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Check Point NGFW vs Sophos XGS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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)
Check Point NGFW
Ranking in Firewalls
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
308
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Sophos XGS
Ranking in Firewalls
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.1%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point NGFW is 3.0%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos XGS is 2.4%, up from 1.0% 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.
Manikandan Kannan - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlined management through dual-interface configuration capabilities with excellent support
We use Check Point NGFW for security purposes. Our clients use it for security reasons, as mentioned during the call The most valuable feature is the availability of two consoles. In the normal GA login, I can create interfaces and configure interface IPs, while in the SmartConsole, I manage the…
Jaffar Ali - PeerSpot reviewer
Has provided stability, security, ease of management, and better reporting options
People use Sophos XGS because the overall channel support is very good, so they don't face issues. Additionally, it is competitive in pricing against Fortinet in some cases, especially when considering high availability, email subscriptions, and gateways Sophos XGS has provided stability,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboard I have found the most valuable in Fortinet FortiGate."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"It has a good UI and overall integration, including FortiGate Manager for controlling all firewalls from a single place."
"The solution can scale well."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"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 ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."
"The SD-WAN function is very developed. It has SD-WAN functionality with security features in one device. We can manage from one single console SD-WAN and the security policy."
"Check Point NGFW makes it easier to handle and use the firewall efficiently."
"It is easy to use, and its management is the best. Check Point has a great unified management solution for firewalls and security products."
"The scalability is very good."
"Another thing I like is that whenever we make changes on the firewall, we first need to publish them and then install the policies. This allows us to double-check the policies before they are implemented, which is helpful."
"We never had an outage of the appliances or the consoles. Stability is very strong. I never had a problem related to stability."
"The performance has been very good."
"There are several ways to implement it."
"It's enabled us to move away from basic LAN to LAN segmentation to a more powerful user separation approach."
"It's much faster than the previous firewall, so you can do the work faster."
"Easy to set up firewall product, that's also easy to manage and scale."
"It's user-friendly and quite easy to configure. It's easy to communicate with the Sophos support team."
"Spam filtering is what I love most about XGS."
"Compared to other products, Sophos XGS is a user-friendly solution."
"The security heartbeat feature and MDR are the best for customer security."
"It is scalable."
"The scalability of Sophos XGS is very good."
 

Cons

"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"The firmware updates are sometimes not stable. The stability issues can vary, sometimes happening once a month or quarterly. New firmware updates can occasionally introduce bugs, causing some policies to fail. We then have to raise a ticket, and Fortinet usually provides a fix within a few days."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"The pricing could be reduced or include the first year warranty."
"I would like to see better Data Leakage protection options and easier-to-understand deployment models for this."
"If you have the standard support level, sometimes they take a long time to understand or even give you a solution or good workaround to a problematic situation."
"Error logs can be more specific."
"The command line is very difficult to use, which is one of the biggest drawbacks of this solution."
"The training for Check Point Firewall should increase, including the number of Training Centers. For most new people in our organization, we have to provide them training from our end, as they are not trained in Check Point Firewalls. So, we have to do the training, from our point of view, to make our engineers able to use Check Point Firewalls. However, with other firewalls, they are already trained, so we are not require to provide them training. This could be improved by the Check Point Community."
"It would be nice to have comprehensive documentation and training resources that can help users and administrators to better understand and utilize the full range of Check Point's capabilities."
"The VPN part was actually one of the most complex parts for us. It was not easy for us to switch from Cisco, because of one particular part of the integration: connecting the Check Point device to an Entrust server. Entrust is a solution that provides two-factor authentication. We got around it by using another server, a solution called RADIUS."
"Improvement regarding the expansion of the SMS's compatibility to include various virtualization environments would be beneficial."
"Sophos configurations are a bit complex."
"One area for improvement would be including automatically generated certificates for HTTPS, which was available in earlier versions but might not be in the latest."
"The solution could improve inspection processes and troubleshooting for VPNs because this area is very weak."
"The solution could improve by using fewer hardware resources compared to other products like Palo Alto, which has better performance."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"There are some issues with conversion and user roles when upgrading to Cyberoam."
"Sophos XGS needs improvement with the threshold values. Other solutions have the capacity to handle more users."
"Sophos XGS would benefit from further development in the SD-WAN area."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a very full-featured and it's priced well solution."
"The product pricing is reasonable."
"It has a competitive price."
"Its licenses cost the same for different subscription plans."
"Compared to Palo Alto, which we have used in the past, pricing and licensing are okay."
"The price is fine."
"The pricing is perfect."
"In the Asian economy in which we operate, FortiGate is expensive."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten. It costs around 100,000-200,000 dollars per month. Besides standard licensing fees, we paid extra for enterprise-level premium support. There were also onboarding costs factored in. These additional costs made it more expensive overall. The total cost was around 100,000 dollars, which was challenging for our budget. Check Point was also pricey, not much different from Palo Alto Networks. However, we decided switching to Check Point was better because it offered more capabilities for a similar price."
"The pricing and licensing are expensive. If you compare it with Fortinet, then it is cheaper on a yearly basis. However, Check Point is the most expensive firewall right now in terms of licenses and its appliance. My recommendation is if you want a long-term investment, then you should use an open server. If you use an open server, then the latency is really low. If you pay for a full appliance, it's more expensive."
"The prices are good for its features. The benefit of its license is we get timely security prevention updates. The price is good for the technology that we get."
"It is a notably expensive product in our country compared to FortiGate and other servers."
"The pricing is good. It is less than Palo Alto's firewalls. Check Point has the same features as Palo Alto, but the licensing and cost of these firewalls are not too expensive. It is one of the best firewalls in the market in this range."
"I have done licensing and contracts for multiple firewalls. The license and contract configuration is completely fine, but if it is possible to make them cost a bit less, then this would be better."
"The solution is expensive."
"They sell it in one box. In that one box, they sell Antivirus and Threat Prevention. They have everything, so we are not required to purchase additional IPS hardware for it."
"I would like to see them reduce the price."
"The price of Sophos XGS is less than competitors worldwide. However, in Turkey the solution is expensive."
"I live in Bolivia and the price of Sophos XGS is high. However, they have adjusted their price a little over the past while but the price could still be less expensive to be affordable."
"Sophos XGS is competitively priced."
"The cost is comparable to other similar solutions."
"Sophos XGS costs around $6,000 for a basic license."
"A central firewall on the cloud with a cluster might be 70,000 to 80,000 euros for a three-year license."
"Sophos XGS is a very expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
59%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
3%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
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 ...
How does Check Point NGFW compare with Fortinet Fortigate?
I have experience on both from Disti and channel experience. Please find below my comments (nothing new as such). -Ch...
Which would you recommend - Azure Firewall or Check Point NGFW?
Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall ...
What do you like most about Check Point NGFW?
Check Point NGFW provides essential security, featuring no-obligation access for secure connections, strong intrusion...
What do you like most about Sophos XGS?
The policies are the greatest feature. They allow us to configure granular control over our network traffic.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos XGS?
The pricing is justified, and the solution is considered budget-friendly compared to other vendors.
What needs improvement with Sophos XGS?
Hardware stability needs improvement. I have experienced multiple hardware complaints, particularly during firmware u...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall
No data available
 

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
Control Southern, Optimal Media
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point NGFW vs. Sophos XGS and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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