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Check Point NGFW vs WatchGuard Firebox comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
316
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Check Point NGFW
Ranking in Firewalls
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
307
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
WatchGuard Firebox
Ranking in Firewalls
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

DineshKumar28 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 25, 2024
Effective threat prevention with responsive customer support
We are using Fortinet FortiGate as a firewall Fortinet FortiGate has been invaluable. It has helped save costs due to its various features, reliable performance, very good UI, low latency, and stability. The Threat Intel engine in Fortinet FortiGate is highly rated for its effectiveness in…
Pratik-Savla - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 22, 2024
Filters internet access and controls applications
Before choosing Check Point NGFW, we used Palo Alto Networks. We switched because of issues with Palo Alto. Their customer support wasn't very responsive. Some policies weren't working right, letting things through that should've been blocked. We compared different pricing options and features before deciding on Check Point NGFW. The main differences between Palo Alto and Check Point NGFW were mostly in how they worked for us. They both offer good next-gen firewalls, but we had some problems with Palo Alto. Sometimes it wouldn't notify us quickly when something got through. Its prevention wasn't always as strong as we wanted. We felt Palo Alto's traffic inspection was only partial, not checking everything thoroughly. Check Point NGFW seemed to offer better inspection. Check Point NGFW also had better threat intel and application control. With Palo Alto, we couldn't see all our applications, only some of them. This caused shadow IT problems. Cost was also a factor in our decision.
CarlosArdila - PeerSpot reviewer
May 24, 2024
Serves as the main firewall for customers' premises and data centers
The initial setup is straightforward. You can deploy it on-premises or using the cloud. If you configure the device to connect to the cloud, you can deploy the Firebox based on templates. You can add a template for a specific client and deploy it for a particular use case. For example, if you're setting it up for a restaurant or a cafe, you can have templates tailored for those businesses. This significantly reduces deployment time, especially if you have several customers of the same type of business. One person is enough for the solution's deployment, but it will run in less than an hour. A network security engineer meets with clients to gather configuration requirements. He prepares a configuration template before the implementation. When he arrives at the site, he turns on the device, applies the template, tests everything, and then migrates the settings from the existing router or firewall to the Firebox.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FortiGate is more feature-rich and has a broader range of hardware. T"
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It creates granular security policies based on users or groups to identify, block or limit the usage of web applications."
"It is easy to configure and it is a valuable antivirus protection. I especially like the IPS feature of this product."
"Within the organization, the inspection of packages has given us great help in detecting traffic that may be a threat to the institution."
"Log storage gives us insights when required."
"The product is flexible."
"The event logs are relatively informative and can provide information on why traffic was accepted or rejected."
"It is giving us a greater reach for greater prevention and is proactively protecting our employees."
"If you just plan to use WatchGuard Firebox in your office and not publicly, then it is okay to purchase it. With WatchGuard Firebox, you can manage your users and permissions while also taking care of the basic setup phase in your office."
"After conducting several tests I found the antivirus is working very well. Additionally, they have a very interesting feature, DNS WatchGuard, which is checking DNS requests for phishing, among other things, and it has caught a lot of unwanted attempts and attacks."
"Their centralized console simplifies management for organizations with multiple Fireboxes."
"[A] valuable feature would be the branch office. We have five offices throughout the United States, and it coordinates the connections of those offices."
"​Efficient to setup, run, and maintain. Saving man hours and cost in the process."
"All of the features have been valuable. There's nothing on my M270 that I'm not using. If you have remote access, you can see how many users are coming from the outside world to be connected to the systems, through the virus systems that we have behind the firewall, in order to gain access to their files and do their work. We can also see how long they stay online and whether these connections are closed forcefully or for any other reasons, such as a glitch or some kind of misbehavior, to see if internet traffic is optimized and if that particular traffic is under company policies, concerning which websites were visited."
"The client is easy to use and stable"
"The tool's most valuable feature is the dashboard."
 

Cons

"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"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 user interface should be user-friendly"
"The only reasons we are looking at other solutions are price and integration."
"There is nothing more that I need in terms of improvement."
"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."
"The solution could improve by keeping more up-to-date with technology. For example, if Amazon releases something in the security field, Check Point should have integration or adoption of this feature a bit faster than it is today. Sometimes we can hear a lot of the marketing information about an attractive feature, which we would like to have, but the feature will be released in two years. This timeframe should decrease."
"The SmartUpdate interface is a little bit crowded if your company has a lot of software items."
"The Antivirus feature is something that could be improved. We don't get much from the Antivirus update in comparison to their competitor's firewalls. It needs to be more advanced because Check Point is nowadays sent all over the world. Therefore, the Antivirus feature should be of very good quality and cover all virus checks. I would also like the Antivirus updates to be more frequent."
"When it comes to Check Point's small business gateway series, there might be a need for hardware upgrades, as configuring them can sometimes be a bit challenging."
"The area where I think this product can be improved is the user interface and the reporting. It can be quite difficult to find the correct logs and to actually find out what is going on. The digging can be time-consuming."
"There is room for improvement on the education side, regarding what does what, rather than just throwing it at a person and assuming they know everything about it. A lot of times, you have to call WatchGuard support to get the solution that will work, rather than their just having it published so that you can fix the problem on your own."
"I would like to see more tutorials on setting up the Firebox."
"One area for improvement could be making the interface even more user-friendly."
"Firebox would be improved with integration for endpoint protection solutions."
"The reporting is a little on the weak side. I would like to see a better reporting set and easier drill-down options."
"The VPN aspect of the WatchGuard Firebox is an area that could potentially benefit from improvement. We encountered difficulties while attempting to integrate Windows 11 laptops into the system, which resulted in unreliable connections. After some research, we discovered that this was primarily due to compatibility issues with Windows 11 and required a patch. However, it was still a challenge as it seemed that even when we tried to keep the laptops on Windows 10, they still exhibited the same issues as Windows 11 machines. Despite WatchGuard attributing the problem to Microsoft, we were eventually able to find a solution and all the machines are now functioning seamlessly."
"WatchGuard Firebox could improve the speed of updates, such as new features or improvements. However, they are frequently improving the solution in many areas, such as geo-locations, definitions, and web blocking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a good product from a price perspective versus functionality."
"The price of FortiGate is reasonable as I plan to buy new switches. The initial gadgets are already booted, and the pricing seems normal on the market. As for additional costs, I haven't subscribed to many extra features, so I'm only using what I need. Last year, I renewed the support for three years, which can sometimes be expensive but depends on the security benefits and how it helps us."
"Its pricing is competitive with other solutions."
"The price for the Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable. Secure SD-WAN is free of charge. If you have their firewall, it's free of charge. It's very tempting."
"This is not a cheap solution but it isn't expensive, either. It's a good solution for the right price."
"Fortinet FortiGate gives you most of the features in one license."
"It is cost-effective, and provides a good value for your money. The pricing, and license renewal, is very reasonable for us."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate when compared to other solutions is high. However, my knowledge of the price is from third parties and I am not sure how accurate it is. I typically work in the technical area of my organization."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
"It's reasonably priced, but competitors offer much cheaper options."
"Pricing is good. The price is very reasonable for enterprise customers."
"You get licensing bundles, so depending on which features you want to activate, your license is going to be more expensive. Some things, like Threat Extraction and Threat Emulation, require subscriptions."
"The licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis and I am happy with the pricing."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward and is based on the blades available, such as NGFW, NGTP, and NGTX."
"When comparing the price of Check Point NGFW to other solutions it's difficult to compare because even though everything is included in the Fortinet price, there are large differences between the models. You need to go to a quite expensive Fortinet firewall to receive the same throughput and functionality as in a Check Point firewall. In the end, they are quite similar in price, Fortinet might be a bit cheaper."
"I don't see that Check Point is very high, but it is geared more towards enterprises."
"The price is so small that I don't pay attention to it anymore. I think we pay a few thousand dollars for two to three years, so about $100 per month. That's for all of our users. There is an additional cost if we want to go with a deeper licensing model, but we just pay for antivirus, IPS, and main product support."
"It's an affordable tool"
"WatchGuard Firebox has good quality, but it is expensive."
"The two larger devices are about $1,000 each and the smaller ones are about $500 or $600 each... It's cheaper and you have more control because it's self-managed."
"The solution is not expensive and customers pay for a yearly license."
"They have an annual subscription license. Initially, we had opted for three years. After that, we went for another three years, and after that, we have been doing it yearly. They also have a license for five years."
"The primary reason that we went with Firebox was its cost. It is very economical and it provided us with all the security functions that we were looking for at the time. And the throughput was more than what we required, so it was a very cost-effective device to deploy on our network."
"It has a very good price. It is not the most expensive one, and it is also not the cheapest one. It is just spot-on in terms of price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
57%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
6%
Hospitality Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
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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 is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We are providing our services to all WatchGuard customers in the region.
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We just use it as a secondary WiFi device. We're a small office and we needed to set up a WiFi device for a few of ou...
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We're a hospital and we use it for developing our incoming and outgoing policies, and we also use it for VPN.
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate
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
Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point NGFW vs. WatchGuard Firebox and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.