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.
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"My favorite feature is the UTM piece and that was the main reason we bought it. It helps us to fine tune the network."
"I think that the most valuable feature is the prevention of known and zero-day threats because they are constantly trying to access your company and compromise its data."
"The VPN tunnels are very effective in terms of stability and quick connection."
"The solution is easy to use. I like the monitoring the most."
"We can precisely determine who has access rights and who is granted permission, regardless of their connection point."
"The product is flexible."
"It is easy to control from the central management system. For example, if we have 10 firewalls, and we want to push that same configuration among them, we can use this solution's central management system to do that simultaneously. So, there is time saving in that way. The time savings does depend on the situation. For example, if I am running half an hour of work on each firewall, that will take around 300 minutes. However, if I do this work from the central management system, then it will only take 30 minutes to push the same configuration to those same 10 devices."
"I think the VSX has been the most valuable feature for us."
"For everyday tasks, we just get alerts. It's anything that's suspicious, including from our Netgate. So, it's part of how we maintain cybersecurity in our school. This is working alongside our endpoint security solution."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"One of the advantages of pfSense is that it is very easy to work with. It is a very good open-source solution, and it works really well. pfSense provides a complete package. For some features, it could be the first solution in the world. It is a very good alternative in the market for a firewall solution. You don't need to go to Cisco or other brands with expensive firewalls. pfSense also allows us to offer some support services."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"The "OpenVPN Client Export" package is really helpful in exporting the VPN client software on most popular devices: iOS/Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and a handful of SIP handsets."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"Check Point could improve the time for delivering requested features from customers."
"Check Point NGFW needs to run marketing events. They have also to set up a support center in India."
"Check Point is a bit difficult to use and manage so it would be nice to see some improvement in those areas."
"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."
"The user interface should be user-friendly"
"There are some issues compared to other products. Ease of use is one."
"In the past year, we faced severe downtime that lasted many days due to a misconfiguration."
"It would be best if the security management server console access is simpler for ease of management."
"Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"Also, the GUI is helpful, but it's not user-friendly. It's complicated. It should be more intuitive for the average user and have an excellent graphical view. Of course, the user will typically know about network administration, but it still should be easy to understand."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"The solution requires a lot of administration."
"The main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
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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