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Fortinet FortiAuthenticator vs Venafi comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
Fortinet FortiAuthenticator improved security and compliance, yet financial gains are hard to quantify with some citing reduced costs.
Sentiment score
3.3
Venafi reduces outages, automates certificate distribution, saves costs, and improves efficiency with faster installations and reduced manual workload.
It enhances security by ensuring only the right person can access systems, even if their login credentials are compromised.
With Venafi, it wasn't about saving time but achieving functionality that was otherwise impossible, such as distributing certificates without manual intervention.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Fortinet FortiAuthenticator offers generally responsive support with some variance in effectiveness based on complexity and local availability.
Sentiment score
5.6
Venafi's customer service is efficient and competent, though some delays occur post-CyberArk acquisition, lacking global 24/7 support.
At times, some technical staff lack knowledge, which delays issue resolution.
Customer service and support are excellent.
Technical support from Fortinet deserves a rating of 10.
Inquiries are typically addressed the same day, with most issues, even complex ones, resolved within 24 hours.
Venafi's technical support is excellent, with even their first-tier support being in-house and highly competent.
Their technical support is knowledgeable and helpful, making Venafi stand out among other CyberArk products.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Fortinet FortiAuthenticator offers scalable user capacity and integrates well, though minor manual adjustments may be needed.
Sentiment score
4.9
Venafi is scalable across environments, with strong cloud performance, valued for access control and integration, despite setup challenges.
The scalability of FortiAuthenticator is good, and I would rate it an eight on a scale of one to ten.
I find Fortinet FortiAuthenticator to be highly scalable, and I would rate it an eight out of ten for scalability.
Fortinet FortiAuthenticator should be sufficiently scalable.
This role-based access control enhances scalability and efficiency by providing a focused view of necessary information.
Horizontal scaling is a necessity rather than vertical scaling.
Scalability with Venafi is good; you can definitely use it if you have ten thousand certs, a thousand certs, a million, or a couple million.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Fortinet FortiAuthenticator is generally stable, though hardware defects and syncing issues affect performance in high-volume environments.
Sentiment score
5.4
Venafi is generally stable and reliable, with occasional minor bugs and rare outages impacting user satisfaction slightly.
It remains stable even when the number of concurrent users increases.
Venafi's stability has been consistently reliable.
Venafi is a stable product. It's definitely more stable than others.
For stability, I'd rate it around six out of ten since we experience some outages despite the investment.
 

Room For Improvement

Fortinet FortiAuthenticator needs improved usability, integration, support, affordability, customization, and stability for better user authentication efficiency.
Venafi requires UI enhancement, improved documentation, better cloud integration, advanced features, and more development for cloud capabilities.
For example, authentication for wireless users expires after 24 hours, requiring re-authentication daily.
I recommend Fortinet make its images migratable between environments.
The technical support could be improved as some staff lacks the necessary knowledge to assist effectively.
Expanding the range of out-of-the-box integrations would significantly improve the user experience.
The yearly DNS verification required by certificate authorities necessitates manual intervention, hindering full automation.
They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we prefer on-premises solutions due to regulatory concerns.
 

Setup Cost

Fortinet FortiAuthenticator is praised for its affordable, straightforward user-based pricing, especially compared to Cisco solutions.
Venafi pricing is competitive but complex, with costs for public CA services, requiring a three-year commitment.
Fortinet FortiAuthenticator is not overly expensive compared to other Fortinet subscriptions.
Venafi offers good value for the cost.
The pricing has increased for us, impacting our organization due to its operational expenditure (OPEX).
For our budget, Venafi's cost is moderate. It's not expensive as internal certificate generation is free, and we only pay for the public CA certificate signer and for storage in Venafi.
 

Valuable Features

Fortinet FortiAuthenticator offers easy setup, cost-effectiveness, strong integration, detailed logging, and flexible two-factor authentication options.
Venafi enhances operational efficiency with certificate discovery, automation, and integration, offering ease of use, compliance, and seamless management.
The integration with FortiToken is outstanding, adding a layer of security for authentication.
We use multi-factor authentication for enhancing security.
The most valuable feature I find in FortiAuthenticator is web filtering.
The most valuable feature of Venafi is the automation that helps save time and reduce human error.
It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices.
What I like best about Venafi is that it's very easy to get somebody on a call and get any of my questions answered.
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiAuthenticator
Ranking in Authentication Systems
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (6th), Identity Management (IM) (8th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
Venafi
Ranking in Authentication Systems
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiAuthenticator is 7.4%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Venafi is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Yonas Abebe - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration capabilities simplify authentication and migration challenges need addressing
The integration capabilities of Fortinet FortiAuthenticator are very interesting, as it can be integrated with third-party devices easily and is straightforward to configure. The integration with FortiToken is outstanding, adding a layer of security for authentication. In addition, it can be used by integrating with zero trust single access, enhancing overall security measures.
Adam Goldstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates certificate management across platforms and has enhanced integration support
Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively. We integrated it with GlobalSign and aimed to automate DNS verification, although challenges remained. Venafi's platform-agnostic nature was beneficial for handling certificates across different systems like IIS, AWS, and Azure. It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices. It significantly improved our operational efficiency by automating certificate workflows. This reduced the number of certificates requiring manual management, freeing internal resources from deploying trivial certificates. While some complex certificates still needed manual intervention, automating simpler ones eliminated internal bottlenecks associated with tasks like uploading certificates to Imperva. By automating these processes, we reduced errors, streamlined workflows, and eliminated the need to repeatedly remember and execute complex procedures, ultimately increasing our overall operational efficiency. The automation capabilities are good; when properly configured, it performs as expected.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiAuthenticator?
Fortinet FortiAuthenticator is not overly expensive compared to other Fortinet subscriptions. However, it would be beneficial if the licensing allowed for more flexibility to cover additional users.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiAuthenticator?
The area for improvement in Fortinet FortiAuthenticator is its price.
What do you like most about Venafi?
We use Venafi for PKI certificates.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?
For our budget, Venafi's cost is moderate. It's not expensive as internal certificate generation is free, and we only pay for the public CA certificate signer and for storage in Venafi. With the to...
What needs improvement with Venafi?
As an end user, I cannot specifically point out improvements, but I believe it would be beneficial to display active certificates in a separate column on the UI, so users can easily find what they ...
 

Also Known As

FortiAuthenticator
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiAuthenticator vs. Venafi and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.