We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and McAfee StoneGate [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"The SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"The web filtering feature and the intrusion protection system are the most valuable. It is a resilient appliance. I never had an issue with it in terms of any security breaches."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"It's quite a stable solution."
"The scalability is very good."
"We can build the new firewalls with minimum efforts."
"It offers services like navigation, control, and filtering, which ensure that all users stay connected to business applications."
"The successful performance of the security blades has shown the value of the investment along with the comparable success of leveraging the NGFW over a separate specialized security solution."
"The solution offers a good GUI."
"Admins and executives are more at ease with the compliance engine within the software as it measures how many of the security requirements we're compliant with, making their work much more accessible from that standpoint."
"The activation of additional features is very easy and well documented."
"It works well with a highly-active cluster."
"We did not have issues with scalabiliy."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"It can be expensive, especially for small businesses."
"The tool’s architecture could be improved a bit."
"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."
"The VPN setup could be simplified. We had to engage professional services for that. That's not a problem, but compared to other products we've used, it was a little more complex."
"The exterior of the physical device can be improved with the use of a display and not just simple lights."
"Reporting has to be improved."
"Check Point should include additional management choices; for example, Check Point does not offer full management support via browser."
"The biggest improvement they could make is having one software to install on all three levels of their products, so that the SMBs, the normal models, and the chassis would all run the same software. Now, while there is central management, everything that has to be configured on the gateway itself works differently on the three kinds of devices."
"After some experience with the solution, we had to do some redesign, but generally, we were happy with the product."
Earn 20 points
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while McAfee StoneGate [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Firewalls. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while McAfee StoneGate [EOL] is rated 7.0. 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 McAfee StoneGate [EOL] writes "The HA cluster had issues during deployment, but the solution gives us better application control than with our previous solution". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas McAfee StoneGate [EOL] is most compared with .
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