We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Steelhead based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two WAN Edge solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The security fabric is excellent."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"Steelhead is stable, and it can even help you avoid service interruption in the event of a power outage. If your hardware fails, technical support will replace your device quickly."
"The connectivity to speed is the valuable feature."
"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."
"One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users."
"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."
"Scalable data referencing is a great feature."
"SteelHead works from the application. I use it to optimize traffic from Amazon. It is mainly used for customers who need to increase the traffic to 33K. For other users, it has been more of an operation."
"It is very easy to install the solution."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"The reporting in Fortinet FortiGate could improve. Customers are having to purchase additional reporting components. When I have used the Sophos solution it is a complete solution, in Fortinet FortiGate you have to use additional tools to have the features needed."
"The product needs improvement in its integration with SDN."
"If we load a primary firewall, the secondary firewall usually handles all the active connections, but in Riverbed, this isn't the case. We lose all the active connections at the moment of failure."
"Application response time and network performance could be improved."
"The product should offer more integration capabilities."
"The solution needs to have alert notifications."
"One area for improvement is related to monitoring and visibility."
"I would like to see improvement in the solution’s configuration and protocol aspects. We have got some configurations that are not set. I would also like to simplify the call detection of some protocols."
"Steelhead's handling of encrypted traffic could be improved because it requires some complex configuration to optimize encrypted traffic, especially when working with Microsoft protocols for mail servers and VPN services"
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in WAN Edge with 306 reviews while Steelhead is ranked 15th in WAN Edge with 23 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Steelhead is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Steelhead writes "Exceptionally stable and reliable but costly". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Steelhead is most compared with Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform, WAAS, Citrix SD-WAN, Noction IRP and Cisco SD-WAN. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Steelhead report.
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