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Check Point NGFW vs Menlo Secure comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
330
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Check Point NGFW
Ranking in Firewalls
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
312
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Menlo Secure
Ranking in Firewalls
52nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (31st), ZTNA (26th), Cloud Security Remediation (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.4%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point NGFW is 3.0%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Secure is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable
In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.
Manikandan Kannan - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlined management through dual-interface configuration capabilities with excellent support
We use Check Point NGFW for security purposes. Our clients use it for security reasons, as mentioned during the call The most valuable feature is the availability of two consoles. In the normal GA login, I can create interfaces and configure interface IPs, while in the SmartConsole, I manage the…
Olivier DALOY - PeerSpot reviewer
Secures users wherever they are and enable us to inspect SSL traffic, but we encountered too many issues
The solution should have no impact but it does have a bit of impact on end-users. For example, we encountered some issues in the downloads that took longer than they did without using Menlo. That is clearly not transparent for users. We expected not to have any latency when downloading anything from the internet with Menlo compared to without Menlo. We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution. In other words, we hope to get the same level of protection, while reducing the number of visible bugs, issues, latencies, impacts on performance, et cetera, that we have today with Menlo. We already solved most of them, but we still have too many such instances of issues with Menlo, even though it is protecting us for sure. The weak point of the solution is that it has consumed far too much of my team's time, taking them away from operations and projects and design. It took far too much time to implement it and get rid of all of the live issues that we encountered when our users started using the solution. The good point is that I'm sure it is protecting us and it's probably protecting us more than any other solution, which is something I appreciate a lot as a CISO. But on the other hand, the number of issues reported by the users, and the amount of time that has been necessary for either my team or the infrastructure team to spend diagnosing, troubleshooting, and fixing the issues that we had with the solution was too much. And that doesn't include the need to still use our previous solution, Blue Coat, that we have kept active so that whatever is not compatible or doesn't work with Menlo, can be handled by that other solution. It is far too demanding in terms of effort and workload and even cost, at the end of the day. That is why we decided to transition to another solution. If we had known in the beginning that we would not be able to get rid of Blue Coat, we probably would not have chosen Menlo because we were planning to replace Blue Coat with something that was at least able to do the same and more. We discovered that it was able to do more but it was not able to replace it, which is an issue. It is not only a matter of cost but is also a matter of not being able to reduce the number of partners that you have to deal with. In addition, they could enhance the ability to troubleshoot. Whenever a connection going through Menlo fails for any reason, being able to troubleshoot what the configuration of Menlo should be to allow it through would help, as would knowing what level of additional risk we would be taking with that configuration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"It is a safe product."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"Application control and the web filter are the best features of Fortinet FortiGate."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"We like the way it protects our network, how easy it is to see and filter logs, and how easy it is to manage next-generation firewall policies."
"It provides a central station where it is very easy to deploy our firewall policy in one click to many firewalls. This is one of the leading perks. It saves time by having one central station because I can deploy the same kind of policy to many firewalls at once."
"The most valuable feature is the IPsec VPN."
"The Blades work fine and the performance optimization is great."
"The QoS blade is very good for controlling traffic such as Windows patches, mail traffic and other stuff."
"The CPU-based emulation is a better feature than any technologies not having that."
"Even though Check Point NGFW provides a set of security features that enforce protection on the network, the most valuable aspect is also the most used feature: the plain and simple firewall component. This is the core of the product and works to a great extent without the need for all other available bells and whistles."
"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."
"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."
"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."
"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."
"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."
 

Cons

"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding FortiAnalyzer to its solution, we should not have to use another solution. FortiAnalyzer can provide more detailed information."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"Fortinet technical support is lacking, as OEM support is slightly better. Improvement in their technical support could include response time as well as having more technically sound people in tech support."
"The one thing I have been continually asking for is a more robust certification process including self-paced study material similar to Cisco's Security certification track."
"Check Point should improve services related to the cloud-based solution."
"Finding support is a little bit hard."
"There's a significant area for improvement when it comes to pricing."
"Complex and not very easy to use."
"One feature that could be improved is the internet object in the application control/URL filtering blade."
"We faced many challenges. For example, an issue with the managed view that Check Point has."
"Check Point products have many places that need to be improved, but they are constantly upgrading."
"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."
"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."
"The user monitoring could still be improved."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. You need to pay for the subscription every year, which is very expensive. The subscription includes technical support and hardware exchange in case of failure."
"Go for long term pricing negotiated at the time of purchase."
"Pricing for this product is comparatively lower than other products. It's an affordable solution, but when expanding the number of users, they'll ask you to replace the model, so that's an added cost."
"Its pricing is fine. It is on a yearly basis. Other than the licensing fee, there is no extra fee."
"This is not a cheap solution but it isn't expensive, either. It's a good solution for the right price."
"I think that the pricing is fair."
"Its price is reasonable. They have a clear pricing policy. It is not complicated by the number of VPN users at a time. We know what the price is. The yearly subscription for the security license is rather high, but it is all included for whatever number of users you have and the kind of functions you need."
"Fortinet's pricing is more straightforward than other solutions. If Fortinet doesn't stick out when you're searching for a solution, you are a glutton for punishment. You only need to know two things when purchasing a Fortinet solution: your total bandwidth and bandwidth at the site. You need to estimate the future bandwidth with other solutions if your customer plans to upgrade."
"Licensing is on a yearly basis and I am happy with the pricing."
"The vendor has a very flexible licensing approach."
"It is a notably expensive product in our country compared to FortiGate and other servers."
"Check Point should provide some basic license for mobile access VPN by default, for at least five to ten users."
"The price is high in comparison to other solutions."
"There is an annual license required for this solution."
"We had to get separate licenses for the different blades. It would be nice to have a feature where we can get the multiple licenses all-in-one instead."
"We pay $5,000-$6,000 a year."
"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."
"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
54%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
3%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Check Point NGFW?
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Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall
Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point NGFW vs. Menlo Secure and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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