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FortiMonitor vs Kentik comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

FortiMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (15th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (8th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (3rd)
Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
32nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of FortiMonitor is 0.7%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

JaimeVasquez - PeerSpot reviewer
Monitoring capabilities keep operations running smoothly and alerts enhance proactive system management
We use FortiMonitor to monitor the infrastructure of our customers. We check on what is happening with their operations, monitor bandwidth, ensure configurations are appropriate for the customer, and identify if anything is going wrong The most valuable features of FortiMonitor are its redundancy…
ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON - PeerSpot reviewer
Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup
The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution helps to see client infrastructure. It has many boxes and blinks green or red when the station goes up or down. We have different domains for the device groups that we monitor."
"FortiMonitor has a very intuitive dashboard, which makes it particularly helpful for analyzing traffic, alerts, and other information."
"FortiMonitor offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, allowing me to track network traffic in and out effectively."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is what the devices are used for. We have big backups for our Cradlepoint solutions, but FortiMonitor is a great routing device and we love working with them."
"Overall, I would recommend FortiMonitor to others."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is user monitoring. We are able to see if the user is following the policy or not from their system. Additionally, the solution integrates well with Fortinet FortiGate and has centralized management."
"It provides the best firewall features."
"In terms of the solution’s real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, I have not been able to find any other monitoring or netflow visualization tool that gives me the kind of information I get from Kentik. If I need to take a deep-dive into something that I see, it's really easy for me to do that. Whereas with most other things, I have to use five or six other tools to get that kind of data, with Kentik, I have it all in one place."
"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."
"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."
"One of the valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."
"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."
"I really love the Data Explorer. I use it all the time to go in and craft exactly what I need to see. I'm able to then take that story and explain it to the executives. I've done that a couple of times and it is helpful."
"Having the API access allows us to do a great deal of automation around a lot of our reporting and management tools."
"I am able to do a lot of work on the visualization end to create different visualizations and different ways to get information out of it."
 

Cons

"FortiMonitor needs to improve its alert system."
"FortiMonitor could be improved by making it more convenient for smaller workloads, such as when configuring a few branches."
". Enhancements in the dashboard, such as clearer alerting, maintenance window management, software version tracking, and better visualization, would be beneficial."
"There is room for improvement in the FortiMonitor report. It is not ideal for showcasing to tech customers or managers, especially when trying to display high CPU usage from logins within a specific range of months or the most recent month."
"We use FortiToken, and it's a pain to use because you have to send things through your phone and then confirm by email. Only after this can you log in. It's dual-factor authentication. I wish that I could just log in or bring up a dashboard where I could log in from."
"Sometimes, we get corruption when upgrading from firmware to the new generation, causing a lot of issues."
"FortiMonitor's monitoring could be much better. It should be like, in Palo Alto."
"I think the current features are really good for me, nothing else comes to mind right now. Maybe some small improvements could be made in the customization and configuration part of the UI to make it easier or more intuitive. Customizable UI options, like we saw in the demo, could be helpful for everyone. But in our operational environment, having clear health status and system details is crucial for us system engineers. One feature I'd really like to see is a credential management system. It would help us keep track of who's logged in and how many times, which is important due to user restrictions. Sometimes, we need to manage logins more efficiently, like logging off other users to free up credentials. So having a feature like that would be really helpful."
"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."
"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."
"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."
"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."
"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."
"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."
"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."
"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are additional costs needed for certain functionality, such as scalability."
"Compared to other solutions, FortiMonitor is a very expensive solution."
"We have a large customer base for Fortinet, and the additional buying power got us really great discounts."
"The tool's pricing model in Vietnam is a bit high. I rate the product price as an eight out of ten."
"On a scale from one to ten, I rate the pricing a nine since it is a good solution that is available at a cheap price."
"In terms of licensing, while it may not be the most expensive option on the market, it's relatively cost-effective. You can obtain licenses at a lower cost, with the calculation being straightforward. For example, if you onboard around 5,000 devices, you'll need approximately 5,000 licenses, as each device typically counts as one license."
"FortiMonitor's price is very high."
"The price of FortiMonitor is approximately $200 annually for 225 users. The price is competitive."
"The tool is cheaply priced."
"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
29%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Retailer
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have a clear bias because I work for Panopta. We aren't a fit for everyone, but I can confirm that Panopta is a lot less work to stand up and maintain. It's also a lot easier to use and onboard n...
What do you like most about FortiMonitor?
In FortiMonitor, we're linked up with our Netgear, CactusServer, and NOC. It's really valuable because everything's migrating to one dashboard for us system engineers. We can keep an eye on traffic...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiMonitor?
FortiMonitor does save time but not significantly on costs, as there are still expenses related to procurement, installation, and licensing.
What do you like most about Kentik?
It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.
What needs improvement with Kentik?
The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Panopta
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SONY, GoDaddy, HCL, ING, ARMOR, billboard
Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Find out what your peers are saying about FortiMonitor vs. Kentik and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.