We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between these two products is that Check Point users feel that the tool’s VPN is hard to integrate. In addition, Check Point does not have an open-source version like pfSense does.
"The solution has very good threat and content filtering switches."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"The GUI is good."
"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."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"The simplicity of the access control is the most valuable feature for us. It gives us the ability to easily identify traffic that is either being allowed or denied to our network."
"It improves user productivity and frees up system resources."
"The product is very scalable."
"Check Point's rule management helped us simplify access control. At one point, we had more than 1,000 access control policies, and it was challenging to manage them all. We cut it down to 300 policies using Check Point's management features, and we are still working on reducing this further to achieve the best way to manage policies. Its logging and monitoring enable us to trace and investigate suspicious traffic."
"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."
"The small business hardware device was powerful and easy to set up."
"We used Check Point for implementation, and they are top-notch. They know the hardware and software better than anyone."
"I had some outages in the network and we provide services for our company. We sell mobile credits. The terminal gets access to our own server inside the network and if one internet fails, then the other one is still up and we have a back-up link on the devices."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"A very stable product that lasts over time, easy to understand, and administer."
"It has a very nice web interface, and it is very simple to use. The way policies are working is also good."
"It's a good solution for end-users. It's pretty easy to work with."
"There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
"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 is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"To enhance the user experience, Check Point should consider adopting an incremental upgrade approach, similar to competitors like Palo Alto or Fortinet, as it would help minimize downtime and streamline the upgrade process, making it more efficient and user-friendly."
"The management of memory in the hardware needs to improve. They have had a lot of issues with memory leakage."
"Sometimes there are security bugs, which is frustrating."
"The firewall should be easily deployable and scalable in any major cloud environment and enable an organization’s security team to manage all of its security settings from a single console."
"It would be ideal to manage everything from one central place."
"The only downside to Check Point, is, due to the vast expanse of configurable options, it does become easily overwhelming."
"Check Point doesn't warn us when rules are about to expire. It was also inconvenient that we had to change hardware when we upgraded. It would be nice if they made the new version compatible with current hardware or if it only required a minor upgrade."
"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."
"Their support could be better in terms of the response time."
"More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"The security could be improved."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"We have not had any problems with it, and we also do not have a need for any new features. If anything, its reporting can be better. Sophos has better reporting than pfSense. Sophos has more detailed information. pfSense is not as detailed. It is summarized."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. 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 Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Meraki MX. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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