Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs ShieldX comparison

The compared Check Point Software Technologies and Fortinet solutions aren't in the same category. Check Point Software Technologies is ranked #7 in Firewalls , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 3.0% mindshare in the category. Fortinet is ranked #11 in MS , and holds a 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Check Point Software Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Check Point Quantum Force and ShieldX are competitors in the cybersecurity industry. Check Point Quantum Force is preferred due to its strong pricing and support, while ShieldX is often chosen for its feature-rich solutions.

Features: Check Point Quantum Force is known for advanced threat prevention, real-time blocking of malware, and zero-day threat defense. ShieldX excels in multi-cloud security, micro-segmentation, and offers deep integration for cloud environments, making it ideal for hybrid cloud strategies.

Room for Improvement: Check Point Quantum Force could improve in integrating flexible cloud-oriented features and enhancing adaptability for cloud strategies. ShieldX might benefit from making its support more responsive and accessible and streamlining its interface to be more user-friendly.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Check Point Quantum Force offers straightforward installation and extensive customer support, with dedicated assistance. ShieldX simplifies deployment with cloud-based solutions but faces occasional delays in support response times.

Pricing and ROI: Check Point Quantum Force has higher initial costs, justifying them with a significant ROI through strong security and scalability. ShieldX offers a flexible pricing model catering to various security needs, favoring lower initial costs but demanding careful ROI management for long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs. ShieldX Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs. ShieldX

December 2024

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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

Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW)	3.0%
Fortinet FortiGate	16.0%
OPNsense	8.9%
Other	72.1%

Firewalls

Microsegmentation Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
ShieldX	1.7%
Illumio	24.7%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	21.3%
Other	52.3%

Microsegmentation Software

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.

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MichaelProcyshyn

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.

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 user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."

"We are using this solution to protect our network on every site."

"The solution has improved my organization significantly, with impactful capabilities such as sandboxing and cloud solutions, such as XDR, MDR, and EDR."

"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."

"The solution effectively blocks unwanted traffic."

"It is a very user-friendly solution. Moreover, Foritgate offers good performance."

"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."

"Its performance in fulfilling our requirements has been satisfactory."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The best feature is the ability to increase the capacity of the solution by exactly what you add, not losing anything for High Availability."

"We never had an outage of the appliances or the consoles. Stability is very strong. I never had a problem related to stability."

"On the firewall side, the security efficacy is good."

"My customers cite performance and ease of configuration as two of the solution's most valuable features."

"One ability that Check Point has is that it is the first to provide us with the ability to use identities instead of using the traditional IP-based format, which allows way more flexibility in what we can do with the rule base."

"Check Point is really the best NGFW I have come across and I have worked with many vendors including Cisco, Juniper, and FortiGate."

"The Check Point Next Generation Firewall has improved the performance of our network, bringing the IT administrator a lot of information and data to make decisions about security, vulnerability, strengths, and weaknesses in our deployed projects."

More Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) pros

"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."

"...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."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX."

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

"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 most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."

"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."

More ShieldX pros

Cons

"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."

"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."

"Fortinet FortiGate SWG should be localised to specific regions to comply with local data privacy regulations because of the data privacy rules in the countries. In the Middle East, data organisation and KFA requirements are stringent."

"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."

"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."

"However, two distinct security policies must be used and nothing of the IPv6 settings are configurable via the GUI."

"Maybe they can offer a smaller scope for a cheaper price for smaller organizations."

"We are not utilizing Fortinet FortiGate to its full capacity because we have to pay for every small feature."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The cost of add-on features is too high."

"It should be user-friendly from an implementation point of view. Its setup is a little bit difficult."

"There is a huge amount of revenue lost in the financial/banking sector due to cyber attacks, so we need to have something that can highly concentrate on future cyber attacks."

"The debugging of VPN tunnels is very stressful."

"In a VPN setup, we have Internet connection via Check Point. The connectivity is not turnkey like competing devices. We have not yet terminated our site-to-site VPN because things are fluctuating right now and Check Point needs to be upgraded. Also, their troubleshooting needs to be improved for this."

"When you want to open the gateway by double-clicking on the interface, sometimes it can cause silly problems such as freezing."

"The antivirus feature is a little bit weak and should be improved."

"The URL objects take significant time in processing compared to other products like Cisco FTD; it would be better if they could improve it."

More Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) cons

"The one criticism I might have is there should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory."

"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."

More ShieldX cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Some of our customers are using Sophos and SonicWall due to price concerns, as they can't manage the pricing of Fortinet FortiGate."

"Fortinet FortiGate as a less expensive solution than Palo Alto."

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

"Fortinet costs are 25% lower than the high-cost provider. There is an equipment cost and a recurring monthly cost for licenses and technical support."

"The product is expensive."

"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is the lowest in the market."

"The pricing is fair."

"I think price-wise, the solution is totally reasonable since it has many products to serve, starting from small homes to massive scale sites."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"Licensing issues may be confusing at times."

"Pricing is good. The price is very reasonable for enterprise customers."

"While it may be slightly more expensive, when compared with competition it is reasonable."

"Check Point is competitively priced; however, there is an additional charge for the Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) and it is easy to understand."

"Pricing is a little high compared to competitive firewalls, but it is easy to go through the licensing steps."

"The prices are good for its features. The benefit of its license is we get timely security prevention updates. The price is good for the technology that we get."

"It's expensive."

"The price of Check Point is lower than Palo Alto but higher than Cisco ASA."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

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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

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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 15% 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

Illumio vs ShieldX

Compared 20% of the time

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

Compared 17% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs ShieldX

Compared 14% of the time

Nutanix Flow Network Security vs ShieldX

Compared 9% of the time

VMware NSX vs ShieldX

Compared 8% of the time

More ShieldX 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

ShieldX

April 2026

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

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

ShieldX offers advanced, scalable security for cloud and data center environments, addressing dynamic threats with precision. Its robust framework enables efficient threat detection and response, safeguarding critical infrastructure.

Specialized in delivering comprehensive security, ShieldX is designed for organizations looking to protect their cloud assets and on-premises data centers. It integrates seamlessly within existing IT frameworks, providing multi-layered defense against cyber threats. ShieldX uses machine learning and AI to detect anomalies and respond to potentially malicious activities, ensuring data integrity and availability while maintaining regulatory compliance.

What are the most important features of ShieldX?

Dynamic Security Policies: Automatically adjust security measures based on current threats.
Micro-Segmentation: Provides granular control of traffic between workloads.
Automated Threat Detection: Leverages AI to identify and mitigate threats instantly.
Comprehensive Visibility: Gain insights into network activities across all environments.

What benefits should users look for in ShieldX reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing security needs without disrupting operations.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces overhead by streamlining security management processes.
Enhanced Compliance: Supports adherence to regulatory requirements with minimal effort.
Increased Uptime: Minimizes downtime by preemptively addressing threats.

ShieldX is widely implemented in industries like finance and healthcare, where data protection is critical. Its versatile security protocols are tailored to meet specific sector needs, fostering a reliable defense against sector-specific threats. Organizations in these fields leverage ShieldX to ensure client data confidentiality and operational continuity.

Fortinet

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

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Iowa State University

Buyer's Guide

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs. ShieldX

December 2024

Free Report: Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs. ShieldX

Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs. ShieldX and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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