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

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 13, 2026

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

Check Point Cloud Firewall ...
Ranking in Firewalls
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
246
Ranking in other categories
Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (1st), Vulnerability Management (10th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (3rd), Cloud and Data Center Security (4th), Container Security (9th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (4th), WAN Edge (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (7th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th), Compliance Management (6th)
Hillstone E-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
40th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
SSL VPN (10th), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is 2.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hillstone E-Series is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)2.7%
Hillstone E-Series0.9%
Other96.4%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Oscar Nunez - PeerSpot reviewer
Ingeniero en redes y Telecomunicaciones at K-IT
Centralized management has reduced policy time and provides reliable multitenant protection
What I would like, what I think they should improve a little is the management of objects at large scale. When you work with multiple domains, there are thousands of network objects. Detecting duplicates and consistency across domains is a very manual process that should be more automated. Another thing: the SmartConsole interface is very powerful and very good, but the learning curve, compared to other solutions in the market from other manufacturers, could be modernized. I think it does not necessarily have to be done from a client application; it could be done via web, because via web I know that not all the options you have in SmartConsole are available. So it would be good if it could also be done from the web and all the options were available. Another thing that I would really like is more automation with Ansible or Terraform. I know it has improved in recent versions, but I think it is still not mature enough. Compared to other manufacturers that do have a bit more in terms of automation capabilities in integration flows with Ansible or Terraform, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) could improve. Another thing that could be improved a little would be the TAC response time, because when there are very complex cases, I think there should be more speed initially, more ownership of those urgent cases, and not leave the customer waiting. This has happened to me: when I have cases open with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) TAC, sometimes they do not respond and I have to keep insisting, and I think that part should improve. I do not know if it depends on who takes the ticket or on the severity of the ticket, but sometimes I have had to insist a lot, and that would be the only problem. Once they attend to me and become involved in the case, the responses they give are very professional and really help directly resolve the problems when there is a bug or troubleshooting to do. As I said, I would like to see a specific improvement in SmartConsole. I think if they improved it—how to say it—gave it a facelift so you could access all the options directly from a browser, that would be great, because sometimes, for one reason or another, you cannot download SmartConsole or, for some reason, the SmartConsole client does not start correctly, and you could do it directly from the browser. I think that would be a good option to improve. Another thing would be that in multidomain environments, I would like a global search function for objects and rules. That is, you could enter and search across all domains at once, because right now you have to go domain by domain, and in environments with many customers, you spend quite a bit of time; you have to exit one domain and enter another. So those would be the improvements I would like to see.
TahirMahmood - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The scalability is very good; again, very user-friendly. I wouldn't even say "user-friendly" because, as long as you deploy it properly, you can kill an EC2 and it will spin up another one right away, within about a minute and a half. And it will be ready for production right away."
"The CloudGuard for Cloud Intelligence tool has several significant features that provide security to our company."
"The identification of misconfigurations, maintenance of compliance in a centralized way, and visibility across all the multi-cloud tenants are the key functionalities."
"The cloud security posture management identify the risks that are the most critical to our business. We can define certain key assets that are your crown jewels. And whenever something hits on these crown jewels, you get a very high score. So you can really fine tune towards protecting your risk based assets in the cloud."
"This solution provides threat prevention and detection of anomalies automatically and investigates the activity of each one of them."
"The stability of the solution is fantastic."
"The security features of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security are very good."
"We consolidated from three management consoles and three clusters to only one, which is a big improvement."
"Very reliable solution with good scalability and straightforward implementation."
"With Hillstone, TCO and ROI are very good, it's an easy sale."
"If an organization is not looking for a web proxy, it's a very, very good product."
"The installation is easy, we have not had any complaints from our customers."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"I am impressed with the application filtering feature."
"The most valuable feature of the Hillstone E-Series is its user-friendliness."
"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."
 

Cons

"Regarding CloudGuard Network Security's integration with various resources like application gateways and application-based security groups, there's room for exploring dynamic access in those areas. A significant concern is the upgrade process. Unlike an in-place upgrade, upgrading the tool in Azure requires deploying a new resource, which can be hectic and less reliable. We have to spend something new to have the tool's latest version."
"The solution is not that flexible when deploying on-prem."
"We want to be able to customize the solution more in order to meet the needs of our company."
"Support is one area where efforts should be required from Check Point."
"I think they have pretty much mastered what can be done. There are some nuances like when you fail over from one cluster member to the other, the external IP address takes about two minutes to fail over."
"The deployment was not easy."
"In case the device is inaccessible due to some issue such as CPU or memory, there is no separate port or hardware partition provided for troubleshooting purposes."
"There is room for improvement in addressing bugs and support issues."
"Having frequent live webinars on a monthly basis would really help."
"The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."
"The tool only had some memory-related problems."
"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."
"The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature."
"The current usage reporting is very basic. I would like to be able to access more granular data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is on the higher end."
"It is a very straightforward licensing model that is based on the number of assets you are discovering and managing with the solution."
"The licensing model has since transitioned to a cluster-based variant."
"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."
"When customers compare it with Sophos or any other products, the price is on the higher side."
"The license fee is high."
"The product's licensing costs are yearly."
"On average, it is normally on the lower end, being less expensive than Palo Alto or Cisco."
"The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand."
"Hillstone's pricing is economical and neither very high nor very low."
"The cost per year for licensing, and hardware, is approximately $850 for the basic plan."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
16%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business133
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise146
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?
Since we use a unified standard for using policies and modules in Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), we can clearly plan which modules we need to activate on a parti...
What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?
The main limitations of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) are not in Check Point itself but in the cloud platforms on which it is deployed. Because not all clouds ha...
What is your primary use case for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?
Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is the main manager that provides network security in different forms in my organization. The primary task that Check Point solves ...
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Also Known As

CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security, Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance
Bank of China Macao, Instituto Tecnológico Bolivariano, Ministry of Labor in San Salvador, FEDCO
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs. Hillstone E-Series and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.