We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"The most valuable features are the possibility of having one fabric for switching on security."
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"The security on offer is very good."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"If there is a critical issue observed, the Check Point support team can create a custom package that we can deploy on the gateway to mitigate critical issues/bug fixes."
"Check Point NGFW is easy to use, flexible and provides good performance. The security of the product is excellent, we do not have to do a lot of patching or upgrades because of vulnerabilities."
"Check Point is awesome from a security standpoint. Based on our experience and also the experience of the other customers, it is a very stable appliance."
"The Smart Dashboard allows for rule creation and administration and management and is user-friendly."
"It provides a central station where it is very easy to deploy our firewall policy in one click to many firewalls. This is one of the leading perks. It saves time by having one central station because I can deploy the same kind of policy to many firewalls at once."
"It is easy to configure and it is a valuable antivirus protection. I especially like the IPS feature of this product."
"Admins and executives are more at ease with the compliance engine within the software as it measures how many of the security requirements we're compliant with, making their work much more accessible from that standpoint."
"It provides end-to-end resolution."
"The most valuable features of this solution are live logging, rule setup and maintenance, and VPN creation."
"The most effective and helpful features of WatchGuard Firebox, especially when purchased with the full suite of applications, are its bundled applications and subscriptions for comprehensive protection against various threats."
"There are many fantastic features."
"What I found most valuable in WatchGuard Firebox is that it's a functional platform that works, and each of its features works well. The solution also has good reporting and dashboard capabilities. I also find the overall performance of WatchGuard Firebox great."
"The most valuable feature for small and medium businesses is the support for various protocol proxies."
"Policy VPN, site-to-site VPN, traffic monitoring, anti-spam filters, and all other advanced features are valuable."
"They've done a lot of work with their SD-WAN, which we do use, to have our old internet service with our new internet service. If anything goes down on a particular interface, I can have different rules applied. Most of my users don't even know when our primary internet goes down anymore... I don't have to be here to do anything to switch it to our backup internet or to switch it back."
"It provides us with Layer 2 and Layer 3 security."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"The cloud features and integration could be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"You do need some IT knowledge in order to effectively work with the solution."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"The source package is a bit more expensive than its competitors."
"I would like for them to develop the ability to manage a cloud firewall with the same console. That would be very helpful."
"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."
"There needs to be more storage space for reporting."
"The policy installation length is still too long. It was promised that the time would be severely reduced in newer versions, but it is still too long."
"I would like the user interface to be more user-friendly. I want the UI to be easier to use than Check Point's competitors."
"It depends whether the problem is known to Check Point. If they are aware there is a problem, quite often it will then depend on which tech you finally land on if it's easier or harder to get to the root cause. The last issue was in India so that was pretty bad. It's easier if you get directly through to Tel Aviv or Ottawa, but you can't choose. Once they know what the issue is, it's pretty good. It pretty much depends on the engineer that you get. There are pretty good engineers and there are many engineers who are at just the starter level at Check Point who are not really into the stuff. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, depending on the problem and the tech engineer you get."
"The only thing which I think should be improved is that training should be increased. In my position I also interview potential employees and I haven't found many people in the market, nowadays, who are familiar with the Check Point firewall. They are more familiar with Palo Alto and Cisco ASA and they are more comfortable with them."
"The solution needs to improve its accessibility."
"Due to their lack of investment in marketing, channel development, and certifications, WatchGuard faces challenges in gaining visibility and market share, especially in regions like Pakistan."
"One area for improvement could be making the interface even more user-friendly."
"The area where I think this product can be improved is the user interface and the reporting. It can be quite difficult to find the correct logs and to actually find out what is going on. The digging can be time-consuming."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"It's sometimes not easy to understand and can require specialist assistance."
"Sometimes I would like to copy a rule set from one box to another box in a direct way. This is a feature that is not present at the moment in WatchGuard."
"I would like to see the devices made more flexible by adding modules to increase the ports that we can use."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while WatchGuard Firebox 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and SonicWall NSa. See our Check Point NGFW vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors, best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors, and best Firewalls vendors.
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