We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate, and Meraki MX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."The product offers good scalability."
"The greatest benefit for the organization is the confidence that we are secured."
"I like them mostly because they don't break and they have great diagnostics."
"Firewall help with cybersecurity resilience. I really like this Cisco product. It's user-friendly. I don't like some other vendors. I've tried those in the past. Cisco is pretty easy. A caveman could do it."
"The most valuable feature is the Intrusion Prevention System."
"We chose Cisco because it had the full package that we were looking for."
"The AnyConnect remote access VPN gives us an easy way to deploy remote working for our users."
"Provides good integrations and reporting."
"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."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"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."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"The features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"Dual WAN connections are greatly simplified and point-to-point VPNs automatically connect regardless of what WAN connection is active."
"I use Meraki in my POCs and with my customers as well."
"The solution is good for load balancing."
"Easy to administer and saves time when you have many smaller locations that you have to manage."
"The initial setup for me was straightforward."
"I am happy with the technical support for the solution. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"What I like best about Meraki MX is that it's easy to deploy remotely. The product works. It has automatic updates. I also like that Meraki MX is a brilliant device. You turn it on, stick the key in there, activate it, and then you're done. Meraki MX does what my customers need at the end of the day, so I also like that."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"Nowadays, nobody is in the office, so I need to figure out how to put the firewall outside. If I could have a centralized firewall that also receives information from external locations, like peoples' home offices, that would help us consolidate everything into one appliance."
"The virtual firewalls don't work very well with Cisco AnyConnect."
"Cisco suffers from some integration issues with other products... There is a problem with the Cisco Catalyst Switches in terms of assembling bursts and having them interact properly with the Cisco Firepower."
"HTTPs inspection and higher throughput/spec would be good."
"The initial setup could be simplified, as it can be complex for new users."
"Other products are becoming easier to access and configure. They are providing UI interfaces to configure, take backup, synchronize redundant machines, and so on. It is very easy to take backup and upgrade the images in those products. Cisco ASA should have such features. If one redundant machine is getting upgraded, the technology and support should be there to upgrade other redundant machines. In a single window, we should be able to do more in terms of backups, restores, and upgrades."
"The ease of use needs improvement. It is complex to operate the solution. The user interface is not friendly."
"I think they need to review their whole UI because it feels like it was created by a whole bunch of different teams of developers who didn't fully talk to each other. The net policy screen is just a mess. It should look like the firewall policy screen, and they should both act the same, but they don't. I feel like it's two different buildings or programming, who don't talk to each other, and that really annoys me."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"The user interface could be improved."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"The whole Cisco Meraki range requires easier access for cameras. For a security center, it would be helpful to have easier access to cameras through the portal. Its licensing cost could also be better."
"The product is quite complex to set up."
"We have been having a problem with the VPN. When the energy goes down and is back again, the VPN link doesn't get established. We have to manually turn off the modems and other pieces of equipment and manually establish the VPN. It has been around one month since we have been having this problem, and we don't have enough support from Meraki to solve the problem."
"What I would like to see in the next version is to have more interfaces for WAN links."
"They need to improve the link between Meraki and Active Directory."
"Right now, you can postpone the update but eventually, if you don't do the update, it will install the updates automatically for you and that's something that is not working for me."
"I need more UTM protection security features."
"Expensive licensing and firewall stops immediately working if the license is not renewed at expiration date."
