We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between these two products is that Check Point users feel that the tool’s VPN is hard to integrate. In addition, Check Point does not have an open-source version like pfSense does.
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"The security on offer is very good."
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"It's very easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"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."
"Check Point offers excellent security."
"We can build the new firewalls with minimum efforts."
"The product is very scalable."
"The solution provides better stability and some interesting features such as the ease of throughput expansion."
"The solution is easy to administer thanks to its dashboards. The monitoring is really useful."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Objects search and tracker logs are useful."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much."
"Sophos Intercept X is scalable. Currently, we have almost 30 people using it in our company."
"The product’s documentation is good."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"The smart console is heavy."
"Check Point NGFW could improve by introducing machine learning and more modeling dividing the way they manage the ports. However, they have evolved over the last year."
"There is no clear way to report incorrect classification to support and a business is neither happy nor forgiving when they cannot receive mail from a crucial business partner."
"Check Point can improve a little better in their technical services, especially in the Indian market."
"Log queries are slow and take time to load."
"The firewall should be easily deployable and scalable in any major cloud environment and enable an organization’s security team to manage all of its security settings from a single console."
"While not being cheap, their pricing models are competitive. In the pricing structure, however, they need improvement."
"The Check Point TAC support has, in recent years, deteriorated."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"The integration of pfSense with EPS and EDS could be better. Also, it should be easier to get reports on how many users are connecting simultaneously and how sections connect in real-time."
"It would be great to add more to security."
"The user interface can be improved to make it easier to add more features. And pfSense could be better integrated with other solutions, like antivirus."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
"Also, the GUI is helpful, but it's not user-friendly. It's complicated. It should be more intuitive for the average user and have an excellent graphical view. Of course, the user will typically know about network administration, but it still should be easy to understand."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 110 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 22 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 9.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Scalable with seamless failover capabilities and excellent logging functionality". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Azure Firewall, Sophos XG and OPNsense, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and Meraki MX. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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