Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs IPFire comparison

Fortinet and IPFire Project are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Fortinet is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.3, while IPFire Project is ranked #29 with an average rating of 8.0. Fortinet holds a 2.2% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to IPFire Project’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Fortinet users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IPFire Project users who would recommend it.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Read 151 Fortinet FortiGate-VM reviews

11,811 Views
10,866 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

IPFire

Read 3 IPFire reviews

3,918 Views
3,840 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

IPFire

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and IPFire based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. IPFire Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. IPFire

August 2026

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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

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Ranking in Firewalls

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

151

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IPFire

Ranking in Firewalls

29th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate-VM is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IPFire is 1.0%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate-VM	2.2%
IPFire	1.0%
Other	96.8%

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

Ehab Ali

Senior Presales Consultant at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Unified security fabric has simplified multi-country deployments and strengthened threat response

FortiGate VM delivers exceptional performance and security with no degradation of service or protection (same features as the HW option). As part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, it extends across clouds and distributed locations, mitigating blind spots in virtual infrastructures. FortiGate VM can be rapidly deployed, managed through a centralized platform, and offers a range of purchasing options to suit every need. Also, FortiGate VM offers versatile deployment options across both public and private clouds, supporting all major public clouds including AWS, Azure, and Google as well as most hypervisors such as VMware, Hyper-V, and KVM. These deployments enable organizations to create scalable, high-performance firewalls that can be tailored to different virtualized environments and hyper-scale public cloud infrastructures. FortiGate VM integrates seamlessly with various infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Jenkins and GitLab, supporting security as code practices.

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Agharinma Ehiedu

Chief Technology Officer at Agileware Limited

Firewall deployment has secured mission-critical public apps and simplifies Linux-based management

The best features IPFire offers include its very intuitive nature because, even though it has a Linux back-end, in terms of configuration, it has a very rich GUI interface. The GUI and configuration features of IPFire have made my work easier and more efficient because their positioning and the sequence with which I follow is easy. In terms of all the processes, what you need to do at first and the next thing that you need to do is clear. The GUI is well arranged in sequential order, so you can follow that from whatever you want to do until you get the target objective. IPFire includes features with a very robust and rich community that is very much valid in terms of content. IPFire has positively impacted my organization by giving us some mileage. At least, a lot of organizations now know that we have a solution that can deliver the same value.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are its flexibility and scalability. This solution is available as a license, which allows us to activate it based on the specific needs of the customer. This gives us and the customer a great deal of versatility and customization options."

"It is scalable because it is a virtual appliance. You can probably scale it up more."

"The product has been very stable, based on my ten to eleven years of experience."

"We use Fortinet FortiGate-VM as a firewall to deliver high-performance network security solutions that protect our network and data from evolving threats."

"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate include the flexibility of hybrid cloud capabilities and the way they are structuring their multi-tenancy and for managed services, along with manageability."

"The performance overall is very good."

"The dashboards are a good feature."

"This product is affordable and it's a good, high-performance appliance."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pros

"IPFire has prevented any kind of hacking and enables us to comply with customer requirements."

"I would rate the stability as ten out of ten for IPFire."

"Regarding IPFire's AI capabilities, I think they are quite focused; in all the deployments I have done, I have not had any incidents or breaches."

Cons

"There are certain GUI features that should be present but are not, although these we can address through the command-line interface."

"There are areas for improvement because usually, most policies don't change much."

"I'd like for it to be possible to cluster together data centers."

"They should keep us up to date about the latest version. That's the biggest thing. Currently, we have to go looking for the latest version. We should get notified about what's going on with the versions. I would like to see easier dual-factor authentication."

"At this moment, we believe that Fortinet FortiGate should be improved by injecting more AI because the kind of threats we are seeing are more ransomware threats. Fortinet FortiGate is able to ensure these threats do not enter, but we would prefer to see more proactive alerting mechanisms come out."

"The security of the solution could be better."

"The product may not be as robust as Palo Alto. However, unless you are a big bank, you probably won't need it to be."

"Integration could be better. There are compatibility issues with other brands, and we need that."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM cons

"Accessing the internet was a bit complicated."

"The graphical interface could be much better."

"I would rate IPFire 8 out of 10 because I do not think there is any solution anywhere in the world that is 100 percent efficient."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay for a yearly license."

"The price is fair for what we get with FortiGate."

"The cost of this product is too high."

"Our license is yearly, but we're thinking of going monthly. I think it's somewhere around 100,000 for VM04. Nowadays, everyone wants to be a hacker, so we believe in security. That's why we also have third-party people that we involve to make sure that we're secure. I don't think the costs are too bad. You still want to get advice from people who worked in security for many years, so you add a third party. The third party also said they would give their share like 100K, or 200K or something like that, so I don't think it's too expensive for security. I think it just adds more trust."

"It is more expensive than its competitor, e.g. Sophos."

"The price is similar to Symantec Endpoint, but it's more expensive than Forcepoint solutions. Fortinet is better than Forcepoint."

"I rate the product price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."

"The best part of Fortinet is the license is bundled together, so it is easy to use and apply."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

20%

Computer Software Company

University

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	74
Midsize Enterprise	35
Large Enterprise	43

No data available

Questions from the Community

Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls

In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...

See all answers

Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?

Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigate VM integrates well and has excellent centralized reporting. It is very easy to...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

I am not involved in the pricing and costs associated with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, as those are handled by the CFO. We are in operations, and we just access the product as it is and take care of the...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IPFire?

IPFire can be improved, but so far, there are no functionalities that have not been able to meet my needs. I wish IPFire could do more, but so far, I am happy with the solution. If there are other ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IPFire?

My main use case for IPFire is usually for security, functioning as a firewall for organizations that run public-facing applications. I will give you a typical example: there is an agency of the fe...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering IPFire?

I would rate IPFire 8 out of 10 because I do not think there is any solution anywhere in the world that is 100 percent efficient. In elementary physics, we are told that no machine can be 100 perce...

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 9% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 9% of the time

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 6% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 6% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM Competitors

OPNsense vs IPFire

Compared 57% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs IPFire

Compared 9% of the time

Sophos Firewall vs IPFire

Compared 7% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs IPFire

Compared 6% of the time

Smoothwall Firewall vs IPFire

Compared 5% of the time

More IPFire Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

August 2026

Download Fortinet FortiGate-VM product report

Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

August 2026

Download IPFire product report

Also Known As

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM

No data available

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate-VM delivers robust security services and advanced network management suitable for cloud environments, providing solutions like firewall and SD-WAN, with seamless integration across Fortinet devices.

FortiGate-VM is designed for enterprise security, offering comprehensive features like intrusion prevention and application filtering. It's known for its scalability and flexibility, supporting cloud platforms such as Azure and AWS. It enhances threat response and network management efficiency, thanks to real-time threat response, intuitive integration with existing systems, and cost-effectiveness.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

Strong Security: Offers firewall, intrusion prevention, and application filtering.
SD-WAN Capability: Improves network connectivity and performance.
Scalability: Efficient scaling in cloud environments.
Integration: Seamlessly connects with other Fortinet devices.

What benefits can users expect from Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

Enhanced Network Management: Simplifies deployment with real-time threat response.
Cost-Effectiveness: Optimal for managing network protocols at reasonable costs.
Flexibility in Deployment: Suitable for secure virtual machine operations on platforms like Azure or AWS.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is predominantly employed in industries requiring stringent data center security, enabling network segmentation and VPN services. It's particularly favored by organizations using virtual and cloud networks due to its Unified Threat Management capabilities, making it an efficient solution for protecting virtual environments from threats.

Fortinet

IPFire enhances network security and protects against cyber threats. It provides a secure firewall, secure remote access, and customizable options. Users praise its ease of use, flexibility, and reliability for network monitoring and traffic shaping. Its valuable features include efficient firewall capabilities, a user-friendly interface, and reliable network performance.

IPFire Project

Sample Customers

Security7 Networks, COOPENAE

1. Siemens 2. IBM 3. Cisco 4. Dell 5. HP 6. Intel 7. Oracle 8. Google 9. Microsoft 10. Amazon 11. Apple 12. Facebook 13. Twitter 14. Netflix 15. Adobe 16. SAP 17. VMware 18. Juniper Networks 19. Ericsson 20. Nokia 21. AT&T 22. Verizon 23. T-Mobile 24. Vodafone 25. Orange 26. Deutsche Telekom 27. British Telecom 28. Comcast 29. Time Warner 30. Sony 31. Samsung 32. LG

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. IPFire

August 2026

Free Report: Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. IPFire

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