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Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms vs Fortinet FortiGate comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiGate
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
594
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Suraj Krishna - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Consultant at Orange
Unified edge routing and security have improved mission‑critical application performance
I do not work with application hosting capability in Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms. Implementing Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms as a gateway does not affect application performance across remote or branch offices. In terms of SD-WAN, I work with FortiGate for security. I'm currently on Fortinet SD-WAN, which is a FortiGate. We also have a third-party IPsec tunnel to form an IPsec tunnel with the third party, including Cisco and Palo Alto, depending upon the third-party devices. Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is mainly for VPN, and since I work at Orange, where we have different clients, depending upon the requirement of the different customers, if a customer is willing to migrate existing legacy networks to Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms, Fortinet SD-WAN, or Palo Alto SD-WAN, I deal with these SD-WAN technologies including the security part. Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is a very good product, and with this, we can do so many things, including integrating with the firewall, URL filtering, VPN, IPsec segmentation, and other capabilities. I would rate this product nine out of ten overall.
Yati Gharat - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at Litmus
Unified security management has simplified data center protection and optimized branch connectivity
In my opinion, a potential area of improvement for Fortinet FortiGate is that while it has a pretty good dashboard, which is not an issue as such, when we talk about hardware parameters, sometimes the hardware gets pretty heated up. Given the amount of traffic going through it, that is fine. However, the heat of the hardware has to be looked into. Fortinet FortiGate firewall is good, but other products like the switching part and all that fabric, in handling very audio-video traffic, sometimes it struggles on the switching part, but on the routing part, it is fine. On the firewall part, it is good; there is no issue as such up till now. Additionally, I suggest that Fortinet can add software which is in a controlled way, particularly regarding AI and ML. It should not happen that the AI/ML takes certain decisions which are not beneficial for the organization. The control should remain with the team members who are responsible for configuring this firewall.
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Comparison Review

it_user216600 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Consultant with 51-200 employees
Jan 3, 2016
Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate
I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business372
Midsize Enterprise138
Large Enterprise195
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms?
For troubleshooting, we are using vManage and ThousandEyes or CLI. We could improve in terms of step-by-step root cause analysis by integrating AI in vManage to assist users, especially remote IT u...
What is your primary use case for Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms?
Major use cases for Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms are primarily for SD-WAN Edge devices, application-aware routing, and it combines routing and security since this is a one-box solution integrated w...
What advice do you have for others considering Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms?
I do not work with application hosting capability in Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms. Implementing Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms as a gateway does not affect application performance across remote or br...
Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage at large. In my opinion, Fortinet would be the best option and l use Fortinet too...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know the firewalls change every 5 to 7 years as stated but you really do need to upg...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite good. The most valuable features for me are their web and email filtering. I wou...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Cisco, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions. Updated: July 2026.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.