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Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs ShieldX comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 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 Quantum Force (...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
346
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (6th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (2nd)
ShieldX
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Microsegmentation Software (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Security Systems solutions, they serve different purposes. Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) is designed for Firewalls and holds a mindshare of 2.9%, up 2.9% compared to last year.
ShieldX, on the other hand, focuses on Microsegmentation Software, holds 2.3% mindshare, up 0.4% since last year.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW)2.9%
Fortinet FortiGate14.0%
OPNsense7.9%
Other75.2%
Firewalls
Microsegmentation Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ShieldX2.3%
Illumio Segmentation23.2%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation19.0%
Other55.5%
Microsegmentation Software
 

Featured Reviews

DS
Network Security Engineer at Connecting Cyber Networks
Advanced threat prevention has protected our perimeter and simplifies daily security operations
Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) can be improved in several areas. First, the interface could be a little more intuitive for new users. The Smart Console is powerful, but it has a steep learning curve when you start using it. Some simple functions for common tasks would help. Second, the initial setup and configuration take quite a bit of time and expertise. It would be helpful if there were more guides, wizards, or templates to speed that up. Third, the price model could be more transparent and flexible. The license cost can add up quickly, specifically when you want to add more advanced features. Finally, I would appreciate seeing better integration with some third-party security tools we use. Right now, we have to do a lot of manual work to make everything talk to each other. Overall, these are minor things. The core product is really solid and does what it is supposed to do very well. The documentation could be more comprehensive in some areas. When we run into issues, the documentation does not have clear answers, so we end up contacting support. Speaking of support, the response time could be faster sometimes. We have had cases where we need help with a certain security issue, and it takes longer than we would prefer to get a response. As for features, it would be nice to have more general reporting options so we can customize reports for different teams and stakeholders without having to do manual work afterward. One more thing, better mobile access to the dashboard would be helpful. Sometimes we need to check on security alerts when we are away from the office, and the mobile experience is not as smooth as it could be. Again, these are improvements that would make it even better, not issues with the core product itself.
MP
IT Director at park holidays uk
Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance
The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) has positively impacted our organization by notably reducing intrusion prevention attempts, as we see a reduction in phishing-related malware that were previously bypassed but now are blocked, leading to reduced security incidents."
"The solution is robust and can handle heavy workloads and user traffic well. The product is good."
"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."
"Fortinet is easier to set up due to its understandable interface and ability to connect to the CLI directly from the web interface without needing an external SSH client."
"The most valuable feature of Check Point NGFW is the unparalleled distribution of the network traffic, and the central management station they have allows you to manage everything from one place."
"The solution boasts a host of features that we like."
"Its functionality is highly satisfactory."
"The event logs are relatively informative and can provide information on why traffic was accepted or rejected."
"...It takes the exact same policies that you would apply to your on-premise environment and enables you to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."
"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."
"Once you install it you can virtually forget about it; it's very low-maintenance and high-protection."
"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."
"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."
"ShieldX makes it a lot easier and a lot simpler to define your policies and define your rules, and that greatly reduces the opportunity for user error."
"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX."
"The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."
 

Cons

"Stability issues. I built out this firewall in a cluster, and I had stability issues day one. Needs to be rebooted frequently. Tunnels need to be bounced frequently. Their hardware compatibility guide, when I built out the servers to host them on, was not accurate."
"The management of memory in the hardware needs to improve. They have had a lot of issues with memory leakage."
"A lot of things need to be improved in Check Point NGFW. One, their support team isn't very efficient and useful."
"SmartEvent Settings and Policy GUI, and the rest of external apps should be improved."
"The current model is predominantly hardware appliance-based, which can incur substantial costs"
"Check Point, of course, has flaws."
"Interoperability with other vendors is not the strongest when it comes to setting up VPNs."
"The training for Check Point Firewall should increase, including the number of Training Centers. For most new people in our organization, we have to provide them training from our end, as they are not trained in Check Point Firewalls. So, we have to do the training, from our point of view, to make our engineers able to use Check Point Firewalls. However, with other firewalls, they are already trained, so we are not require to provide them training. This could be improved by the Check Point Community."
"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."
"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."
"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."
"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."
"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."
"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is on the higher side."
"The price of Check Point is lower than Palo Alto but higher than Cisco ASA."
"It falls in a moderate price range, not as inexpensive as some alternatives but not as costly as Palo Alto."
"The price is high in comparison to other solutions."
"Use the basic sizing tool to do the correct sizing so you don't waste too much money, because it's not a very cheap solution when compared to other vendors."
"The technology itself is impressive, but I find the pricing a bit on the higher side."
"The cost of the pricing and licensing are okay. They are giving me a good product as far as I know. It is more expensive than Cisco, but cheaper than Palo Alto, which is fine. It has many good features, so it deserves a good price as well."
"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."
"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."
"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."
"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."
"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."
"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."
"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."
"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
19%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business164
Midsize Enterprise94
Large Enterprise198
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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). -Check Point GUI is a bit complicated, -Application and Web filtering are better t...
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 cloud platform, autoscaling, and the ability for users to create virtual IP addr...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point NGFW?
Our experience with pricing for Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) has been mixed. The initial setup costs were fairly significant because we needed to buy the hardware appliances and then pay for th...
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Also Known As

Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall
APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Control Southern, Optimal Media
Iowa State University
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