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Check Point Web Gateway vs McAfee Web Protection [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

iboss
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
Check Point Web Gateway
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (18th)
McAfee Web Protection [EOL]
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
KT
Senior Security Consultant at Orange Cyberdefense
Has improved threat visibility and centralized management but needs wider feature support
We have not worked much with granular control over web usage policies, so I cannot provide detailed feedback. We have not worked with the effectiveness of the multi-layered defense approach in threat prevention. Their product coverage is not as extensive as some competitors. They have fewer products and features compared to competitors. Support for operational technology (OT) is not as comprehensive in Check Point Web Gateway as it is in competing products.
VivekGupta7 - PeerSpot reviewer
DGM at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Secure, reasonably priced, and performs well
We used cloud services for testing purposes. We used Amazon cloud services. Depending on the solution, there are a variety of options. There are several options such as Endpoint, WAF, NAC, and SIEM are currently available. A variety of solutions are implemented. It was a third-party implementation by Inspira. McAfee also provides an endpoint solution. McAfee's DLP is also present. Previously, we had used Trend Micro and Symantec. There is a method we had to upgrade our systems, a solution was required, and it had to match the three, four solutions from one company that were going to be cheaper, and there is a bidding process, whoever comes first, based on quality and cost, wins the competition. The requirements were speed, quality, and cost. Because Symantec was about to be renewed, our renewal would be more expensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would say iboss is a very good product; its scalability is very good, and it's seamless for the user."
"The iboss solution gives me the ability to scan the traffic through all the ports, through all the 131,000 PCP and UDP ports, and with this ability, we have the granularity also for consults over social media and applications on mobile, and this is an advantage that the customers are looking for right now."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"This product is solid, fairly easy to use, and reliable."
"The main advantage of iboss is its cloud-based security centralized policy management, which helps organizations protect users working from different locations, secure access to cloud applications, and reduce security risks."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"I recommend iboss for organizations looking for strong cloud-based web security and centralized access control."
"From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe."
"The most valuable features of Check Point Web Gateway are all the IPS. However, what matters for users is content and web filtering."
"The stability of the tool is very good."
"SmartConsole is intuitive."
"The interface is simply amazing; it is really user-friendly and it has improved our organization a lot."
"For security concerns, Check Point Web Security is the best solution with features such as URL filtering, application control, and antivirus."
"We have required technical support quite a few times, and it has been very forthcoming from Check Point."
"Application control allows the administrator to create granular policies based on users to allow, block, or limit access."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"Provides good accessibility and handles any overload very well."
"McAfee Web Protection has been around for many years and the solution holds its ground as a product providing good accessibility and handling any overload very well."
"The LiveSafe version works very well and has a very small price."
"McAfee Web Protection is good technology, absolutely, and it has a very particular configuration that you can implement in a granular way."
"The most valuable is the blocking of blacklisted sites, a URL that is, either by intelligence or by McAfee, detected as a malicious site."
"I would recommend the solution to others; it works well for me and it is affordable."
"It's a solution that permits making a granular configuration and it is easier to deploy the same configuration on a lot of devices using the central console. It is the master of the product."
"Even if the product, as well with the Advanced Threat Defense costs a lot, it's a long-term investment and will help you with attacks."
 

Cons

"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"I appreciate that iboss's single pane of glass console gives centralized visibility into web traffic, user activity, security policies, and alerts from one dashboard, allowing us to quickly investigate incidents and monitor policy violations without switching between multiple tools, improving operational efficiency; however, the dashboard customization and reporting could be more flexible."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices; it is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents, and that is where in 2025 we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"The product requires prior knowledge and information and would be difficult for an engineer with minimal experience to understand."
"Check Point Web Gateway could improve the graphical user interface to make it more appealing."
"The documentation must be improved."
"There is room for improvement in support because the solution needs multiple regions to reach certain features and validations."
"Check Point Web Gateway could add an end point access function."
"The tool's response time can be improved since sometimes it lags, but not always...The tool's UI should be made more dynamic."
"Their product coverage is not as extensive as some competitors. They have fewer products and features compared to competitors."
"We understand that if we want to see greater connections, greater services, and a greater capacity established for primary equipment, this solution needs to evolve to make an application installed directly on equipment."
"In McAfee Web Protection there are gaps in the security design, in the overall architecture, the gaps need to be fixed."
"We need a better customer experience and more flexibility in the product."
"The only thing I can think of that might be negative is that sometimes I get a feeling that web protection products are purposely filtering some sites that are not really malicious."
"Lacking filter for spam."
"The solution could always use more security features. If it was more secure, it would be an even stronger product."
"We used a consultant to help us set it up. Unfortunately, he was not that good. They were out of McAfee people. He was a consultant and knew the product, but he was not a McAfee person. How they managed it and how they worked was not straightforward."
"The True Key version for mobile phones should be improved. The password manager is not as seamless as on the desktop. Once implemented, on the desktop, when you go to the site, it automatically fills and connects you, whereas, on the mobile phone, it doesn't do that quite seamlessly. You need to open the True Key application and then select the password you want to use. It then opens in the browser. There are fewer steps in the desktop version as compared to the mobile version."
"Endpoints are lightweight agents, eating too much of the host resources."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"Our customers pay a licensing fee annually or once in three or five years, per their requirements."
"The price is on the higher side, even when compared to Azure Firewall Premium."
"This program is very, very expensive."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The product is neither too expensive nor too cheap, so it comes at a good price point for my company."
"The price is very high."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price as a seven out of ten."
"The product is not cheap. It is expensive."
"It is expensive. Licensing is on a yearly basis. You need to do the support subscription."
"In McAfee Web Protection you have the ability to install any appliance you want with the same license. If you need an appliance on-premise, you can install it with the same license because the license is for users, not for appliances. If you need one more, you can install it and you don't have problems with the license or need to change your environment."
"It is not very expensive. It costs 100 Canadian Dollars per year per license. I buy one-year or two-year protection. The license covers my PC, laptops, and telephone. The cost is per user but for multiple devices. It has just the standard licensing fees. There are some options for extended protection. For example, if I wanted to have a VPN, there will be an extra cost. So, there are upgradable features, but I'm very happy with what it is giving me with the basic plan. It gives me the basic privacy protection that I need."
"The pricing is cheaper than some of the other options that are available."
"$150 Canadian per year."
"The license number would be approximately $35,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
7%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
iboss could be improved by making the dashboard more user-friendly, providing more detailed real-time alerts, and imp...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
iboss is primarily used for cloud security, helping to protect users when they access websites and cloud applications...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
The pricing and licensing for iboss were reasonable for the security features. The setup costs were manageable, thoug...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point Web Gateway?
It will be the same pricing as other solutions. Fortinet is the cheaper product, while Palo Alto and Check Point Web ...
What needs improvement with Check Point Web Gateway?
As of now, I did not notice any significant areas for improvement. The interface of Check Point Web Gateway is far be...
What is your primary use case for Check Point Web Gateway?
My main use case for Check Point Web Gateway was web filtering and application control. When I want to block social m...
Do you recommend McAfee Web Protection?
I highly recommend McAfee Web Protection. In my opinion, it is a comprehensive web protection platform with a great f...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
No data available
McAfee Web Gateway, McAfee SaaS Web Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.
Morton Salt, Medical Advocacy and Outreach, BH Telecom, Lightbeam Health Solutions, X by Orange, Cadence, Nihondentsu, Datastream Connexion, Good Sam, Omnyway, FIASA, Pacific Life, Banco del Pacifico, Control Southern, Xero, Centrify, Tradair, Laterlite, Phoenix International, Unisinos, Wilkin Chapman, Connexus Energy, Mutua Universal, Smart & Final, Central New Mexico Community Colleg, Grupo Financiero Multiva
Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Zscaler and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.