We performed a comparison between Fortinet Fortigate and Cisco SD-WAN based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate seems to be the superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Cisco SD-WAN rather expensive to purchase, not as secure as it should be, and somewhat difficult to deploy.
"Installation is easy."
"We would recommend this solution to customers looking to implement it on a global scale. We recommend the solution, not only because of the functionality or the technical support, but also because of the delivery of the solution, and the docking and upgrading capabilities."
"It is really easy to deploy and use. It is also easy to use for failovers and designing solutions. The rollout is really quick. It is easy to adjust and roll out."
"The most valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN are reliability and scalability."
"Cisco SD-WAN has separate OMP routing."
"The orchestration on the VPN connection between remote locations is a fantastic feature. I used it some time ago."
"Load balancing is a feature that allows us to take the best of our links and distribute the load intelligently, always with an eye on the end-customer experience."
"The solution can scale. We haven't had any issues doing so."
"The security on offer is very good."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"Cisco's router and voice gateway has not been available since the launch of SD-WAN."
"Cyber security should also be implemented in the solution, along with maybe implementation of AI/ML."
"Cisco needs to improve the technical support for this solution."
"Its license model needs to be improved. They always make the license model too complex. There are too many license models and too many options. They should have a flexible license model. They can improve a lot of things in terms of scalability, templates, and automation, mainly automation for onboarding a number of sites. If you want some new features, it can take quite a long time. If you want a feature and it is not yet developed, you need to have the support of the business units to have the feature developed. If the feature is not on their roadmap, it can take quite some time before you get the feature."
"Cisco SD-WAN could improve on the ease of integration, the configuration should be easier. At the moment the process is more command line based and it would be better if it was able to be done through an interface."
"Since most user-data is going through the solution, we are concerned about security, as all the information is in the cloud and not on-premises. The user data authentification should be higher to better prevent malicious attacks."
"Better pricing and greater security would be nice to see."
"Cisco products are a little bit complicated, so making them a little bit easier would be an improvement."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
Cisco SD-WAN is ranked 1st in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 86 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 306 reviews. Cisco SD-WAN is rated 8.0, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco SD-WAN writes "A solution for integrating services to enhance up-time, performance and lower costs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Cisco SD-WAN is most compared with Meraki SD-WAN, VMware SD-WAN, Juniper Session Smart Router, Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform and Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and OPNsense. See our Cisco SD-WAN vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
See our list of best Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions vendors and best WAN Edge vendors.
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