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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Fortinet FortiGate comparison

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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

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiGate
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
594
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (2nd), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 2.9%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 7.9%, down from 17.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate7.9%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT2.9%
Other89.2%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2772102 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Logging and customizable rules have helped improve threat monitoring and detection
The logging is mainly what I consider one of the best features with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. Being able to log and store it in a file allows you to push it to a centralized repository. The logging and reporting help improve incident response. You should always be logging threats, any sort of misconfiguration, and anything that could be an issue. It's important to at least log and monitor it. The basic rules provide a good baseline in assessing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT's ability in providing real-time analytics for threat detection, but as a professional, you should look to constantly modify that baseline. They provide extensive customizability so you can define your own rules. The customizability allows it to be adaptable in protecting against diverse network threats to the constant change.
VR
Practice Head at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Unified security has protected diverse environments and supports consistent policies everywhere
I would say 8 out of 10 regarding the stability of Fortinet FortiGate. It requires a lot of bug fixing and what I understand, Fortinet is fast enough to provide bug fixes and patches, but usually I suggest Fortinet should do thorough testing of their releases and software releases and once probably they can reduce the frequency of new releases but make it stable. That's what my recommendation is. As far as the core objective of Fortinet FortiGate is concerned, I think they are meeting the targets but I guess for rolling out new features and new updates, they are doing a bit of hurry just to cope with the market dynamics. But possibly, I understand that they are compromising on the quality of the software and stability. So over there they have to improve. Rest of the aspects, I guess they are doing pretty good. We are happy. Regarding my experience with Fortinet FortiGate in comparison to maybe some other vendors such as CyberArk, Fortinet is in the top three and they give a lot of competition to their nearest peers in the market. But I guess Fortinet is really struggling in software-defined LAN, Wi-Fi, and FortiSwitches space. So they have to make their products more affordable in Forti-switching and Forti-WiFi space. They are not able to compete effectively with the nearest competitor HP Enterprise and HP Aruba.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The tool's most valuable feature is threat detection, which is important because we have multiple layers not only in Cisco."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"In general, the features are all great. However, if I need to take hardware for ASA, because they need to upgrade to Firepower, we want to create rules. For that, most of the time we go to the command line. Right now Firepower is working really hard on the grid. You can apply all those rules to the grid. Even if you want to monitor the logs, for example, the activity will tell you which particular user has been blocked because of that rule. Firepower's monitoring interface is very good, because you can see each and every piece. ASA also had it, but there you needed to type the command and be under the server to see all that stuff. In Firepower you have the possibility to go directly to the firewall. The way the monitoring is displayed is also very nice. The feature I appreciate most in Firepower is actually the grid. The grid has worked very well."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"I like most of Cisco's features, like malware detection and URL filtering."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"With Cisco Sourcefire SNORT, we've been able to prevent and detect intrusion in our network and actually decrease our SLA (Service Level Agreement)."
"The most valuable feature is reliability, and this solution is better than Check Point."
"The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"Apart from the fact that they should just include everything in their offering, everything else works fine for me."
"Technical support is acceptable, and they're good in terms of local support and global support."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"Previously, we were using another firewall device, Sophos. Compared to that, Fortinet FortiGate provides more features and better security."
"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate are UTM, web filtering, and IPS."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"It controls the traffic in the organization and the navigation of the Internet, blocks some sites, permits limited access to our information through the web, and lets us detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
 

Cons

"This solution needs to be more customizable."
"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"Performance needs improvement."
"I want to see a better dashboard for the product. The dashboard can be a bit modified or enhanced."
"There are some bugs in this solution and troubleshooting them is complicated."
"If the price is brought down then everybody will be happy."
"In most cases, the IPS engine uses too many resources, which makes Fortinet FortiGate devices unstable."
"The people we are working with are not able to configure MFA. They are having some technical issues. Fortinet needs to ensure that its partners are well-trained."
"Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations."
"There are some issues with security features and aspects like logs not being up to the mark."
"I think some improvements could be made in vulnerability scanning."
"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"The configuration part was challenging, especially converting configurations from another OEM to FortiGate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"I don't know the exact amount, but most of the time when I go to a company with a proposition, they will say, "This thing that you are selling is good, but it's expensive. Why don't you propose something like FortiGate, Check Point, or Palo Alto?" Cisco device are expensive compared to other devices."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"It is too expensive for us. My organization is very small, and we have a total of ten users. We have three internal users and seven external users. The FortiGate 100D series is too expensive for renewing the licenses."
"It is an inexpensive solution."
"It cost us around $73,000 for three years."
"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."
"The initial setup is super straight forward and as far as the licensing goes for the small product that we have, the pricing was pretty competitive. It wasn't as simple and as cheap as a SonicWall but for the service we would get it was a good price."
"Its pricing is good. The advantages of Fortinet FortiGate over its competitors include good pricing and meeting our requirements at a lower cost."
"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."
"The price of FortiGate is good."
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business372
Midsize Enterprise138
Large Enterprise195
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five. There are some other tools in the market that are more expensive than Cisco. There are no additional c...
What needs improvement with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
I have not had much experience with the community-driven rule set while utilizing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. I don't have experience with recognizing zero-day vulnerabilities, but based on my knowledg...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
Endpoint protection is the main use case. The main aspect involves specifying different rules, and when network traffic hits these rules, it will try to block the traffic or at least log the traffi...
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

Sourcefire SNORT
Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CareCore, City of Biel, Dimension Data, LightEdge, Lone Star College System, National Rugby League, Port Aventura, Smart City Networks, Telecom Italia, The Department of Education in Western Australia
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 Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Fortinet FortiGate and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.