Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs Hillstone E-Series comparison

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs. Hillstone E-Series

Download the complete report

Helped 900,644 peers since 2012

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

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 15.1%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is 2.4%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hillstone E-Series is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	15.1%
Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)	2.4%
Hillstone E-Series	0.7%
Other	81.8%

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

Mageshwaran S

Solution Architect at airtel

Enables customers to manage security effortlessly with intuitive features and easy integration

In terms of improvements for Fortinet FortiGate, they could offer evaluation licenses, as compared to Meraki, which provides a 90-day evaluation. In Fortinet FortiGate, they do not provide standard evaluation licenses; instead, we need to request them from the OEM through the account manager for POCs. If we want to conduct a demo, we need to work with real hardware. In comparison to Cisco, we have DCloud, which helps with providing demos to customers, but in Meraki, I need to reach out to them, book a lab, and they need to provide all the hardware. I need remote access and L3 engineers to program it; only then can I offer a real-time demo to the customer.

Read full review

Viral Shaa

IT Security Analyst at Eos Energy Enterprises, Inc.

Cloud security has unified hybrid policies and now protects critical energy workloads continuously

I would say Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is valuable due to its hybrid cloud security features. It offers granular policy management across the on-premises and cloud environments, giving administrators consistent control for configuration drift. We need to change the policy and the inbound and outbound traffic settings, indicating what traffic must be blocked or allowed, and this capability with Check Point provides significant input into our security strategy. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) provides unified security management across both hybrid clouds and on-premises environments. Unified security management affects my security operations positively, as we maintain critical systems on the cloud that require strong security and air gap networks. This cloud-native routing and policy installation helps close gaps in protecting critical applications and environments from exposure to the public cloud. From an administrator's perspective, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) enhances our organization with clearer and more intuitive logging, making decisions easier to understand without deep investigation. In the CloudGuard UI, I can see which threats have triggered alerts, and this information is available on the unified dashboard that provides details of the threat analysis upon alert. As a small team, we log into the console to check specific alerts for high or low network usage or machine shutdowns. If needed, I tune the configuration policy, and the visualizing tools with reporting functionality simplify tracking changes made on the firewall, including the relevant source IP or device names. We ingest logs into our SIEM for detailed oversight, which allows us to monitor any administrative changes. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has significantly reduced our organizational risk. We clearly understand our threat landscape and the associated risks. Onboarding the CloudGuard solution directly into our cloud environment has significantly lowered the risks throughout the network and it is easy to launch. When we assess our security posture with third-party assessments, we gain granular visibility into our network pre- and post-CloudGuard installation, showing how we have addressed significant risks and secured vulnerabilities.

Read full review

TahirMahmood

IT Manager at Zubair Feeds

Offers good features like URL filtering, IPS, and IDS to users

We received an update for the tool in July. The update was provided for the tool as there was a problem with the firewall, where too much memory was consumed, and the firewall was hanging a lot. When we updated the tool's features, everything became okay. The tool only had some memory-related problems. It took the tool a month to fix the issues.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortinet firewalls are a great new generation firewall."

"I find that Fortinet FortiGate is pretty easy to use and integrated, offering many features in one box at a decent price compared to other enterprise vendors."

"The firewall is stable and that's important."

"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."

"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."

"It is a fantastic product, it fits the customer requirements very well, and the vendor is great."

"It is pretty straightforward to manage and has robust capabilities. I appreciate that Fortinet FortiGate can be a central controller for other Fortinet products, such as switches and access points."

"The most valuable aspects of FortiGate NGFW are its top-notch reputation in peer reviews, user-friendly interface, and excellent support."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"We have very good visibility or granularity regarding security."

"The ease of deployment has been nice. It is like managing any of our on-prem firewalls."

"The solution assures protection on cloud and ensures the workload is protected in the same manner when deployed on-premises."

"Overall, the comprehensiveness of the solution's threat prevention security is great."

"Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is easy to implement, easy to use, easy to install, and easy to configure, especially compared to other competitors such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, Sophos, and SonicWall."

"Check Point CloudGuard provides comprehensive security coverage."

"It makes my life easier. I have on-prem and cloud firewalls. I can use the same policies in both places."

"The Identity Awareness blade and dynamic tagging in Azure are valuable because they make access management automatic. Instead of manually setting up access for each new resource, it happens automatically based on the same access policy. This dynamic setup is scalable."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) pros

"The most valuable features of the Hillstone E-Series are its hardware capacity, innovation, and the throughput that the hardware can take."

"Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients secure connectivity from a remote location to their offices or their servers."

"Very reliable solution with good scalability and straightforward implementation."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ransomware protection that the tool offers."

"The most valuable feature of the Hillstone E-Series is its user-friendliness."

"With Hillstone, TCO and ROI are very good, it's an easy sale."

"The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy."

"Five out of five ROI."

More Hillstone E-Series pros

Cons

"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."

"FortiGate's logging and reporting could be improved. I would also like to see Fortinet add a guest management portal."

"FortGate's IPS reporting could be made better by giving more details regarding the source and destination of network traffic when it comes to the overview section. This would allow me to more easily follow the flow of traffic based on IP addresses, without having to integrate the IPS with other products that perform more sophisticated traffic analysis."

"We were not getting proper support from Fortinet. That's the reason we had to phase out FortiGate."

"The renewal cost is much higher than other firewalls. It is not reasonable."

"Some time ago we upgraded to the Fortinet solution of our previous partner and there was a memory leak which created problems."

"The people we are working with are not able to configure MFA. They are having some technical issues. Fortinet needs to ensure that its partners are well-trained."

"The SD-WAN functionality is a bit overly complicated and not fully documented."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"Today, we are trying to look more into encrypted traffic."

"We did not use the AWS Transit Gateway, and that's one of the things that we're currently using. I believe we will be working with Check Point again, in the near future, to implement it, once they start having proper support for a single customer with multiple accounts. When we were using them, we had to install Check Point on each and every single account."

"It's meeting our needs at this time. If I could make it better, it would be by making it more standalone. That would be beneficial to us. I say that because our current platform for virtualization is VMware. The issue isn't any fault of Check Point, it's more how the virtualization platform partners allow for that partnership and integration. There has to be close ties and partnerships between the vendors to ensure interoperability and sup-portability. There is only so far that Check Point, or any security vendor technology can go without the partnership and enablement of the virtualization platform vendor as it relies on "Service Insertion" to maintain optimal performance."

"When upgrading the firewall, the old VPC containing the firewalls needs to be destroyed. After that, a new firewall is redeployed in the setup. Additionally, there's a need to separate the routing, and the routing from the old VPC has to be recreated in the new one."

"CloudGuard Network Security could be improved in the area of upgrading in place."

"People don't know about the tool's features. There's a lack of skill. Users require more knowledge on how to integrate it into the cloud environment and orchestrate routing. So, it's not necessarily a CloudGuard Network Security or Check Point issue but more about integration, knowledge, and understanding."

"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."

"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could be improved by enhancing its user interface, simplifying policy management, and expanding third-party integrations."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) cons

"Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement."

"The current usage reporting is very basic. I would like to be able to access more granular data."

"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."

"The tool only had some memory-related problems."

"The room for improvement would be the SSL VPN license cost."

"The tool needs to improve its price."

"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."

"The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand."

More Hillstone E-Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is an expensive solution."

"The initial setup is super straight forward and as far as the licensing goes for the small product that we have, the pricing was pretty competitive. It wasn't as simple and as cheap as a SonicWall but for the service we would get it was a good price."

"The product is not very expensive."

"You need to pay a license for this solution. Our licensing is now done in our subsidiary."

"I pay €1,200 per year for the license along with Fortinet's 81E firewall appliance. I would rate this pricing as 3/5 stars, and I believe the price is reasonably similar to its competitors in the market, being somewhere in the middle."

"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."

"While slightly more affordable than competitors, it remains relatively expensive due to its inclusive subscription."

"The support subscription for the solution is annual. You are paying for support and there are two levels of support, professional and advanced."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"I do not have too much to compare to, but if I compare it with Azure Firewall, Scale Set is quite good. It has quite a good price."

"My experience has been extremely positive. It was not a concern because I had an account team that fought for pricing for our company. They were not pushing me to professional services for certain help. I was instantly getting a CloudGuard architect to help us out."

"Pricing of CloudGuard is pretty fair when you have a single account. It's comparable with other cloud providers. But for our use case, it got really pricey when we had to deploy multiple CloudGuards on multiple accounts in different regions, because you can't have CloudGuard protecting multiple regions. That's the big thing."

"You get charged only for what resources you choose and how much traffic actually passes through the firewall, which in turn saves a lot of money."

"I do not know the exact price, but it is fairly priced. It is neither cheap nor costly."

"I know that we have an enterprise agreement with Check Point. That gives us some benefits, but I do not have more information about that."

"Although I don't have specifics for pricing, based on my overall experience, I can conclude that Check Point provides the best pricing when comparing to other vendors."

"The tool's pricing is reasonable."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) pricing and cost advice

"The cost per year for licensing, and hardware, is approximately $850 for the basic plan."

"Hillstone's pricing is economical and neither very high nor very low."

"The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand."

"The tool's pricing is reasonable. It depends on the model. The product's pricing is around 600 USD. You need to buy a software license to activate the features. You need to pay around 150 USD for that."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	370
Midsize Enterprise	138
Large Enterprise	195

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	72
Midsize Enterprise	40
Large Enterprise	79

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	1

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 ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is comparatively conservative in terms of pricing; ...

What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is definitely lagging behind its peers. I am not su...

What is your primary use case for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is a cloud-native application protection platform a...

What needs improvement with Hillstone E-Series?

We received an update for the tool in July. The update was provided for the tool as there was a problem with the fire...

What is your primary use case for Hillstone E-Series?

I use the solution in my company for site-to-site VPN, SSL VPNs, URL filtering, IPS, IDS and all the other features w...

What advice do you have for others considering Hillstone E-Series?

Our company did not use the tool's micro-segmentation features. There were no issues while integrating the tool. I ha...

Sophos Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Comparisons

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Azure Firewall vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 7% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 5% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 4% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 4% of the time

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Competitors

OpenVPN Access Server vs Hillstone E-Series

Compared 14% of the time

Sangfor SSL VPN vs Hillstone E-Series

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Hillstone E-Series

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco IOS SSL VPN vs Hillstone E-Series

Compared 6% of the time

Ivanti Connect Secure vs Hillstone E-Series

Compared 3% of the time

More Hillstone E-Series Competitors

Product Reports

Fortinet FortiGate

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Download Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) product report

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) report

Download Hillstone E-Series product report

Firewalls

May 2026

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

No data available

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate is a versatile network security tool offering features like VPN, firewall, web filtering, intrusion prevention, and scalability. It is known for its performance and integration with other Fortinet products, making it a preferred choice for robust cybersecurity.

Fortinet FortiGate stands out as a comprehensive cybersecurity solution with strong performance and ease of configuration. It delivers unified threat management, integrating features such as dynamic routing, SD-WAN support, and centralized management. Despite its strengths, improvements in the web interface's stability, pricing structures, and reporting capabilities are needed. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and automation advancements to enhance the experience further. These enhancements, alongside improvements in bandwidth management and the reduction of licensing costs, are points of interest for users looking to capitalize on FortiGate's extensive capabilities.

What are Fortinet FortiGate's key features?

VPN: Ensures secure remote connections.
Firewall: Protects against unauthorized access.
Web Filtering: Blocks malicious sites and content.
Application Control: Manages and controls applications.
Intrusion Prevention: Detects and prevents vulnerabilities.
SSL Inspection: Enhances security by inspecting encrypted traffic.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Fortinet FortiGate?

Affordability: Offers cost-effective security solutions.
Reliability: Known for consistent and stable performance.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other Fortinet products.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides broad threat protection capabilities.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries as a primary firewall system for securing internet gateways and safeguarding data centers. It supports businesses in achieving SD-WAN integration and enhances cybersecurity by providing essential features like antivirus, web filtering, and application control. Enterprises utilize FortiGate for securing remote connections and ensuring compliance with security standards, making it adaptable for different network sizes and industries.

Fortinet

Check Point Cloud Firewall delivers advanced threat prevention and administration ease with centralized management of hybrid clouds. It offers seamless cloud platform integration, maintaining consistent security policies and enhancing efficiency.

Check Point Cloud Firewall is designed for comprehensive cloud security, ensuring perimeter protection, traffic inspection, and threat prevention. It is often used for safeguarding workloads and applications in public cloud settings like AWS and Azure. The firewall effectively controls both east-west and north-south traffic and supports hybrid cloud setups. Utilizing features like VPN, IPS, and URL filtering, it secures environments across multiple platforms, helping manage compliance effectively while addressing latency, API integration, and onboarding challenges.

What are the key features?

Advanced Threat Prevention: Defends against cyber threats across hybrid clouds.
Auto-Scaling: Automatically adjusts resources to meet demand.
Unified Security Management: Centralizes management for consistent security.
REST API Automation: Enables seamless integration with existing workflows.
Robust VPN Capabilities: Ensures secure data transmission across networks.

What benefits to expect in reviews?

Ease of Administration: Simplified management processes across environments.
Operational Efficiency: Enhances productivity by reducing risk and complexity.
Consistent Security Policies: Maintains a uniform security posture between clouds.
User-Friendly Interface: Streamlines user interactions and task completion.

Check Point Cloud Firewall sees frequent use in sectors needing robust perimeter protection, such as finance and healthcare, where compliance is critical. Its capabilities suit businesses utilizing public cloud infrastructures, managing complex hybrid models, or requiring strong VPN services and traffic control.

Check Point Software Technologies

Hillstone E-Series is known for user-friendliness and advanced security features, offering high-performance threat protection with virtual switching and routing to support significant data volumes without third-party hardware. It provides top-notch firewall capabilities tailored to educational and energy sectors.

Hillstone E-Series delivers comprehensive network security with threat intelligence, ransomware protection, and state-of-the-art hardware innovation. Its 64-bit call processor facilitates handling large data volumes efficiently. Capabilities such as SSL VPN, integrated IPS, and application filtering make it a valuable choice for network protection. While further integration with a web proxy and enhanced usage reporting can enhance its offerings, enhancements in pricing models, support systems, and updates align with evolving user expectations for improved regional support and detailed analytics.

What are the standout features of Hillstone E-Series?

User-Friendliness: Intuitive setup and management for all users.
Threat Intelligence: Advanced protection against modern cyber threats.
Ransomware Protection: Strong defenses to mitigate ransomware attacks.
Hardware Innovation: Virtual switching/routing for seamless operations.
64-Bit Call Processor: Efficient performance with high data volumes.

What benefits should users expect when evaluating Hillstone E-Series?

Comprehensive Capability: Addresses complex network security needs.
Impressive Throughput: Maintains high performance under load.
Easy Policy Management: Simplifies network security rule application.
Robust Security Features: Offers extensive filtering and blocking options.

The Hillstone E-Series is implemented extensively across industries like educational institutions and energy companies to safeguard local networks against gateway-level threats. Many organizations benefit from features such as antivirus, integrated IPS, site-to-site VPN, SSL VPN, and policy management, enhancing remote work security and simplifying network management tasks.

Hillstone Networks

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

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance

Bank of China Macao, Instituto Tecnológico Bolivariano, Ministry of Labor in San Salvador, FEDCO

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs. Hillstone E-Series