No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
151
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (11th)
McAfee Firewall Enterprise ...
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Ehab Ali - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer999975 - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Technician at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We cannot find resources to help us configure it, so most of the time the virus still goes on our computer and McAfee doesn't detect it
It's pretty easy to use on a daily basis, but there are no other features because it's hard to configure on the server. On the endpoint it's really easy to push. It's hard to configure on the server, though. It's hard to find resources to help us configure it, and there is not much online help that you can find. Most of the time, we were looking at the forums, and we needed to go very deep to find what we were looking for. It was hard, and McAfee was not really helpful when we were trying to get the product to work perfectly. This is why are changing it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"The thing that I like the most is that they're very willing to work with us to resolve issues that they haven't taken care of before in their product."
"Technical support has been super responsive and dedicated to getting any challenges resolved."
"It is a marvellous solution, but a bit expensive against its competitors."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"The functionality provided is very good."
"One top feature is the ability to use the appliance as a WLAN controller for up to 10 access points with the new 5.6 firmware."
"The technical support is very good."
"It's a very functional and stable product if you're looking for a Layer 7 firewall with reputation filtering and encrypted traffic inspection."
"ROI: It's good."
"It does give certain protection for everything that is well configured on our McAfee server. We have good protection with it. If we could find a feature and make it work, it would work perfectly, there would be no bugs, and it would be really good."
"For managing multiple MFE firewalls it is incredibly handy, convenient, and it is easy to use the product with McAfee Control Centre."
"We have 10 offices throughout Brazil, and now they are all connected by using the VPN feature of the firewall."
 

Cons

"Integration could be better. There are compatibility issues with other brands, and we need that."
"There are certain GUI features that should be present but are not, although these we can address through the command-line interface."
"When new versions are deployed they tend to be a little buggy, so they should be more fully tested before release."
"They could provide more integration options with different platforms."
"Right now, we have two data centers that are a thousand kilometers apart. It would be nice to be able to string them together."
"Technical support would probably be an area for improvement, particularly around the extensibility of hybrid multi-cloud integration with AI."
"Deployment can be difficult and they could dispense with reliance on FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"The key activation is very complicated at times."
"HA configuration is a bit difficult for the first time."
"The hardware is not stable and we have faced many stability issues."
"Customer support and AV are both lacking and are really hard to come to you when the product is installed. Those are the two major points that they need to work on."
"Migrating from v7 to v8 of McAfee Firewall Enterprise, in many cases, involves you having to completely re-write all of your previous McAfee Firewall Enterprise v7 policies due to the difference in the way the interfaces are named in the product going from v7 to v8."
"Administration of the firewall is a little confusing for end users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​The basic pricing in Austria is OK, but asking for special offers, e.g., NPOs, NGOs, trade up, and/or trade in, is always useful.​"
"We don't have to pay for the licenses. But we might purchase licenses in the future."
"The tool is neither expensive nor cheap, so it is okay."
"​It is on par with what you receive. It can be expensive upfront."
"For medium and enterprise organizations, FortiGate is more affordable."
"There is an annual license required to use the solution."
"The pricing and licensing are not as expensive as its competitors."
"The license can be purchased at intervals of one, three, and five years."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business74
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise43
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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiGate-VM?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, the main client I deal with is a reputed company in the market, making it easy for them to afford Fortinet FortiGate-VM compared to Palo Alto, which is...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM
Firewall Enterprise MFE, Intel Security Firewall Enterprise MFE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Security7 Networks, COOPENAE
French Ministry of Education, RWTH Aachen, Avency, Cegedim, Cobweb, Intel Security, Cemex Mauser, R_sler Oberfl_chentechnik
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Cisco and others in Firewalls. Updated: July 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.