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Azure Firewall vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
318
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Azure Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
16th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Check Point CloudGuard Netw...
Ranking in Firewalls
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
151
Ranking in other categories
Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (3rd), Cloud and Data Center Security (6th), WAN Edge (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.8%, up from 17.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Firewall is 2.2%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable
In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.
Charan Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and configure but could be more robust
The cost of the solution has increased. The robustness of the software could be better. It should be able to cover host-to-host traffic or HTTP traffic. Configurations can be better. The workloads need to still have free access. The encryption and decryption process is not that seamless. It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls.
Martin Raška - PeerSpot reviewer
Unification of security features strengthens network protection
The overall network security is good. It's big-picture, all in one bundle. It's valuable to have everything in one place instead of spreading across different products. Unified security management positively affects a company's security operations. They have one unified view of the security. I can connect multiple gateways to the management and have it in one place. I can have reporting and views in a single pane of glass on the consolidated platform. It's easy to use. The management is the best on the market. It's very easy to work with, read, understand, and navigate. It helps increase our customer's security posture. We can see in some cases CloudGuard improves our customers' posture overall.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"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 virtual firewall feature is the most valuable. We have around 1,500 firewalls. We did not buy individual hardware, and the virtual firewalls made sense because we don't have to keep on buying the hardware. FortiGate is easier to use as compared to Checkpoint devices. It is user friendly and has a good UI. You don't need much expertise to work on this firewall. You don't need to worry much about DCLA, commands, and things like that."
"It has a good UI and overall integration, including FortiGate Manager for controlling all firewalls from a single place."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"The most valuable features of Azure Firewall for me are its URL-based internet access control and DDoS protection for incoming traffic."
"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."
"Azure Firewall's feature that I have found most valuable is its scalability."
"There is not a single feature or single product that can ensure security."
"One of the notable advantages of Azure Firewall is its user-friendly interface, which closely resembles or shares similarities with other Azure components."
"Great security and connectivity."
"The SIEM that Azure Firewall provides us is very robust."
"The tool's deployment is rapid. Its dashboard is also useful. It's easy to deploy both on-premises and in Azure. In an office with VMware running, deployment is a simple process. Similarly, in Azure, deployment is easy and scalable. Adding more CPUs is a straightforward task – just shut it down, modify the security, and restart. This ease of use translates into cost and resource savings, and faster deployment times."
"We get good insights into security, and we are more secure because we have more insights than we would get from other products."
"The solution could improve to have a DLP feature."
"The features of the solution which I have found most valuable are its flexibility and agility. It's a fully scalable solution, from our perspective. We can define scaling groups and, based on the load, it will create new instances. It's truly a product which is oriented toward the cloud mindset, cloud agility, and this is a great feature."
"The complexity managed by Check Point developers is amazing."
"The IPS, application and URL filtering, as well as Identity Awareness, are all very valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that you can start off with a simple firewall and expand it to UTM."
"It gives us more confidence in secure cloud deployments."
 

Cons

"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"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."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"Though the tool's GUI is user-friendly, it can be considered as an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Backup can be improved."
"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."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"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."
"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."
"The product pricing could be more competitive."
"I would appreciate it if Azure Firewall included built-in VPN capabilities."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"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."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"Integration could be easier, especially with Scale Set and related features."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."
"The solution needs to support more hypervisors."
"From my experience, the failover times are unsatisfactory when dealing with HA failovers in the cloud, but this is connected to API calls within Azure. While this is largely due to limitations of the cloud architecture, an improvement in this area would be beneficial."
"In case the device is inaccessible due to some issue such as CPU or memory, there is no separate port or hardware partition provided for troubleshooting purposes."
"I would like to see more focus on east-west traffic inspection and AWS."
"What I would like for future updates would be faster updates to apply, and perhaps a greater presence in the local language for the regions of Latin America."
"Check Point support, beyond CloudGuard, does need some improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have the full license that included all of the features and support."
"Before choosing a piece of equipment you have to take into account the cost-benefit offered by each one. Sometimes it is not worth paying a very cheap price to have a minimum level of security."
"For the price, I'd rate it a ten because it's very cost-effective."
"Fortinet FortiGate is reasonably priced."
"The price, in comparison to other products is very cheap."
"Fortinet is reasonable in pricing and licensing. Overall, FortiGate is affordable. The licensing fee can be a little high, depending on the budget for your project."
"The cost of Fortinet FortiGate is competitive and not expensive compared to other enterprise- grade solutions. On average, the license cost per year is around seventy percent of the firewall's purchase price."
"The license is yearly. We pay for the top end. It's called 360."
"Azure Firewall is quite an expensive product."
"It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
"The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
"Before choosing this solution, we evaluated others, and we found this to be the most cost-effective."
"Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."
"Azure Firewall is expensive."
"Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."
"It is expensive, especially with the premium functions. For one of the clients, it was very expensive. You have to use it more at an enterprise level, and there, it was not at an enterprise level. So, it was very costly, but security-wise, it was a very wise decision to use it that way."
"It is the most expensive part of the product. There is a lot of room for improvement. Security comes with a price, but it is still a big chunk just for the service."
"The tool's monthly costs have undergone a significant reduction, dropping from approximately 12,000 euros to around 4,000. This represents a cost reduction of over 60 percent. However, it's essential to note that while costs decreased in some areas, they increased in others due to shifts in our environment. As our overall environment has grown, currently connecting 50 accounts to the cloud, it's challenging to directly compare costs with the state of our setup three years ago."
"The product is expensive but also valuable."
"We explored both pay-as-you-go and build-your-own-licensing models, and found both to be competitive."
"It is fair. Its license covers all the features. There is a cost-benefit. The licensing for the cloud is better than on-premises because, with on-premises, you have to pay separately for different things."
"The price of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very high compared to other solutions, such as Fortinet FortiMail. For the over 2,000 mailboxes we use with the solution it is very expensive."
"The pricing and licensing have been good. We just had to do a license increase for our portion of it. We had that done within a couple of days. Given the fact that it's purely a software-based license, it ends up being even quicker than doing it for an on-prem firewall."
"It is more expensive than other solutions and would be more competetive in the market if it came down in price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?
Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the...
Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?
Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigat...
What do you like most about Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?
The tool's most valuable feature is its management console.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?
The setup cost is okay. The cost overall is somewhat high compared to other vendors, whether firewalls or cloud-nativ...
What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?
The reporting needs enhancement. Currently, we are not always aware of the gateways' status, like CPU and RAM usage. ...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
No data available
CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
Information Not Available
Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.