We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Fortinet FortiGate-VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point NGFW is praised for its extensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. Fortinet FortiGate-VM receives appreciation for its stability, reliability, and user-friendly interface.
Check Point NGFW needs enhancements in integration, hardware upgrades, cost and pricing, stability and security, setup process, load balancing capabilities, technical support, and reporting. Fortinet FortiGate-VM requires improvements in key activation, log management, cloud management, IPsec failover, monitoring tool, setup and configuration, performance, firmware updates, log settings, GUI capabilities, costs, technical support, and integration.
Service and Support: The customer service for Check Point NGFW has garnered varying opinions, with some customers appreciating its helpfulness and responsiveness, while others believe there is room for improvement. Fortinet FortiGate-VM's support has received a mix of feedback. Certain customers commend its prompt response times and expertise, while others highlight concerns regarding delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: Check Point NGFW's initial setup can be complex and may require expertise and experience for certain configurations and migrations. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers a generally straightforward and easy setup process, aided by Fortinet's support and assistance.
Pricing: Check Point NGFW has a high setup cost, yet offers flexible licensing options. Fortinet FortiGate-VM has competitive pricing and includes support without extra charges.
ROI: Check Point NGFW provides cost savings, simplicity, and strong security enforcement, resulting in a favorable ROI. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers stability and enhanced security, guaranteeing a positive ROI when purchased initially.
Comparison Results: Check Point NGFW is the preferred choice when comparing it to Fortinet FortiGate-VM. Check Point NGFW stands out for its extensive security features, such as URL filtering, intrusion prevention systems, identity and access management, and application control capabilities. Additionally, it offers centralized management and virtualization options, as well as stability, user-friendliness, and scalability.
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"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."
"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."
"Check Point NGFW has helped us to significantly reduce our risk of cyberattacks by providing comprehensive protection against a wide range of threats, including malware, viruses, ransomware, phishing attacks, and zero-day threats."
"I like the dashboard, redundancy, log analysis, threat prevention and ISP, and VPN."
"The most valuable feature is the Stateful Inspection, which was developed by Check Point."
"Check Point firewalls have significantly improved our ability to detect and prevent threats."
"Its functionality is highly satisfactory."
"After introducing this NGFW, we have improved our security posture, and now, have peace of mind."
"The Smart Dashboard and other user interfaces are very easy to use and can be handled without any significant IT skills."
"We can easily check firewall configurations against any compliance standard."
"We are able to closely monitor the usages of individual users and see their usage habits and other items, including the data itself, which gives us quite a bit of visibility."
"The EPM bundle is a good feature."
"It provides an ease of management and configuration as well."
"The setup is simple."
"It offers the same robust features and functionality in virtual, on-premise, and traditional data center environments."
"The most valuable feature is the WAN optimization."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"We work in the archiving domain where a secure environment is very important. We have some special requirements regarding the security of infrastructure."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"They've become quite expensive."
"The user interface could be improved."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"In our particular case, we have different web applications developed by the same organization, however, that requires a specialized protection element such as a WAF. Having this service or feature within the same solution would be very valuable."
"I would like there to be a way to run packet captures more easily in the GUI environment. Right now, if we want to read packet captures, we have to do so from the command line."
"The pricing could always be more competitive."
"The equipment is complex, so you need guidance from specialized people or those who constantly work with Check Point. Better forums and information manuals could be provided so that users from different institutions can have more access to the information."
"Although the GUI is simple to use and fairly comprehensive, more support via CLI would be beneficial for bulk operations."
"Improvement regarding the expansion of the SMS's compatibility to include various virtualization environments would be beneficial."
"We'd like an option that can convert other vendors' NGFW configurations to supported Check Point NGFW config for ease of migration."
"Check Point can improve a little better in their technical services, especially in the Indian market."
"Technical support could be improved."
"We encountered scalability issues in IPSec Module. The tunnels freeze sometimes."
"his is not a good solution for enterprises. It's better for smaller companies."
"The operating system isn't stable, so it goes to memory counters every night."
"Some issues with connecting to the VPN from home after firmware updates."
"It is a very good product, and it is good at standing by itself. It can maybe have a little bit of integration with other products, but it is not that important for most use cases."
"In the next release, we would like to see full integration with VMware NSX virtualized networks."
"The pricing is expensive."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 279 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM 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-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". 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-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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