Check Point Software Technologies (NASDAQ: CHKP) will start selling its firewalls as a subscription on November 1. Customers pay a monthly or annual fee and Check Point keeps title to the hardware, so nobody has to sign off on a big capital purchase. The program was announced on October 26. It runs through Check Point partners on a three-year term.
The bundle covers a lot of ground. It includes Check Point Force Firewalls sized and priced by the threat prevention throughput a customer needs, the AI Network Firewall features that came with the R82.20 release in July, SandBlast threat prevention, Live Updates that install without a reboot, cloud-based Smart-1 Agentic Management, 24×7 premium support and Global Services Flex Credits. Those credits can pay for moving firewall policies off another vendor’s gear. That detail says a lot about who Check Point wants to win.
Who it’s for and what it costs
Check Point hasn’t published prices. The release only says the fee depends on throughput. Customers can buy more throughput during the term and move to new hardware after 36 months. A company blog post by product marketing manager Sharon Caro is more specific about the target: small and midsize organizations “from a few hundred to a few thousand employees.” The same post claims that teams buying hardware outright “often purchase more than twice the firewall they need,” though Check Point offers no data to back that up.
The pitch leans hard on budgets. Check Point cites the IANS Research and Artico Search 2026 Security Budget Benchmark, which found the median security budget didn’t grow this year. Some 55 percent of CISOs saw flat or lower budgets, and 64 percent asked for more money while only 45 percent got it. Pete Finalle, a research manager at IDC, said in the release that “consumption models that turn on-premises security hardware into a predictable operating expense” can help close that gap.
The product line Check Point needs to fix
The timing isn’t random. Hardware is the weak spot in Check Point’s numbers. In the second quarter, products and licenses revenue fell 14 percent to $113.4 million, while security subscriptions rose 12 percent to $332.6 million. Support revenue slipped 3 percent, and total revenue grew just 1 percent to $673.6 million. Security subscriptions now bring in about half of quarterly revenue. Product sales bring in about a sixth.
Management pinned most of the appliance shortfall on its own sales reorganization. CFO Roei Ganzarovski called it “a combination of internal disruption and definitely also behavior of customers,” and CEO Nadav Zafrir said the company needs about 300 more go-to-market staff. Higher memory costs also shaved gross margin, and the CFO said securing appliance inventory takes up a big part of his time. The stock fell about 9.6 percent in premarket trading after that report.
Its main rivals are in a very different place. Fortinet’s product revenue jumped 37 percent to $765 million in its third quarter, with price increases adding about 10 points to billings growth. Fortinet’s CFO described the usual motion there: larger enterprises buy the hardware first, then add security subscriptions. Fortinet does run FortiFlex, a pay-for-usage licensing program, but it centers on virtual firewalls and security services. Palo Alto Networks reported product revenue of $738 million for its fiscal fourth quarter, up from $574 million a year earlier.
What it means for recurring revenue
A monthly fee for a box looks a lot like recurring revenue, which is the part of Check Point that’s already growing. The catch is cash timing. Check Point says it carries the capital cost and keeps the hardware, so money it used to collect on day one now comes in over three years, at a time when memory is getting more expensive. The release doesn’t say how the company will book the revenue, or how big the program could get.
For smaller buyers sitting on aging firewalls, the offer is simple. No upfront bill, and a path off a competitor’s gear with migration paid for. If it works, Check Point picks up buyers who were stuck waiting on budget approval. If it doesn’t, it’s just one more way to buy the same appliance.
Check Point reports third-quarter results on November 2, a day after the program goes live. Management has called the third quarter the bottom for product sales and expects a return to growth in the fourth. Watch whether it says how much of that recovery is coming through subscriptions.