We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Fortinet Fortigate based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Fortinet’s lack of an option to deploy firewalls on multiple endpoints is a definite downside. Although Fortinet received better feedback for its support, Check Point is the winner in this comparison.
"It is easy to control from the central management system. For example, if we have 10 firewalls, and we want to push that same configuration among them, we can use this solution's central management system to do that simultaneously. So, there is time saving in that way. The time savings does depend on the situation. For example, if I am running half an hour of work on each firewall, that will take around 300 minutes. However, if I do this work from the central management system, then it will only take 30 minutes to push the same configuration to those same 10 devices."
"I like the dashboard, redundancy, log analysis, threat prevention and ISP, and VPN."
"Everything is easily managed through their Smart Console dashboard. It's a very easy-to-understand dashboard that provides a detailed view."
"We can build the new firewalls with minimum efforts."
"Objects search and tracker logs are useful."
"Apart from it having very good features, I personally like the vulnerability assistance via report management which detects host and network vulnerability."
"Within the organization, the inspection of packages has given us great help in detecting traffic that may be a threat to the institution."
"Sandboxing is the most valuable feature."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"The interface could be better."
"I really want to see geo-blocking as a feature of NGFW."
"Until you have some experience, the installation and configuration are difficult."
"They could improve by lowering prices."
"One area which is still lacking is the site-to-site VPN solution."
"Sometimes debugging is a hassle."
"The predefined reports are limited and should provide more information. Check Point should provide a greater number of defined reports and produce reports for each division of the organization."
"When installed on Windows, the system with low storage space slows down."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"FortiOS is not simple."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate 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 Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and SonicWall TZ. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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First of all, Check Point checks the rules to be configured before installing them in the firewall and this prevents the user from making mistakes and putting the company at risk.
Check Point is no longer expensive. It has many models and competes in performance and price vs. Fortinet.
Now web interfaces, like Fortinet, may have more bugs per top 10 OWASP.
We are using both but the GUI and clustering on the FortiGate side look better/easier/more comfortable.
And I do agree with others - Check Point is expensive and Fortinet FortiGate has many models offering less expensive implementation.
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 than Fortigate.
-IPS and AV are more effective than Fortigate. Overall more stable than any other firewall
Support: not up to the level like Fortigate and lack of trained resources (in the gulf).
Check Point is expensive.
Fortinet has many models and is more affordable than Check Point. It also provides outstanding support. GUI is more user-friendly.
We had this same discussion recently with my organization. It came down to the security of the platform.
Fortinet has had a number of breaches over the last 2 years and this was a key factor in our decision.
The challenge with Check Point will be the transition from our existing firewall and taking advantage of the various features across our organization.