Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs McAfee StoneGate [EOL] comparison

Check Point Software Technologies and McAfee are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Additionally, 96% of Check Point Software Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of McAfee users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

McAfee StoneGate EOL and Check Point Quantum Force NGFW compete in the network security market. Check Point Quantum Force NGFW has the upper hand for those valuing comprehensive security solutions due to its advanced features.

Features: McAfee StoneGate EOL provides solid traffic management, effective intrusion prevention, and affordable security. Check Point Quantum Force NGFW offers extensive threat prevention technologies, superior integration options, and advanced security features, making it a preferred choice for comprehensive security needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: McAfee StoneGate EOL has a straightforward deployment model and reliable customer support, reducing setup complexity. Check Point Quantum Force NGFW stands out with a refined deployment process and enhanced support services, ensuring rapid deployment and dependable assistance.

Pricing and ROI: McAfee StoneGate EOL offers competitive pricing and reasonable ROI, appealing to budget-conscious buyers. Check Point Quantum Force NGFW, despite higher initial costs, provides significant ROI through extensive features and security enhancements, making it worth the investment for organizations prioritizing robust security.

To learn more, read our detailed Firewalls Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

April 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 892,678 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

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav

Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd

Unified security and sd-wan have improved uptime and cut wan costs for multi-site branches

Users report stability issues in certain versions, which requires regular updates. Real-world attacks have also highlighted the need for urgent patching of vulnerabilities.Fortinet FortiGate, while a powerful and feature-rich web firewall, could improve in areas like firmware stability, documentation, and ease of use. The learning curve can be steep for some users. For beginners, support quality can vary, and frequent updates with occasional vulnerabilities call for careful patch management. However, once Fortinet FortiGate is configured, it remains highly reliable and efficient. Customer support needs improvement, as I find it very slow, with reports from other users reflecting that customer support is inadequate.

Read full review

San Naing Htun

Network Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Has improved threat prevention and protection but presents deployment and licensing challenges

The best features Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) offers are AI-powered threat prevention, zero-day protection, unified management, and scalability. These features have helped me in my daily work or my organization by allowing us, as a SAAS company operating across AWS, Azure, and handling external partner access or a multi-tenant model, to preemptively stop unknown attacks, which is critical. Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) has positively impacted my organization as it is a high-end enterprise grade firewall. I have noticed that it is very good if your SAAS business has high traffic volume, serious threat prevention requirements, and you are ready for the investment.

Read full review

it_user935460

Computer Framework at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It works well with a highly-active cluster.

It is important for us in case of a disaster, or in case of a failure of one server. This means that the high availability is the most important part for us. It is important for us that the system is available and no connection is going to be lost if the system is restarting one note, or something like that. This is the main request for us for a good firewall protection product.

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

"The most helpful features of FortiGate include its firewall policy, specifically the user-based policy, which I find to be quite beneficial in managing our network security effectively."

"Stateful packet inspection is valuable. It also does SSL packet inspection. It is able to provide a VPN for remote users with secure connectivity."

"User identification and application identification are valuable features."

"FortiGate is very good if you're thinking of expanding where you have remote offices, then it's a good solution."

"Fortinet FortiGate is stable; I am told that Fortinet FortiGate is one of the best solutions available, and I believe it."

"It has upscaled our security posture, especially regarding external connectivity, because any access or connection from the company has to go through the Fortinet FortiGate firewall."

"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."

"I think Fortinet is a cheaper, stable, scalable, and reliable device."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"Good solution - I recommend it."

"The best features Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) offers include having that single pane of glass to manage multiple firewalls from a single place, which really simplifies the management of our firewall infrastructure."

"It is giving us a greater reach for greater prevention and is proactively protecting our employees."

"It is easy to configure and it is a valuable antivirus protection."

"Check Point's firewall does a good job of protecting the user from malicious threats and is able to run smoothly without being a bottleneck in the network."

"The support offers the best services I have experienced. It's better than any other IT vendor."

"The feature I like the most is their central management, the Smart controller which you can use to manage all the firewalls from one location... Being able to access almost everything in one location — manage all your gateways and get all your logs — for me, is the best feature to work with."

"Since implementing Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW), we have had zero downtime and do not need to upgrade the device in three to four months as it does not have any major CVE."

More Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) pros

"High availability is very consistent and provides good firewalling and stability."

"We did not have issues with scalabiliy."

"It works well with a highly-active cluster."

"The stability of the product is fantastic; it is a really proven system and I never had any type of problem where the system was unstable or had a software failure."

"It has given us better application control."

Cons

"Support could be improved."

"In the scenarios coming from Sophos, it has not."

"The only issue that I have is with FortiNAC. The firewall is fine, but the FortiNAC interface is a little bit too jumbled or too complicated, not as straightforward as it is on the Fortinet FortiGate firewall and FortiAnalyzer."

"FortiGate can only retain logs for 24 hours or 7 days. I'm not sure if it holds them for a longer period, such as for a month. It will be useful for assessing our strategy and monitoring our environment without investing in FortiGate Analyzer. It would be beneficial if Fortinet could enhance the FortiGate by providing more statistical and monitoring views for a longer timeframe, rather than requiring access to FortiGate Analyzer."

"At the moment, the main concern is the pricing and the type of licensing. Fortinet offers different types of licensing, and my idea is that the best approach is to have only one, two, or a maximum of three types of licensing."

"In most cases, the IPS engine uses too many resources, which makes Fortinet FortiGate devices unstable."

"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."

"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"Until you have some experience, the installation and configuration are difficult."

"It's complex because it's not too easy to use, but the brand and our partner help us with NG Firewall configuration issues or other solutions like Harmony."

"The frequency of the antivirus updates which we get for Check Point firewalls should increase. They should be of good quality compared to the competitive firewalls on the market. They should give us stable antivirus signatures. That is an area in which they can improve."

"I would say avoid it. There are definitely better solutions out there."

"The antivirus is not as effective as it could be because updates are not that frequent."

"One area for improvement in Check Point NGFW is the support process."

"Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) can be improved with better cost and better reporting."

"I would like to see better Data Leakage protection options and easier-to-understand deployment models for this."

More Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) cons

"The hardware needs improving as we had a lot of problems with the hard drive reliability, both with the firewall and the intrusion protection system."

"After some experience with the solution, we had to do some redesign, but generally, we were happy with the product."

"HA failover is not stable."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It scales well if you know what to buy from a physical box standpoint. They seem to offer something for every level."

"Fortinet FortiGate's price can be reduced."

"Its price is reasonable. They have a clear pricing policy. It is not complicated by the number of VPN users at a time. We know what the price is. The yearly subscription for the security license is rather high, but it is all included for whatever number of users you have and the kind of functions you need."

"The price is relatively expensive compared to other solutions which are providing similar features."

"Its pricing is good. It's average or normal as compared to Palo Alto and Check Point firewalls."

"The solution is very expensive so pricing is rated a one out of ten."

"Price-wise, it's at a good price point for our market."

"Fortinet is the least expensive solution."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"It's reasonably priced, but competitors offer much cheaper options."

"Check Point solutions are very expensive here. They're good, but they're expensive... Check Point is only useful for customers that have a big IT budget."

"There are three types of licensing: Threat Prevention, NGTP, and Next Generation Threat Extraction. Before, it used to be you would just enable the license of whatever blade you wanted to buy. Nowadays, Threat Prevention would be sufficient for most clients, so I would think people would go for the NGTP, license which includes all the blades."

"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."

"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."

"We pay $5,000-$6,000 a year."

"Comparatively, Check Point pricing is a little high. However, if you have that budget, I would recommend anybody to go with Check Point."

"Check Point NGFW is a little expensive."

More Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) pricing and cost advice

Information not available

See which vendors are best for you

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

See recommendations

892,678 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Construction Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	367
Midsize Enterprise	135
Large Enterprise	193

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	163
Midsize Enterprise	95
Large Enterprise	198

No data available

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point NGFW?

The pricing and licensing for Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) are fair, but they can feel complex initially. The val...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Sophos Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 18% 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

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW)

Compared 16% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW)

Compared 12% of the time

Sophos Firewall vs Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW)

Compared 5% of the time

OPNsense vs Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW)

Compared 4% of the time

Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW)

Compared 4% of the time

More Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) Competitors

Cisco Secure Firewall vs McAfee StoneGate [EOL]

Compared 68% of the time

More McAfee StoneGate [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

May 2026

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW)

May 2026

Download Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) product report

Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

April 2026

Download McAfee StoneGate [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall

McAfee Next Generation Firewall, Stonesoft, Intel Next Generation Firewall, Intel Security StoneGate

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 Quantum Force NGFW provides centralized management with scalable security for network perimeters. As a reliable firewall, it ensures advanced threat prevention and offers seamless integration, making it suitable for various network environments.

Offering comprehensive security, Check Point Quantum Force NGFW helps control ingress and egress traffic, secures data center firewalls, and integrates seamlessly with cloud and on-premises setups. Users appreciate its application control, deep packet inspection, and identity awareness features for enhanced protection against cyber threats. Despite pricing issues and interface complexity, its IPsec VPN and robust logging provide valuable insights into network activities.

What are the key features of Check Point Quantum Force NGFW?

Centralized Management: Simplifies administrative tasks across different environments.
Advanced Threat Prevention: Shields against evolving cyber threats with real-time protection.
Deep Packet Inspection: Analyzes traffic to prevent intrusions without impacting performance.
Application Control: Manages access to applications, enhancing security policies.
IPsec VPN: Secures remote connections with encrypted tunnels.

What benefits should users consider for Check Point Quantum Force NGFW?

Scalability: Adapts to the changing needs of organizations of different sizes.
Integration Capabilities: Works alongside existing systems for a comprehensive defense strategy.
Logging and Reporting: Offers detailed insights into network activity and threats.
User-Friendly Interface: Streamlines management with intuitive controls despite initial complexity.

Check Point Quantum Force NGFW is deployed across industries for securing network boundaries, supporting critical data center operations, and enabling secure VPN connections. In finance, it helps meet stringent compliance standards, while in healthcare, it's crucial for protecting sensitive patient data through robust security protocols.

Check Point Software Technologies

StoneGate is a Highly Available Firewall/VPN. The StoneGate fault-tolerant VPN maintains sessions across multiple VPN devices and multiple Internet or network connections, regardless of device or connection failures. StoneGate provides Security, Manageability, Availability, and Scalability thus reducing network security complexity and costs. Stonesoft was the inventor of high availability for security solutions and a recognized leader in network security.

McAfee

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

Avency, R€SLER Oberfl_chentechnik GmbH, MAUSER Group, CEMEX, Cegedim, Fusion Media Networks

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Sophos and others in Firewalls. Updated: April 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

892,678 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best Firewalls vendors.

We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.