We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Check Point NGFW based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Azure Firewall seems to be a superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Check Point NGFW to be rather expensive to purchase. Users of Check Point NGFW feel that the stability of the product could be improved. Additionally, some users are not so impressed by the technical support and training that it offers.
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"The initial setup is straightforward; Azure Firewall does not have a complex implementation process. It is very simple; you just need to enable the service within Azure. It does not require any maintenance because it is managed by Microsoft, that is, it is a fully managed service."
"I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference."
"It is easy for me to protect certain ports or even the IP addresses, as well as do whitelisting, blacklisting, and the FQDN when we want virtual machines connected and to protect certain websites."
"The solution should be capable of self-scaling, which is one of the features we like about it."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is the control over the network permissions and the network."
"It provides end-to-end resolution."
"The most valuable feature is the Stateful Inspection, which was developed by Check Point."
"Now we can add application signature in the same rule base & don't have to create a different policy for that."
"We never had an outage of the appliances or the consoles. Stability is very strong. I never had a problem related to stability."
"Being able to access almost everything in one location manage all your gateways and get all your logs is great."
"The user interface is very cool and easy to use."
"The level of security is excellent. It protects our organization well."
"It improves user productivity and frees up system resources."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"The web-cache feature which was previously on the FortiGate device, but was deleted with the recent upgrade should be returned. It was a very valuable feature for us."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"The reporting in Fortinet FortiGate could improve. Customers are having to purchase additional reporting components. When I have used the Sophos solution it is a complete solution, in Fortinet FortiGate you have to use additional tools to have the features needed."
"For large organizations, a third-party firewall would be an added advantage, because it would have more advanced features, things that are not in Azure Firewall."
"It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB."
"Azure has new versions including a premium firewall. But I would like to see them not put the premium features on Azure Firewall Premium alone because it is quite expensive."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"It would be nice to be able to create groupings for servers and offer groups of IP addresses."
"We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions."
"The pricing could be better."
"The setup is a little complex compared to its competitors."
"Although very efficient, the product could be developed in a way that does not take a lot more system resources."
"I hope for product simplification. It would be better to use one security console, instead of many of them (for licensing and monitoring). The solution is hard for newcomers and takes much time to deep in. Also, I want a historical graph for throughput and system resources usage. Maybe it will be great to make easy step-by-step installation and configuration cookbooks as Fortinet did, and integrate the documentation within the solution."
"Compliance and centralized management can be improved."
"The naming in the inline layers and ordered layers needs improvement. It makes things very complicated. I've seen quite a lot of people saying that. For audit policies, it is okay since it's very simple to see. However, this area is for very large organizations, which have too many policies, and they need to share all these policies. For small to medium-sized businesses, they don't need it. Even if somebody has 500 rules, if they try to use it, it can be very confusing."
"The complexity could be fixed. It's a bit complex to set up, for example."
"I would like to see an improvement of built-in monitoring capabilities such as throughput. Practically visualization of CPview outputs into beautiful pink GUI will do it."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and OPNsense. See our Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW report.
See our list of 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.
Check Point firewall does a deep inspection of packets till Layer 7 and is more compatible with the organizational environment.
The Azure firewall is also a cloud-based security solution that also provides Advance Threat Protection.