We compared Fortinet FortiGate and VMWare SD-WAN based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiGate is highly regarded for its ease of use, extensive features, and affordability. However, it could benefit from enhancements in SSL VPN, multi-factor authentication, and filtering. VMware SD-WAN is praised for its efficient multipath optimization and robust cloud web security, but it needs improvements in customization, Broadcom routing support, firewall capabilities, and inter-cloud connectivity. The customer service and support for both products have received varied feedback.
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"It is a safe product."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"The solution can scale well."
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"Good performance, stability, and virtual domain ability."
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"Increases the performance of applications and is easy to deploy."
"It can be used for load balancing and load sharing. It's easy to use and customizable."
"The most valuable features of VMware SD-WAN are the overall capabilities and ease of use."
"If one circuit crashes, we are able to switch to a second circuit without any disruption in connection."
"The most valuable feature is load balancing."
"VMware is the only SD-WAN solution that integrates with Azure Virtual WAN."
"There are 400 functionalities of the system."
"VMware SD-WAN is a complete solution."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"Currently, FortiGate is providing SSL VPN. But they're missing some features that are available in Palo Alto's SSL VPN."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"It needs better security."
"I would like for them to upgrade to 5G integration. Our customers have 4G now and the connectivity isn't good. It should be much faster."
"Reporting is an area that can be improved, as there are some features that are lacking with the reporting aspect."
"Better price model would be appreciated."
"Some of the service providers that use VeloCloud as their SD-WAN should be enabled to have better global visibility."
"In an upcoming release, they should allow customers the flexibility to use mobile applications where they can go and check on the information about their networks. A lot of vendors, such as Meraki, have a lot more integration with the use of portals to a mobile application. Having this feature as an alternative to logging into a laptop would be beneficial. If you are a SaaS-based company why not make a mobile application as well. You might not be able to do configurations but at least monitor while away or on vacation."
"VMware SD-WAN is harder than Cisco. It is complex, and we must take many steps to get the service. I think it would be beneficial if obtaining licenses could be simplified. Currently, numerous options and integrations are bundled together, which can make it quite complex."
"The initial setup of VMware SD-WAN was simple. However, it took six days to complete."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 306 reviews while VMware SD-WAN is ranked 4th in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 51 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while VMware SD-WAN 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 VMware SD-WAN writes "To fully utilize cloud vendors' hardware networking, Microsoft and VMware support everything". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas VMware SD-WAN is most compared with Cisco SD-WAN, Meraki SD-WAN, Cato SASE Cloud Platform, Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform and Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. VMware SD-WAN report.
See our list of best Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions vendors and best WAN Edge vendors.
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One of our favorite things about Fortinet Fortigate is that you can deploy on the cloud or on premises. It is a very stable, reliable, and consistent solution. We like that we can manage the entire network from one interface; there is no going back and forth as some other solutions force you to do. Fortinet Fortigate firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system; there is no need for additional devices. This solution offers great built-in features for web filtering and the VPN is an extremely valuable feature.
The reporting with Fortinet Fortigate needs some degree of customization so that more usable reports can be created. If you want extra features, you need to buy extra licenses, which can get expensive quickly. We would have liked to get more features with the general license. We would also like to see better cloud management.
We like VMware SD-WAN for our clients that want a very easy-to-use solution. VMware SD-WAN offers simple troubleshooting and great cybersecurity. One amazing feature it has is DMPO (Dynamic MultiPath Optimization), which helps ensure data integrity. VMware SD-WAN comes loaded with several defined applications so that you don’t have to create them yourself - this is a huge time-saver.
Reporting and security with VMware SD-WAN could be improved, though. There really needs to be some failover capabilities, especially with their own devices. We would also like to see a mobile application. Many other solutions are already offering this as a basic feature. It would help make this solution easier to manage.
Conclusion
We felt the biggest difference between Fortinet Fortigate and VMware SD-WAN was the ease of use. The zero-touch provisioning offered with VMware SD-WAN makes it very easy to set up and the DMPO makes it easy to manage. We also felt the SD-WAN on VMware SD-WAN was better.