using Cisco, Check Point, or Palo Alto, you know that you will pay more, but you know that it will work."

"The solution's licensing is based on the number of users of the VMs. We follow a pay-as-you-go model. Its pricing is competitive."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

15%

Construction Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	132
Midsize Enterprise	53
Large Enterprise	142

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Since we use a unified standard for using policies and modules in Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), we can clearly plan which modules we need to activate on a parti...

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What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

The main limitations of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) are not in Check Point itself but in the cloud platforms on which it is deployed. Because not all clouds ha...

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What is your primary use case for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is the main manager that provides network security in different forms in my organization. The primary task that Check Point solves ...

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Comparisons

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Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 51% of the time

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Compared 32% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

September 2026

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) report

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Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

August 2026

Download McAfee StoneGate [EOL] product report

Also Known As

CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security, Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP

McAfee Next Generation Firewall, Stonesoft, Intel Next Generation Firewall, Intel Security StoneGate

Overview

Check Point Cloud Firewall, previously known as CloudGuard Network Security, provides advanced threat prevention, centralized management, and VPN capabilities, enabling robust cloud security across various platforms including Azure and AWS.

Check Point Cloud Firewall delivers seamless cloud integration with advanced automated threat prevention and centralized management to enhance security posture. It offers auto-scaling for dynamic environments and a comprehensive policy enforcement framework in hybrid settings. The unified interface streamlines administration across cloud infrastructures, ensuring consistent protection and reducing risk.

What important features does it offer?

Advanced Threat Prevention: Safeguards against sophisticated threats.
Centralized Management: Simplifies control for cloud infrastructures.
Auto-scaling: Adapts to changing workloads seamlessly.
VPN Capabilities: Enables secure connections across environments.
Integration with Azure and AWS: Ensures compatibility with leading cloud services.
Visibility Tools: Enhanced monitoring and management for security enforcement.

What benefits can users expect?

Enhanced Security: Comprehensive threat management reduces risk.
Operational Efficiency: Automation capabilities streamline processes.
Cost Management: Efficient resource usage with auto-scaling reduces expenses.
Integration Flexibility: Adapts easily into existing cloud platforms.
Simplified Administration: Unified management reduces complexity.

In manufacturing and conglomerate sectors, Check Point Cloud Firewall is utilized for protecting cloud environments and implementing network segmentation. It supports secure cloud migration on AWS, Azure, and GCP, ensuring compliance, perimeter defense, and traffic inspection, facilitating sophisticated threat prevention strategies.

Check Point Software Technologies

StoneGate is a Highly Available Firewall/VPN. The StoneGate fault-tolerant VPN maintains sessions across multiple VPN devices and multiple Internet or network connections, regardless of device or connection failures. StoneGate provides Security, Manageability, Availability, and Scalability thus reducing network security complexity and costs. Stonesoft was the inventor of high availability for security solutions and a recognized leader in network security.

McAfee

Sample Customers

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance

Avency, R€SLER Oberfl_chentechnik GmbH, MAUSER Group, CEMEX, Cegedim, Fusion Media Networks

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Cisco and others in Firewalls. Updated: August 2026.

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