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Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs McAfee StoneGate [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 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

Check Point Quantum Force (...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
346
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (6th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (2nd)
McAfee StoneGate [EOL]
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

San Naing Htun - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Has improved threat prevention and protection but presents deployment and licensing challenges
The best features Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) offers are AI-powered threat prevention, zero-day protection, unified management, and scalability. These features have helped me in my daily work or my organization by allowing us, as a SAAS company operating across AWS, Azure, and handling external partner access or a multi-tenant model, to preemptively stop unknown attacks, which is critical. Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) has positively impacted my organization as it is a high-end enterprise grade firewall. I have noticed that it is very good if your SAAS business has high traffic volume, serious threat prevention requirements, and you are ready for the investment.
it_user935460 - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Framework at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It works well with a highly-active cluster.
It is important for us in case of a disaster, or in case of a failure of one server. This means that the high availability is the most important part for us. It is important for us that the system is available and no connection is going to be lost if the system is restarting one note, or something like that. This is the main request for us for a good firewall protection product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Identity-Based Inspection Control gives us the ability to leverage the organization’s Microsoft AD, LDAP, RADIUS, and Cisco pxGrid."
"Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) provides numerous features such as threat emulations, anti-bots, and the most outstanding feature is ElasticXL."
"It provides access to the Internet for corporate resources in a secure manner."
"I have to say that it was Application Control and web filtering are excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the Stateful Inspection, which was developed by Check Point."
"The high availability setup of Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) is outstanding, and whenever any hardware fails, whether active or standby, the second hardware takes care of all connectivity, and there will be no loss of connection or session seen by users."
"It has allowed us to grow in a safe way and in accordance with our particular needs."
"The price point is good."
"It has given us better application control."
"It works well with a highly-active cluster."
"High availability is very consistent and provides good firewalling and stability."
"The stability of the product is fantastic; it is a really proven system and I never had any type of problem where the system was unstable or had a software failure."
"We did not have issues with scalabiliy."
 

Cons

"The SmartConsole to manage Checkpoint Next Generation Firewalls takes a long time to load and gets stuck sometimes."
"I feel the only thing that I see as a possible improvement in Check Point software is the lack of ability to create "static discard routes" which makes it difficult for NAT ranges to be advertised via BGP to neighbors."
"It could be easier to access the installation of the Hostfix for VSX solutions. The CLI commands help us understand how virtual firewalls behave in terms of processor, memory, and other aspects. More graphic visualizations of CPUSE commands would be a welcome improvement, and Check Point could expand scripts to run within the solution for multiple tasks."
"With respect to stability, we always have ongoing support calls; we have faced lots of issues that have led to upgrading with a Hotfix."
"There is room for improvement in application-based filtering, as with other firewalls available in the market today."
"It could greatly improve our customer experience by centralizing management."
"The need to offer scheduled policy pushes in Smart Console."
"This solution is way too expensive for what it is worth, especially when it doesn't work."
"HA failover is not stable."
"After some experience with the solution, we had to do some redesign, but generally, we were happy with the product."
"The hardware needs improving as we had a lot of problems with the hard drive reliability, both with the firewall and the intrusion protection system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the pricing of Check Point NGFW a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten. It costs around 100,000-200,000 dollars per month. Besides standard licensing fees, we paid extra for enterprise-level premium support. There were also onboarding costs factored in. These additional costs made it more expensive overall. The total cost was around 100,000 dollars, which was challenging for our budget. Check Point was also pricey, not much different from Palo Alto Networks. However, we decided switching to Check Point was better because it offered more capabilities for a similar price."
"Before you buy, check which features you need, and if possible, I recommend signing up for at least a three-year license."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
"The hardware cost is not huge, but you need to push for good pricing on software licensing and blades."
"It can be expensive, but it's value for money. What you pay for is what you get."
"Cisco pushes clients to purchase their hardware, and this is not the case with Check Point. This helps to easily manage costs."
"When comparing the price of Check Point NGFW to other solutions it's difficult to compare because even though everything is included in the Fortinet price, there are large differences between the models. You need to go to a quite expensive Fortinet firewall to receive the same throughput and functionality as in a Check Point firewall. In the end, they are quite similar in price, Fortinet might be a bit cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business164
Midsize Enterprise93
Large Enterprise199
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Check Point NGFW compare with Fortinet Fortigate?
I have experience on both from Disti and channel experience. Please find below my comments (nothing new as such). -Check Point GUI is a bit complicated, -Application and Web filtering are better t...
Which would you recommend - Azure Firewall or Check Point NGFW?
Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall cloud platform, autoscaling, and the ability for users to create virtual IP addr...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point NGFW?
Our experience with pricing for Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) has been mixed. The initial setup costs were fairly significant because we needed to buy the hardware appliances and then pay for th...
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Also Known As

Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall
McAfee Next Generation Firewall, Stonesoft, Intel Next Generation Firewall, Intel Security StoneGate
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Control Southern, Optimal Media
Avency, R€SLER Oberfl_chentechnik GmbH, MAUSER Group, CEMEX, Cegedim, Fusion Media Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Cisco, Netgate and others in Firewalls. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.