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 #14 in MS , and holds a 0.3% 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

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

"I haven't configured or experienced any stability issues."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall."

"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."

"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."

"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."

"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."

"The initial setup is easy."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"Initial setup is very straightforward with a wizard, if needed."

"Use of this product does not require daily interactions."

"It handles our current load with ease, and I think it can handle a bit more. It definitely can handle a lot more capacity than we currently use."

"Technical support has been super responsive and dedicated to getting any challenges resolved."

"The most valuable features are the SD-WAN and the web filtering applications control."

"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues at all while using the product."

"We are able to closely monitor the usages of individual users and see their usage habits and other items, including the data itself, which gives us quite a bit of visibility."

"GitDM, like FortiGate VM, provides similar features to FortiGate appliances or cloud solutions. However, FortiGate VM is more suitable for heavy traffic and inspection compared to GitDM. Unfortunately, FortiGate VM lacks a dedicated SPU for inspection, and all features rely on CPU and RAM."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pros

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"...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."

Cons

"At the moment, the main concern is the pricing and the type of licensing. Fortinet offers different types of licensing, and my idea is that the best approach is to have only one, two, or a maximum of three types of licensing."

"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."

"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."

"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."

"I would rate the technical support of Fortinet FortiGate as a five because it is not as strong as Cisco. Additionally, the turnaround time is very high compared to Cisco."

"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."

"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."

"One of the most important areas for improvement for Fortinet FortiGate is the limited resources for tests. I was limited to a few interfaces for one month, and it would be great if Fortinet could improve these features in their test versions."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The tool does not have a good name in the market, consisting of enterprise-class businesses, making it an area where the product lacks and needs to improve."

"The user interface (UI) and the performance of interface both need improvement."

"The price is sometimes very expensive."

"Web filtering is a feature that needs some improvement. There should be some additional features to allow active users to change their own passwords."

"The costs could be lowered."

"New versions are complicated with a big configuration."

"The management tools should be more user-friendly."

"We'd like to have more customization and easier customization of policies."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM cons

"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."

"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."

"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 fine."

"It is more affordable than Check Point and Palo Alto. Another thing is that all the features and the OS remain the same irrespective of the size of the device. Pricing-wise, Fortinet typically provides one-year support with the firewall appliance. There is also an option for three years which is how their licensing works."

"In terms of the market, it's not a cheap product, but it's cost-effective."

"It was probably about $2,500 per firewall. It was all included. It included support, services, threat management software, and 24/7 FortiCare on it. Cisco products are more expensive."

"Cost-wise, there is not much difference from Sophos, but feature-wise, we get more features."

"The support subscription for the solution is annual. You are paying for support and there are two levels of support, professional and advanced."

"The beauty is the price performance ratio is great with FortiGate. It provides all the features we needed and the price is comparable with others' firewalls. The price is quite competitive with the firewalls with similar features."

"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable for an SME."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"There is no additional cost. Once you get the licensing fee, you're good."

"It is an expensive solution."

"With Fortinet FortiGate-VM you can bring your own licensing, or it can be paid on a yearly basis."

"Installation does not require another license making it an inexpensive solution."

"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."

"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is very expensive, I rate the solution around two or three. I think the solution's prices are okay, considering the services and features they offer."

"The price of the solution could be less expensive. There are some features that have to be purchased separately that have their own license."

"The price of this product is great compared to others."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

10%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it...

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Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?

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

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Compared 20% of the time

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SonicWall NSa vs Fortinet FortiGate

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

July 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

June 2025

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Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

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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