Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs ShieldX comparison

The compared Fortinet FortiGate-VM and ShieldX solutions aren't in the same category. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked #9 in Firewalls , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 1.9% mindshare in the category. ShieldX is ranked #13 in MS , and holds a 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Fortinet FortiGate-VM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ShieldX users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Fortinet FortiGate-VM and ShieldX compete in the network security category. ShieldX appears superior due to its advanced security features, although Fortinet stands out for its pricing and support.

Features: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is recognized for advanced threat protection, extensive firewall capabilities, and reliable protection. ShieldX is noted for deep visibility into network traffic, micro-segmentation capabilities, and granular security policies.

Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiGate-VM could improve its configuration complexity, reporting capabilities, and initial setup challenges. ShieldX could benefit from enhanced integration with third-party tools, more streamlined management interfaces, and faster response times from support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fortinet FortiGate-VM deployment is generally straightforward, though some users face challenges with initial setup. ShieldX deployment is smoother with less intricate setup. Fortinet's customer service is highly rated, while ShieldX's support is adequate but could be faster.

Pricing and ROI: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is known for competitive pricing and strong ROI, making it cost-effective for larger deployments. ShieldX has higher pricing, but its advanced features justify the expense, presenting a compelling value proposition for some users.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. ShieldX Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. ShieldX

December 2024

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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

Mindshare comparison

Firewalls Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate-VM	1.9%
Fortinet FortiGate	20.7%
Netgate pfSense	11.1%
Other	66.30000000000001%

Firewalls

Microsegmentation Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ShieldX	0.4%
Illumio	29.5%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	26.9%
Other	43.2%

Microsegmentation Software

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.

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Sitti Ridzma Salahuddin

System Engineer at Trends and Technologies, Inc

Integrates seamlessly and helps with real-time threat response

Since the solution we offered was a complete suite with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, it was easier for them to manage because they have FortiManager as well. The main reason they wanted to position FortiGate in the cloud was so that they could easily deploy through FortiManager. That was the selling point we had for them. Especially for their multiple branches, where they had approximately 60 sites, and some assets were in AWS, it was really a good deployment opportunity. FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer were also part of that solution.

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MichaelProcyshyn

IT Director at park holidays uk

Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance

The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

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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

"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."

"The most valuable feature is the deep inspection for traffic, which is capable of identifying zero-day attacks."

"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."

"The product is scalable."

"Initial setup is easy to configure."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate IPS are firewall and filtering."

"The primary feature I appreciate about Fortinet FortiGate is the ease of setup."

"User identification and application identification are valuable features."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The policies are very valuable. They allow me to secure and manage future traffic effectively."

"Primarily, the VPN solution is most valuable. It allows you to have more flexibility in terms of what is there on the end-user device, and what is not there. You can check and make sure that they're current. It has more flexibility than just a straight VPN solution. It works really well. It has the features that 99% of people need."

"The solution integrates well with other Fortinet products."

"It is highly scalable because it has a mesh architecture that allows consistent policies."

"It offers the same robust features and functionality in virtual, on-premise, and traditional data center environments."

"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."

"The solution can scale well."

"The dashboards are a good feature."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pros

"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."

"The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."

"...It takes the exact same policies that you would apply to your on-premise environment and enables you to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."

"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."

Cons

"For Fortinet FortiGate, their code development would definitely be something they need to improve on to reduce vulnerabilities that need to be patched."

"Their technical support could be improved a little bit in terms of responsiveness."

"The initial setup is complex."

"The performance can be improved."

"There's always something new that can be added or fixed."

"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."

"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."

"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The user interface needs to be improved."

"There should be integration with an active directory — with Microsoft."

"Once the sale happens, they just vanish, and then you're on your own."

"There is an issue with Fortinet support, as we are using the premium support but have not received good results, since they take a long time to resolve queries after we submit them."

"In the next releases, it would be nice to see central cloud management."

"The interface needs to be updated and simplified."

"The operating system isn't stable, so it goes to memory counters every night."

"We face some issues with the IPsec connection during replication."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM cons

"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."

"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is okay, so far so good."

"We pay about $4,000 for a yearly license, and there aren't any additional fees."

"The pricing is better compared to other solutions like Check Point, Arista, or Cisco."

"The price is okay."

"FortiGate SWG is reasonably priced."

"Go for long term pricing negotiated at the time of purchase."

"The price for the Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable. Secure SD-WAN is free of charge. If you have their firewall, it's free of charge. It's very tempting."

"Fortinet FortiGate allows you to purchase licenses for hardware and software."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the product's pricing as four out of five."

"This solution is very expensive."

"If you are in a licensed solution, like Cisco or Palo Alto, it is cheaper. I do recommend using it with a license, because it is a security solution and it needs updates."

"I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM's pricing a six out of ten."

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

"Of all the firewalls that we compared, FortiGate is the cheapest and most affordable, so we are satisfied with the pricing."

"The tool is neither expensive nor cheap, so it is okay."

"We pay for a yearly license."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pricing and cost advice

"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."

"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."

"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."

"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	350
Midsize Enterprise	129
Large Enterprise	187

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	68
Midsize Enterprise	30
Large Enterprise	33

No data available

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Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigat...

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What do you like most about Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

An enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured.

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Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

SonicWall NSa vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 2% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Azure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 24% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 4% of the time

Sophos XGS vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 4% of the time

Zyxel Unified Security Gateway vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 3% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM Competitors

Illumio vs ShieldX

Compared 100% of the time

More ShieldX Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

September 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

September 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate-VM product report

Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

August 2025

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

No data available

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate excels in providing integrated VPN, firewalling, and Unified Threat Management (UTM) with centralized management and high availability. It supports remote access and comprehensive threat protection, making it a preferred choice for securing networks.

Fortinet FortiGate offers a robust security platform with features such as strong intrusion prevention, application control, and web filtering. Its integration with Active Directory and SD-WAN functionality provides scalable solutions for large networks. Users appreciate its ease of use through centralized management interfaces, ensuring robust security with flexible configurations. However, FortiGate could enhance its graphical interface and technical support responsiveness, address firmware bugs and costly licensing, improve logging, integrate better with third-party tools, and strengthen scalability and memory for log storage. Complexity in configuration and the need for intuitive features are noted challenges, and there's a demand for advanced security, zero-trust capabilities, and AI integration.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN: Secure remote access and connectivity.
Firewalling: Protects networks from unauthorized access and attacks.
UTM: Offers a comprehensive approach to threat management.
SD-WAN: Optimizes traffic routing for efficient network performance.
Web Filtering: Controls and monitors web access and ensures Internet security.

What benefits or ROI should be considered?

Centralized Management: Simplifies administration and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures consistent security and network availability.
Scalability: Adapts to the needs of growing networks.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Provides robust security measures.
Ease of Use: Minimizes the complexity of security management.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries like education, finance, and government. Companies use it for firewall protection, VPN, and SD-WAN capabilities, ensuring secure perimeter and data center security. It facilitates remote access management and traffic routing optimization, offering reliable security and connectivity solutions.

Fortinet

FortiGate Virtual Appliances allow you to mitigate blind spots by implementing critical security controls within your virtual infrastructure. They also allow you to rapidly provision security infrastructure whenever and wherever it is needed. FortiGate virtual appliances feature all of the security and networking services common to traditional hardware-based FortiGate appliances. With the addition of virtual appliances from Fortinet, you can deploy a mix of hardware and virtual appliances, operating together and managed from a common centralized management platform.

Fortinet

The ShieldX Elastic Security Platform dynamically scales to deliver comprehensive and consistent controls to protect data centers, cloud infrastructure, applications and data no matter where they are or where they go to make the cloud more secure than on-premise deployments. Our frictionless approach leverages agentless technology as well as the ShieldX Adaptive Intention Engine which autonomously translates and enforces intention into a set of comprehensive controls - microsegmentation, firewall, IPS and more - making security the easiest thing you do in the cloud.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

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

Security7 Networks, COOPENAE

Iowa State University

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. ShieldX

December 2024

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