We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"The GUI is good."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"I like the Next-Generation Firewall."
"The Blades work fine and the performance optimization is great."
"The most valuable feature of Check Point NGFW is it is a complete solution for protecting not only the network but the applications. Additionally, it provides a hybrid cloud solution."
"Check Point's Quantum helps our clients in their overall cybersecurity practice."
"The ability to split single hardware into multiple virtuals along with support for dynamic routing using BGP is very useful for our environment."
"The small business hardware device was powerful and easy to set up."
"We have between five and ten firewalls on-premises, and if we want to configure or push the same configuration to all of the firewalls, then the centralized management system is very helpful."
"The tool provides great security."
"HostWatch makes it so I can see, in real-time, activity in the event that there is something weird happening on the network. This simplifies my job."
"The solution has increased productivity with our outside salespeople being able to connect into their computers and use those remotely."
"I have found the DNS Watch feature for intrusion and prevention response and APT Locker most valuable to me."
"I like the High Availability features of the newest ones I'm using because they allow a firewall to fail and still be up and running."
"The firewall aspect and the branch office VPNs are the most valuable features... We don't have any issues with it. We don't have to spend a lot of time maintaining it."
"The ease of use is most valuable. You can quickly train someone who hasn't seen a firewall in life. You can get people up to speed, and in a few months, they are able to manage this product very easily. It is a very user-friendly, scalable, and stable product. Its price is also spot-on."
"From my experience with their customer service team, I would say that they seem quite knowledgeable and fairly quick to respond."
"What I found most valuable in WatchGuard Firebox is that it's a functional platform that works, and each of its features works well. The solution also has good reporting and dashboard capabilities. I also find the overall performance of WatchGuard Firebox great."
"We would like to see better pricing."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"The end-user VPN could be improved. It could benefit from some modification."
"It's too expensive for mid-market companies."
"The URL objects take significant time in processing compared to other products like Cisco FTD; it would be better if they could improve it."
"It could greatly improve our customer experience by centralizing management."
"I have had some issues in the past with the desktop client being slow to come up for logging in, and then slow to respond to screen changes, however, overall, it really hasn't been too bad."
"One area which is still lacking is the site-to-site VPN solution."
"A lot of things need to be improved in Check Point NGFW. One, their support team isn't very efficient and useful."
"The interface could be better."
"When working with WatchGuard, specifically in configuring Panda Security on the portal for the first time, it was challenging for me."
"The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer... The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work."
"The level of support from WatchGuard is not as good."
"It's sometimes not easy to understand and can require specialist assistance."
"I don't think I can get a full-blown DNS client from it. I've been trying to have DNS services. It has forwarding, but I don't get the services of a full DNS client. My main difficulty with it is that I can't run a complete service. I need NTP. I need DNS. I need DHCP for my domain, but I only get forwarding. As far as I can tell, I don't get caching and the kinds of reporting and registration needed to host a DNS for a domain. I have to have a separate solution for that."
"Once you start getting into proxy actions and setting up: "Okay, cool. Once this rule gets triggered, what actions have to happen?" I do know a few people who use WatchGuard and they still have to get assistance when they look at that. So I would file that as a con for WatchGuard. Proxy actions can be a little bit complicated."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say their web blocker feature. It is still quite a confusing setup, especially when you want to filter out a particular category for granularity. For example, you do not want to filter Facebook but you do want to filter Facebook games only. It can be done, but the process to do it is very confusing."
"The solution can improve by adding a feature to tag a MAC address of a computer system in the policy and more IP configuration settings."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 77 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Rock-solid stability and easy to change the model". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Cisco Secure Firewall and Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Meraki MX and Azure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.