CheckPoint vs. pfSense

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CheckPoint
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
CheckPoint is a digital access management and engagement system for venues. It automates and digitizes the registration, ticketing, and check-in process while enabling venues, vendors, and exhibitors to engage with guests directly to their phone's lock screen. CheckPoint is an event management tool for events, conferences, festivals, clubs, and more. The venue management solution boasts users among both the Oscars and Nasdaq.N/A
pfSense
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs. As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent…
$179
per appliance
Pricing
CheckPointpfSense
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
SG-1100
$179
per appliance
SG-2100
$229
per appliance
SG-3100
$399
per appliance
SG-5100
$699
per appliance
XG-7100-DT
$899
per appliance
XG-7100-1U
$999
per appliance
XG-1537
$1,949
per appliance
XG-1541
$2,649
per appliance
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CheckPointpfSense
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CheckPointpfSense
Considered Both Products
CheckPoint
Chose CheckPoint
CheckPoint is easier to use, the leader of the NGFW firewall and for the price equal to other competitor. the support for the devices owned is also a good side of the vendor that allow to learn about a lot of information behind the CheckPoint TAC support and PS engineer.
pfSense

No answer on this topic

Features
CheckPointpfSense
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
CheckPoint
-
Ratings
pfSense
8.8
17 Ratings
2% above category average
Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.714 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.714 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings9.116 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.617 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.613 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings9.516 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.317 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings9.017 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings9.416 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings9.915 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings8.215 Ratings
Best Alternatives
CheckPointpfSense
Small Businesses
Whova
Whova
Score 9.4 out of 10
Sophos UTM
Sophos UTM
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Whova
Whova
Score 9.4 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Whova
Whova
Score 9.4 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CheckPointpfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
1.0
(1 ratings)
9.3
(30 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
4.9
(2 ratings)
9.7
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
CheckPointpfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
Fobi AI
CheckPoint performs well as an internal firewall between network zones, providing policy control and deep inspection of internal traffic. It works well for a multi network setup like ours across multiple sites. It is however not a fast changing interface and time needs to be taken to perform changes. It's not a quick as other vendors
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.
Read full review
Pros
Fobi AI
  • Threat Prevention better than Fortinet
  • Granularity of security policy can be customized to the maximum
  • hardware performance is really good
  • Bugs are less as compared to other vendors
  • support is excellent
  • modules work as expected
  • Features can achieve out of box requirements
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
  • Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.
Read full review
Cons
Fobi AI
  • In my experience, notifications are completely broken and non-functional
  • In my opinion, confusing UX for the cloud portal
  • Don't try and import 100's of endpoints when onboarding because it will create a mess
  • When installing the CP client you have to remove Microsoft Defender and if that fails, CheckPoint technical support goes, "Not my problem, sucks to be you!"
Read full review
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
  • When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
  • I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
  • I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
  • I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.
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Likelihood to Renew
Fobi AI
Every dollar to CheckPoint is a wasted dollar.
Read full review
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Usability
Fobi AI
the solution offer the most improvement about the usability by management more firewall in the same context or multicontext instead. The shared database allow to use one object for more than a package target of a cluster or more of gateways firewall. The management remain isolated from traffic pass through the firewall so the disruption is limited at minimum.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.
Read full review
Support Rating
Fobi AI
No answers on this topic
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.
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Alternatives Considered
Fobi AI
The CheckPoint Firewall and Cisco ISR router serve different purposes. Our organisation uses both devices, but in different areas of the topology. The Cisco ISR is a remote device and its function is to relay information to our edge firewall, which then passes to our internal firewall (CheckPoint) to securely control traffic requests.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.
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Return on Investment
Fobi AI
  • Smart console with lower operational overhead
  • Compliance with Hipaa, PCISSS and saving on compliance plenties
  • Less compatibility issues
  • licensing model is costlier at the beginning
  • Some modules require special training
  • False positives may occur
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
  • The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.
Read full review
ScreenShots

CheckPoint Screenshots

Screenshot of CheckPoint ecosystem includes the digital ticket using the wallet pass technology, a near-field communication tap device used for registration and check-in, and an admin portal used to provide real-time updates and analytics to make data-driven decisions.Screenshot of CheckPoint gives exhibitors, vendors and sponsors access to your guests' lock screen to send personalized notifications. Send urgent messages in real-time to increase security around your venue.Screenshot of Modernize your venue with CheckPoint's digital ticketing system that lives in your guests' mobile wallets. By using CheckPoint, improve your user experience by enabling a 100% contactless and automated system that gets your guests into your venues faster and smarter.Screenshot of Increase security around check-in with CheckPoint's automated and contactless system. CheckPoint is a sleek digital solution that condensed a multi-step process into one simple tap to speed up check-ins.