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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
14th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Check Point CloudGuard Netw...
Ranking in Firewalls
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
140
Ranking in other categories
Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (3rd), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th), WAN Edge (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.7%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Firewall is 2.2%, down from 3.0% 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 the view. I can have reporting and walks 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 customer's posture overall.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"The solution is stable."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"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 solution has FQDN integration."
"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's auto-scalable, which is a great feature."
"Azure Firewall's feature that I have found most valuable is its scalability."
"I can easily configure it."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"We have unified management. It is one of the advantages of this product."
"The URL filtering provides a lot of added value compared to the Azure Firewall."
"Auto Scaling is one of the features that make me want to choose CloudGuard over actual HW."
"Check Point is one of the few solutions that pay attention to cloud security. Many others mostly focus on providing on-premises solutions."
"Its security and the definition of signatures are pretty good. Especially when you use those firewalls for a website, they pick up the signature very quickly."
"This solution has good scalability and stability."
"It is a good-to-use tool that is also flexible."
"Check Point, in general, provides ease of day-to-day use, management, and log review, which is a significant advantage."
 

Cons

"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"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."
"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 captive portal could be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"The configuration part was challenging, especially converting configurations from another OEM to FortiGate."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"It would be much easier if the on-premises, firewall rules, had some kind of export-import possibility in place, which is not the case right now."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"It is a cloud service, but the lending speed for each region is not always the same. For example, in China, the speed is slow. They need to think about how to make sure that the service pace or speed is always the same in all regions. It would be a great improvement if they can provide the same pace worldwide."
"For larger enterprises, they need to adjust the scalability."
"Currently, it only supports IP addresses, so you have to be specific about the IPs that are in your environment."
"Azure Firewall is an expensive solution. On a scale from one to ten, where one is not affordable, I would rate the price as a three."
"The product could be made more customizable."
"We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions."
"Documentation might become too complex or too spread out, especially for newcomers."
"For major upgrades, it's still necessary to destroy the VMs and re-create them again. Doing that would mean new public IPs as well."
"Clustering in Azure is a bit different, not using the Check Point cluster but relying on load balancing. It's not as instant as I'm used to; in Azure, it might take around half a minute to a minute, and during this time, services could be down. The delay is attributed to Azure using its load balancing mechanisms instead of the Check Point cluster."
"The reporting needs enhancement. Currently, we are not always aware of the gateways' status, like CPU and RAM usage."
"The pricing is sometimes more expensive than some vendors."
"When upgrading the firewall, the old VPC containing the firewalls needs to be destroyed. After that, a new firewall is redeployed in the setup. Additionally, there's a need to separate the routing, and the routing from the old VPC has to be recreated in the new one."
"The biggest room for improvement is that, for a long time now, they've moved everything over to R80 but they still maintain some of the stuff in the old dashboard. They need to "buy in" and move everything to the modern dashboard so that you don't have to go to one place and to another place, at times, to configure the environment. It's time they just finish what they started and put everything in the new, modern dashboard."
"We did not use the AWS Transit Gateway, and that's one of the things that we're currently using. I believe we will be working with Check Point again, in the near future, to implement it, once they start having proper support for a single customer with multiple accounts. When we were using them, we had to install Check Point on each and every single account."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet FortiGate as a less expensive solution than Palo Alto."
"This is not a cheap solution but it isn't expensive, either. It's a good solution for the right price."
"It has a competitive price."
"For medium and enterprise organizations, FortiGate is more affordable."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable for an SME."
"The license is yearly. We pay for the top end. It's called 360."
"It has been two years. I don't remember the actual price, but it was affordable. We buy the boxes and then use the license for three years."
"Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."
"The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
"Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."
"I rate the product pricing a five out of ten."
"Azure Firewall is more expensive. If Microsoft can make Azure Firewall cheaper, I can see that all clients will think of using it. One client used FortiGate because it is much cheaper. Some clients ask me for Cisco, but in the cloud estimate, I found its cost is the same as Azure Firewall."
"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."
"Azure Firewall is expensive."
"The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
"Azure Firewall is quite an expensive product."
"We have a pretty good partnership with Check Point. We have a global subscription and agreement. They give us a pretty good corporate discount."
"They're a little high in price. The price could be lower."
"The price is fair for most of the customers. We don't find the price excessive. It's okay."
"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."
"Pricing of CloudGuard is pretty fair when you have a single account. It's comparable with other cloud providers. But for our use case, it got really pricey when we had to deploy multiple CloudGuards on multiple accounts in different regions, because you can't have CloudGuard protecting multiple regions. That's the big thing."
"The tool's pricing is good. Customers want it to be cheap. I consider the pricing to be elastic. CloudGuard Network Security is perceived as cost-effective compared to using the built-in tools provided by the cloud."
"Handling costs is not my department. Licensing has been quite acceptable. It is a bit easier now, but when I began working with CloudGuard, it was a bit too technical."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
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?
Pricing is high, over $25,000 USD annually. The package offered includes features we may not need, and more flexible ...
What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?
The pricing is too high. We pay more than twenty-five thousand USD per year, which could be reduced. Moreover, Check ...
 

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: January 2025.
838,533 professionals have used our research since 2012.