Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Check Point Harmony Browse vs F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th)
Check Point Harmony Browse
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
15th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Browsers (4th)
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (8th), SSL VPN (5th), Remote Access (9th), Access Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point Harmony Browse is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is 1.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Nasseer Qureshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Securing web browsing activities with effective threat prevention
There is room for improvement in Check Point Harmony Browse. While it is effective, the management portal could use some refinement. For instance, we would like to see more advanced filtering options and clearer reporting for policy violations. Although reporting exists, it sometimes isn't granular enough to quickly identify user-level activity. Another area of improvement is extension compatibility since it currently works best with Chrome and Edge, but having wider browser support for Firefox and Safari would be beneficial for mixed environments. I would also appreciate more flexible customization of policies, especially for different departments with varying needs, allowing for more granular rule-based policies directly from the dashboard. When we receive alerts, sometimes they turn out to be false positives. For example, we encountered a false positive recently and sought to fine-tune our policies to reduce these occurrences, but we didn't have options for that level of fine-tuning. I would like to see improvements in alert tuning that would help reduce unnecessary notifications, especially for low-risk events. Overall, it's a strong out-of-the-box solution, but a few enhancements would refine the experience and make it easier to scale.
Ashish Kumar Rai - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers remote access control, good GUI and easy to configure
I'd suggest improved documentation integration directly within the GUI. Right now, finding comprehensive documentation often requires going to external websites like the community portal. In the APM interface itself, they could add direct hyperlinks to relevant online documentation. This would provide easy access to admin guides and other resources when working within the GUI.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"The installation process is simple. Once initiated, the process is quite straightforward and seamless, making it easy to complete."
"It is easy to implement and has great security potential to avoid vulnerabilities through internet browsing."
"It has content filtering, which has helped us a lot in being able to apply the necessary filtering policies where we can allow or block websites."
"This solution has improved my organization by providing enhanced web security."
"The real-time Threat Intelligence feature powered by Check Point's ThreatCloud is impressive because ThreatCloud integrates and correlates all malicious data from Check Point installations globally, collecting and analyzing this data with AI and machine learning to help prevent zero-day attacks effectively."
"It provides end-to-end encryption for the communication between the user's device and the remote browser, which helps to protect against eavesdropping and other forms of man-in-the-middle attacks."
"Its Nano Agent, which integrates with the browser, is incredibly invisible to the user and the computer since it does not require much performance."
"The product is stable."
"The tool is reliable and easy to configure."
"F5 BIG-IP APM is relatively easy to use."
"I rate the overall solution nine out of ten."
"The performance of the solution is valuable."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"Our customers have never complained about the stability"
"This is a product that is easy to install and integrate, and it is simple to use."
"On a scale from one to ten for stability, I would rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) a ten."
 

Cons

"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"URL filtering could be better."
"The only thing they should add or improve is the reporting series."
"It seems to us that the performance in some opportunities of Check Point Infinity and the administration web portal is slow."
"They should focus on new areas of product. In the last year, they have not released any updates with improvements or extra options."
"The URL filtering database should be improved."
"By default, on Harmony Browse there is no URL group which is commonly blocked worldwide."
"More strengthening and robustness are required in zero-day threat prevention to ensure its efficiency at 100%."
"I would like the solution to be implemented more easily for teams and directly on Android or iOS devices."
"The solution is quite costly."
"The price of this product can be improved."
"If I could copy and paste objects instead of picking and configuring them from scratch each time, it would be great."
"I have had a lot of issues in the past few months with the agents, which was disappointing."
"F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager has room for improvement in integration with other products."
"The main improvement needed for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is to integrate into the cloud-delivered services from F5."
"Regarding price, I'm not directly involved in purchasing, but our CIO thinks the product is very expensive. He's considering moving from the tool to Citrix NetScaler WAF because it's cheaper, and we already have Citrix for VDI. We got NetScaler almost free as part of our VDI deal. Three years ago, I convinced him to use the solution because it's better, but now, with budget constraints, he may want to switch."
"The operational deployment is not great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"The price is not very expensive for our organisation, but for others, it might be a little expensive."
"The product has a reasonable pricing."
"The tool is a little bit expensive."
"The product is very expensive."
"Recently, they have simplified the licensing"
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
31%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Security Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...
What needs improvement with Check Point Harmony Browse?
There is always scope for improvement for Check Point Harmony Browse, particularly in the user interface and adding t...
What is your primary use case for Check Point Harmony Browse?
We are working in a SOC environment as an MSSP ( /categories/managed-security-services-providers-mssp ) SOC. Our clie...
What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
In my opinion, the GUI is perfect with the configuration options provided. F5 BIG-IP has given customization options ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability, akin to purchas...
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM ( /categories/application-performance-monitoring-apm-and-observability )) does n...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
No data available
F5 Access Policy Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Information Not Available
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Harmony Browse vs. F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.