We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Fortinet FortiGate-VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point NGFW is praised for its extensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. Fortinet FortiGate-VM receives appreciation for its stability, reliability, and user-friendly interface.
Check Point NGFW needs enhancements in integration, hardware upgrades, cost and pricing, stability and security, setup process, load balancing capabilities, technical support, and reporting. Fortinet FortiGate-VM requires improvements in key activation, log management, cloud management, IPsec failover, monitoring tool, setup and configuration, performance, firmware updates, log settings, GUI capabilities, costs, technical support, and integration.
Service and Support: The customer service for Check Point NGFW has garnered varying opinions, with some customers appreciating its helpfulness and responsiveness, while others believe there is room for improvement. Fortinet FortiGate-VM's support has received a mix of feedback. Certain customers commend its prompt response times and expertise, while others highlight concerns regarding delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: Check Point NGFW's initial setup can be complex and may require expertise and experience for certain configurations and migrations. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers a generally straightforward and easy setup process, aided by Fortinet's support and assistance.
Pricing: Check Point NGFW has a high setup cost, yet offers flexible licensing options. Fortinet FortiGate-VM has competitive pricing and includes support without extra charges.
ROI: Check Point NGFW provides cost savings, simplicity, and strong security enforcement, resulting in a favorable ROI. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers stability and enhanced security, guaranteeing a positive ROI when purchased initially.
Comparison Results: Check Point NGFW is the preferred choice when comparing it to Fortinet FortiGate-VM. Check Point NGFW stands out for its extensive security features, such as URL filtering, intrusion prevention systems, identity and access management, and application control capabilities. Additionally, it offers centralized management and virtualization options, as well as stability, user-friendliness, and scalability.
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"The documentation is simple to understand and is easily available."
"As with any firewall, IPSEC VPN is the critical functionality. Not every organization has the budget to implement MPLS or SD-WAN, which makes IPSEC the go-to for site-to-site connectivity."
"The ease of configuring VPNs can be very useful especially for companies with lots of remote locations."
"The most valuable features are the security blades and the ease of managing the policies, searching log for events, and correlating them."
"Everything is easily managed through their Smart Console dashboard. It's a very easy-to-understand dashboard that provides a detailed view."
"Check Point NGFW has helped the company in the prevention of cyber attacks that could affect operations and slow down production."
"My favorite feature is the UTM piece and that was the main reason we bought it. It helps us to fine tune the network."
"Check Point has strong security features as well as some decent monitoring and management capabilities."
"The IPS module is my favorite because of the security advantage reached with a few clicks and its automatic updates."
"Web filtering and the IPS functionality."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are the ease of use, IPS system, application filter, web filtering, and email security. Additionally, there is a migration tool that other vendors do not provide. We only need to upload the configuration file to the tool, and it converts everything, except the passwords, and gives us the new configuration, which we can directly upload on the firewall. This migration process takes a maximum of 15 minutes."
"All the security features that are built into the product are valuable."
"The solution's initial setup process was very easy."
"Its performance is adequate. We are quite satisfied with its performance. The fact that it is a complete ecosystem with all kinds of integrations is valuable. It did take us a couple of months to get a grip on the new software, but all in all, it replaced our on-premise and single-point solution environment."
"The most valuable feature is the UTM, which gives them an advantage over other firewalls."
"The dashboards are a good feature."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"Lacks training for new features."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"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."
"The current reporting capability needs to be parsed and edited to be appreciated by leadership."
"The client for the central tools is very big - maybe using web access in future releases, similar to other vendors should be possible."
"VMware is not supported by the platform."
"In our particular case, we have different web applications developed by the same organization, however, that requires a specialized protection element such as a WAF. Having this service or feature within the same solution would be very valuable."
"In the future, some of the features that I would like to see would be the ability to integrate environmental solutions such as the metaverse or blockchain so that we can see them also in applications directly and on mobile devices or natively."
"Check Point should quickly update and expand its application database to have what Palo Alto has."
"I still don't have access to the reporting service."
"The frequency of the antivirus updates which we get for Check Point firewalls should increase. They should be of good quality compared to the competitive firewalls on the market. They should give us stable antivirus signatures. That is an area in which they can improve."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The solution should provide more useful GUI features."
"FortiGate should be more customer friendly and budgeted better."
"The tool does not have a good name in the market, consisting of enterprise-class businesses, making it an area where the product lacks and needs to improve."
"The block, the clarity, the quarantine command, is not very user-friendly. You would have to do everything through the command line and I would have preferred if it wasn't a CLI."
"It needs an Application Inspection."
"With FortiGate, we sometimes encounter bugs in various operating systems."
"The price is sometimes very expensive."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM 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 Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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