Azure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 14, 2022

We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Fortinet Fortigate VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of Azure Firewall overwhelmingly agree that the initial setup is easy and straightforward. Likewise, users of Fortinet Fortigate VM feel the same, and state that you will have limited downtime because it is so easy to deploy.
  • Features: Valuable features of Azure Firewall include the intrusion detection and prevention system, network filtering, integration, security, connectivity, threat intelligence, virtual IP addresses, and auto scaling. However, reviewers feel that Azure Firewall could benefit from better scalability and a more user-friendly interface and that their reporting, logging, and monitoring features need improvement. Users of Fortinet Fortigate VM find the most valuable features to include visibility, monitoring, user-friendliness, solid user interface, and very good documentation. Users of Fortinet Fortigate also felt that the overall stability could be improved.
  • Pricing: Users of Azure Firewall agree that the pricing is fair, and cheaper than Fortinet Fortigate VM. Reviewers of Fortinet Fortigate VM acknowledge that the pricing is more expensive than its competitors' prices.
  • Service and Support: Users of Azure Firewall mention that service and support is usually very good. However, there are some users who indicate that the response time can take a bit longer than desired. Fortinet Fortigate VM users say that technical support and customer service are not wonderful.
  • ROI: Azure Firewall users have seen cost benefits, stating that you get better value for your money. Users of Fortinet Fortigate VM say they have yet to see an ROI.

Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Azure Firewall seems to be the more favorable choice. It is priced more fairly than Fortinet Fortigate VM; it includes more features; its survive and support ratings were much better than Fortinet’s; and PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to have a greater ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM Report (Updated: September 2023).
734,678 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?
Answer: Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigate VM integrates well and has excellent centralized reporting. It is very easy to use, provides greater security than many other solutions, and is very scalable and flexible. This solution has an amazing VPN offering, which can help filter traffic to ensure the right traffic is getting through while blocking the rest. Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall cloud platform, autoscaling, and the ability for users to create virtual IP addresses. The cost of the solution is also competitive. Fortinet FortiGate VM can be challenging to deploy. Updates are not automatic and one needs to be vigilant to ensure they are not missing any in order to stay current. Also, some new updates can be a bit buggy and should be tested more thoroughly before release. For Azure Firewall, you have to specify each IP address used. We also found Azure to be challenging to implement from region to region, as it does not currently offer a universal approach across regions. Conclusion It really boils down to what you need the solution to do for you or your client. Fortinet FortiGate has VPN options that are super secure and flexible and best represents what many of our clients are really asking for, as so much of the workforce is still working remotely. Azure Firewall is great with cloud-based options and of course, being a part of the Azure ecosystem makes it a great fit for many of our clients. Both of these solutions help us offer excellent, necessary options to our varied client base across the globe.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Good performance, stability, and virtual domain ability.""The security on offer is very good.""Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable.""It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation.""The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS.""Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it.""The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall.""I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."

More Fortinet FortiGate Pros →

"It is easy for me to protect certain ports or even the IP addresses, as well as do whitelisting, blacklisting, and the FQDN when we want virtual machines connected and to protect certain websites.""The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good.""The initial setup is straightforward; Azure Firewall does not have a complex implementation process. It is very simple; you just need to enable the service within Azure. It does not require any maintenance because it is managed by Microsoft, that is, it is a fully managed service.""It provided ease of maintenance. If a new firewall was needed, we only had to run the pipelines for this. So, the maintenance was very easy.""It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature.""The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats.""In terms of the reporting, it's beautiful. It integrates with Azure monitoring and with Azure policies. That piece is a big help. You can set governing policies and you can use the application firewall, as well as the Azure Firewall, to enforce those policies.""We use the solution for application and server deployment."

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"FortiGate integrates well.""The most valuable feature is that its IPsec works perfectly.""The best part about FortiGate-VM is its strong security.""FortiGate-VM has many valuable features: it's easy to use, it's intuitive, it's got very good traffic inspection features, it's got comprehensive filtering categories, and it has an extensive threat database, using FortiGuard.""The interface is decent.""Fortinet FortiGate-VM is easy to use.""The configuration, graphical interface and command line are easy to use.""The solution can scale well."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM Pros →

Cons
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful.""I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security.""The solution is very expensive.""There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved.""Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved.""When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues.""There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes.""The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."

More Fortinet FortiGate Cons →

"It would be much easier if the on-premises, firewall rules, had some kind of export-import possibility in place, which is not the case right now.""It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB.""An Azure firewall is not a real firewall.""There should be better monitoring and logging. Currently, it is put in Sentinel. It should be more seamless and from the interface.""For large organizations, a third-party firewall would be an added advantage, because it would have more advanced features, things that are not in Azure Firewall.""Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories.""Azure Firewall definitely needs a broader feature base. It should be able to go all the way up to layer 7 when looking at applications and things like that.""Azure Firewall should have a free trial version for new users so that they can evaluate it before deploying it."

More Azure Firewall Cons →

"Price-wise, it could be slightly better, however, if you compared it to other makes and models of equal category, it is generally cheaper.""The pricing is expensive.""The product has issues with integration. I would like to see better integration in future releases of the product.""Support could be improved a little.""New versions are complicated with a big configuration.""The solution could use very well-defined support for resellers.""FortiGate-VM could be improved by making it cloud-based. I'd like it to be a cloud-based management solution instead of just a dedicated management orchestration tool.""Areas for improvement would be application control and web filtering."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "I had to pay for the license for the firewall, but it is guaranteed to have updates. I expect a good service for it. It was about €1000 for a year, and there was no additional cost."
  • "It is more expensive than Sophos. Fortinet is overall more expensive than Sophos. The small range of Fortinet, such as 60F and 80F, is more expensive than the small range of Sophos. Sophos is cheaper. In addition, if you jump from 80F Series to 100F Series, the price doubles."
  • "The license is yearly. We pay for the top end. It's called 360."
  • "Here in Brazil, we're going through difficult economic times and the tax on the dollar is high. All the solutions from minor competitors are growing in the market. The prices have come more competitive."
  • "Licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is on a yearly basis. Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
  • "The licensing scheme of Fortinet is better than Cisco. It is more logical."
  • "The solution requires a license annually, it is not a user license, you can have as many users as your want. I must renew the license regularly per device."
  • "It was probably about $2,500 per firewall. It was all included. It included support, services, threat management software, and 24/7 FortiCare on it. Cisco products are more expensive."
  • More Fortinet FortiGate Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
  • "It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
  • "Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."
  • "The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
  • "Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."
  • "It is expensive, especially with the premium functions. For one of the clients, it was very expensive. You have to use it more at an enterprise level, and there, it was not at an enterprise level. So, it was very costly, but security-wise, it was a very wise decision to use it that way."
  • "The pricing should be competitive. If you compare Azure's pricing to that of security solutions from AWS or GCP, theirs is much more competitive. Azure Firewall should also have similar competitive prices so that it is accessible to small- and medium-sized organizations."
  • More Azure Firewall Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "With Fortinet FortiGate-VM you can bring your own licensing, or it can be paid on a yearly basis."
  • "There are no additional costs beyond the standard fee."
  • "There is an annual license required to use the solution."
  • "The cost of this product is too high."
  • "There are yearly or monthly licenses which you can choose from."
  • "The solution could be better priced."
  • "The license we pay is a yearly fee. I can't say it's very expensive; it is a good price and is highly suitable for our usage."
  • "We have been waiting a long time for the vendor to give us licenses, it has been five months and we are still waiting. However, the price is reasonable."
  • More Fortinet FortiGate-VM Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and… more »
    Top Answer:From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know… more »
    Top Answer:As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite… more »
    Top Answer:Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure… more »
    Top Answer:Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the… more »
    Top Answer:Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigate… more »
    Top Answer:In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it… more »
    Top Answer:The ease of access and user-friendly setup is a valuable feature. Fortinet proves to be particularly straightforward to… more »
    Top Answer:The price is pretty decent compared to other products. The product’s licensing must be a little cheaper.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate
    FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM
    Learn More
    Overview

    Fortinet FortiGate is an innovative line of firewalls that aim to protect organizations from all types of web-based network threats. They come in a wide variety of product types. Fortinet FortiGate’s solutions are available in a large range of sizes and form factors and are key components of the Fortinet Security Fabric, which enables immediate, intelligent defense against known and new threats throughout the entire network.

    Fortinet FortiGate provides users with next-generation firewall solutions that provide proven protection with unmatched performance across the network, from internal segments to data centers to cloud environments. You can protect every part of your network without exception. Additionally, your protections can be managed from a single central location. This ensures that the task of protecting your network is infinitely easier to accomplish.

    Benefits of Fortinet FortiGate

    Some of the benefits of using Fortinet FortiGate include:

    • The ability to manage your firewalls from a centralized automated control console. Fortinet FortiGate’s FortiManager enables administrators to exercise control of their firewalls in a streamlined manner. Administrators have full visibility and control over their system from a single location. It utilizes automation that collects information in real time, which greatly simplifies and reduces the cost of running various types of workflows. Administrators can free up resources by automating the most basic tasks.
    • The ability to produce uniform, appropriate, and coordinated responses to threats across networks. Fortinet FortiGate’s FortiGuard feature generates system protections in near real time. This allows administrators to address threats to the system with custom-made solutions that can be uniformly enforced.
    • The ability to scale up your security to fit your changing security needs. Fortinet FortiGate’s design allows users to accelerate the transfer of data between users and escalate the number of users that are covered without compromising security of performance. This means that users can grow their networks and continue to collaborate without worrying about the system slowing down or coming under attack.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Fortinet FortiGate’s firewall solutions are cutting edge. They stand out from competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are the robustness and power of their firewalls. Fortinet FortiGate’s firewall provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with the solution. These firewalls enable users to use a single piece of software to accomplish tasks that often require the use of multiple pieces of software.

    PeerSpot user Eric S., a Solutions Engineer and Consultant at a tech-services company, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface.”

    PeerSpot user Jim M., a network admin at Penobscot Valley Hospital, notes the power of Fortinet FortiGate’s security software when he writes, "It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall.”

    Azure Firewall is a user-friendly, intuitive, cloud-native firewall security solution that provides top-of-the-industry threat protection for all your Azure Virtual Network resources. Azure Firewall is constantly and thoroughly analyzing all traffic and data packets, making it a very valuable and secure fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. Azure Firewall allows users to create virtual IP addresses and provides for secure DDoS protection for the virtual machines on your network. It also provides fast and efficient east-west and north-south traffic security.

    Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service built to protect your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability.

    Azure Firewall has two significant offerings, Standard and Premium.

    Azure Firewall Standard works directly with Microsoft Cyber Security and supplies excellent L3-L7 filtering and threat awareness. The proactive real-time threat awareness will quickly alert you and immediately deny all traffic to and from any known problematic or suspicious domains or IP addresses. Microsoft Cyber Security is updated continually to protect against all new and known potential threats at all times. To learn more about Azure Firewall Standard, click here.

    Azure Firewall Premium provides everything the standard version does, and additionally adds extra levels of data encryption, network intrusion detection, extended URL filtering, and Web category filters. To learn more about the added features of Azure Firewall Premium, click here.

    Key Benefits and Features of Azure Firewall:

    • High availability - You do not need load balancers with Azure Firewall; it's already built in and ready to go.
    • Self-scalability - Azure Firewall is intuitive and will auto-scale as needed based on traffic flow to be ready for peak traffic times.
    • Threat awareness - Using Microsoft Cyber Security to filter traffic, Azure Firewall will deny any known problematic threats to keep your network safe.
    • Additional IP addresses - You can securely add up to 250 public IP addresses with Azure Firewall
    • Improved web category filtering - You can set up specific protocols to allow or deny categories within websites that are deemed inappropriate for use within your network. You have the ability to organize categories based on a defined set of descriptions.

    What our real users have to say:

    Many PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to be very user-friendly and easy to use. They liked that it offers seamless integration to the cloud and were especially pleased with the threat filtering options.

    Regarding integration and threat intelligence, our users wrote:

    “The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.”

    The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats.”

    I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system.”



    FortiGate Virtual Appliances allow you to mitigate blind spots by implementing critical security controls within your virtual infrastructure. They also allow you to rapidly provision security infrastructure whenever and wherever it is needed. FortiGate virtual appliances feature all of the security and networking services common to traditional hardware-based FortiGate appliances. With the addition of virtual appliances from Fortinet, you can deploy a mix of hardware and virtual appliances, operating together and managed from a common centralized management platform.

    Offer
    Learn more about Fortinet FortiGate
    Learn more about Azure Firewall
    Learn more about Fortinet FortiGate-VM
    Sample Customers
    Pittsburgh Steelers, LUSH Cosmetics, NASDAQ, Verizon, Arizona State University, Levi Strauss & Co. Whitepaper and case studies here
    Information Not Available
    Security7 Networks, COOPENAE
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider16%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization22%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm29%
    Government14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider16%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business48%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise30%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise33%
    Large Enterprise41%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business53%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise24%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise51%
    Buyer's Guide
    Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM
    September 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
    734,678 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Azure Firewall is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 14 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 38 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.0, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Scalability and centralized filtering reduce the management overhead, but there should be a consistent service speed worldwide". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "Flexible with good cloud management and a straightforward user interface". Azure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Check Point NGFW, Netgate pfSense and Meraki MX, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, OPNsense, Netgate pfSense, Fortinet FortiOS and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.

    See our list of best Firewalls vendors.

    We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.