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Check Point Quantum Force vs Palo Alto Networks VM-Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 22, 2026

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
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
591
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Check Point Quantum Force
Ranking in Firewalls
28th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Unified security and sd-wan have improved uptime and cut wan costs for multi-site branches
Users report stability issues in certain versions, which requires regular updates. Real-world attacks have also highlighted the need for urgent patching of vulnerabilities.Fortinet FortiGate, while a powerful and feature-rich web firewall, could improve in areas like firmware stability, documentation, and ease of use. The learning curve can be steep for some users. For beginners, support quality can vary, and frequent updates with occasional vulnerabilities call for careful patch management. However, once Fortinet FortiGate is configured, it remains highly reliable and efficient. Customer support needs improvement, as I find it very slow, with reports from other users reflecting that customer support is inadequate.
Abnet Tsegaye Belay - PeerSpot reviewer
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has strengthened perimeter security through AI-driven protection and unified management
I have noticed some limitations with Check Point Quantum Force. There is a limitation in integrating with existing infrastructure, such as orchestration and logging, specifically with VPNs. VPNs are hard and sophisticated to deploy on this firewall. However, it is improving currently. Some performance aspects need higher resources. If you do not give it higher resources, it will slow down your network. It is a trade-off - if you have higher resources, you will have good performance. The complexity of configuring a VPN needs to be improved because we need to go back and forth to configure VPNs. It has to be simpler to understand.
MuhammadNadeem - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Has supported urgent deployments and enabled inline threat protection but pricing and features could be more flexible
I am not using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series mostly, but based on my experience, there are some deficiencies in Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Having those features missing, we are not proposing Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to all customers. However, for urgency and for some solutions that customers need for some of their other sites and subdivisions, we are providing the same.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"It has the same functionalities throughout the range of products."
"The SD-WAN feature of Fortinet FortiGate has been most impactful in maintaining our network's integrity."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"The best feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the IPS or IDS implementation. I appreciate most the agility or the flexibility to create hashes to block incoming threats, and I can integrate with third-party threat intelligence with our FortiGate."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"We have several sites spread geographically across Latin America and Asia that use FortiGate, and some of them are unable to support cloud services so we have deployed it on-premise in order to provide ourselves with a fast and secure network."
"The security features and layered security features are better compared to others."
"The most valuable features I find in Check Point Quantum Force are the security policy features, including all security features that are provided by firewall, IPS/IDS."
"In performance and threat prevention, it has benefited my cybersecurity strategy."
"The outcomes from Check Point Quantum Force firewall gave us the ability to be fit and secure from the cyber world."
"If you do not have a Next-Generation Firewall, Palo Alto is a good choice, it is reliable and the support is very good."
"The most valuable feature is that you can launch it in a very short time; you don't have to wait for the hardware to arrive and get it staged and installed, and from that perspective, it is easy to launch and also scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the Posture Assessment."
"We now know a lot more detail about what our users are doing on the network."
"The tool's cloud version makes application migration easy."
"The VM series has an advantage over the physical version because we are able to change the sources that the machine has, such as the amount of available RAM."
"We can monitor the traffic manually and detect threats. Additionally, we can block different IP addresses and URLs."
"The VM series has an advantage over the physical version because we are able to change the sources that the machine has, such as the amount of available RAM."
 

Cons

"Regarding stability, I have experienced performance issues with Fortinet FortiGate. Sometimes it does not work correctly in certain situations, such as DNS or URL categories, where it might block incorrectly."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"If you have the firmware version 6.4.3 and are using FortiLink in VLAN, it has trouble with tunneling networks for a wireless network; it won't give it a route to the internet."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"The solution's stability should be improved because it is extremely unstable."
"The solution’s stability could be improved."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI."
"I would like to see improvements in the IPS/IDS feature to enhance protection against attacks from attackers, including ransomware protection."
"I see good competition which is less expensive."
"Check Point Quantum Force does not have strong local support. We are based in India, and Check Point Quantum Force does not have extensive local support in our region."
"I have observed weaknesses in Check Point Quantum Force, particularly when configuring tunnels from any point product to a peer, which has very complex configuration requirements."
"The complexity of configuring a VPN needs to be improved because we need to go back and forth to configure VPNs."
"The product could be better in terms of performance than one of its competitors."
"AWS doesn't integrate well with third-party firewalls."
"There is a need for two-factor authentication, particularly for VPN and CloudProtect."
"The only minor issue we've faced is with the app's ID configuration, which requires specific matching for application filtering."
"The current licensing model can be a sore point as we're paying for features we're not fully utilizing."
"The product's AIOps process needs improvement."
"We don't know how it will scale once we start putting more load on it."
"The flexible throughput in Palo Alto Networks VM-Series can be improved"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is okay, so far so good."
"There is only a standard license cost to use the solution."
"I pay €1,200 per year for the license along with Fortinet's 81E firewall appliance. I would rate this pricing as 3/5 stars, and I believe the price is reasonably similar to its competitors in the market, being somewhere in the middle."
"Pricing is lower than Cisco."
"The pricing is flexible."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Fortinet FortiGate is reasonably priced."
"Licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is on a yearly basis. Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
Information not available
"When you have a client compare box against box, a lot of times Palo Alto is a bit more expensive, but its network firewalls have a very rich ratio."
"AWS is available as a AMI that you can purchase from the AWS Marketplace. Therefore, you need to purchase the licensing, since it is per AMI. Then, you deploy it on a regular EC2. Then, for on-premise, you can use both Palo Alto's software and hardware."
"Purchasing on the AWS Marketplace was simple, effective, and easy."
"The product is costly but provides all essential security features. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"Palo Alto is more expensive than other products."
"The pricing and licensing are reasonable."
"This is not the cheapest firewall but it's not the most expensive of the options on the market."
"It is not the cheapest on the market. The total cost for two firewall instances is $75,000. This includes licenses, deployment fees, and support for two years."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
No data available
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business367
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise193
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

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From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point Quantum Force?
In terms of pricing, setup cost, and licensing, many users and clients say that the pricing is high. The license stru...
What needs improvement with Check Point Quantum Force?
I would assess Check Point Quantum Force's real-time threat intelligence in guarding against ransomware as not effect...
What is your primary use case for Check Point Quantum Force?
I am dealing mostly with firewalls and I am working with Check Point Quantum Force. I have utilized the capability to...
Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
No data available
 

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
Information Not Available
Warren Rogers Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Quantum Force vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.