Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway comparison

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

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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

Featured Reviews

EhabAli

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable

In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.

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Pietro Di Blasi

Pre-Sales Analyst at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Organize networks efficiently while benefiting from strong reliability and support

The main use is for clients who are migrating to the cloud. We started this journey during the pandemic, and the main case is with clients who are moving to either a private or a public cloud The solution allows us to organize our networks and access within one vendor, using an integrated…

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Alexander Azikov

It Manager at Diamond Braces

A robust appliance that is reasonably priced and straightforward to set up

Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved. There are two user interface options available, namely the basic and the advanced. The basic UI is not very good and doesn't have a lot of features, although it is fast. The advanced UI allows me to do whatever I want, but this is where the issue of speed exists. At one of our sites, the CPU utilization was very high, and for no reason. Technical support needs to be more responsive to requests.

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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

"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."

"The ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."

"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."

"The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy."

"Fortinet FortiGate is good for helping you secure and protect mission-critical data."

"Advanced routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PBR). It gives you a seamless and simple integration into a large network."

"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."

"Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"Fortinet is user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature is the UTM, which gives them an advantage over other firewalls."

"The functionality provided is very good."

"I've found the UTM features and the SD-WAN to be most valuable."

"Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very easy to create the user of VPN, allowing them to use it quickly. Additionally, the integration and interface are good."

"The most valuable feature is the WAN optimization."

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

"The best part about FortiGate-VM is its strong security."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pros

"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."

"The solution can scale well."

"The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus."

Cons

"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."

"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."

"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."

"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."

"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."

"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."

"Their support can be better, and there should be better policies for immediate replacement in critical situations."

"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"Their offering for MFA isn't the cleanest."

"To improve FortiGate-VM, Fortinet needs to harden it more. For example, if you are using Hyper-V, then you need guidelines for hardening FortiGate-VM that are specific to the Hyper-V environment. If it's VMware, there should be at least a guideline on how to harden the firewall."

"The price is problematic."

"It is a very good product, and it is good at standing by itself. It can maybe have a little bit of integration with other products, but it is not that important for most use cases."

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

"Areas for improvement would be application control and web filtering."

"Data backup functionality could be included in the product."

"In the next release, we would like to see full integration with VMware NSX virtualized networks."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM cons

"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved."

"Sometimes it reboots when you least expect it, and that's the main issue."

"The product has some scalability and data management issues where improvements are required."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of FortiGate is comparable to that of most other firewall solutions and is more affordable than Cisco."

"Fortinet bundles FortiGate with other products and because of this, the price is a little expensive to some SMB enterprises."

"When I look around at other products, such as Sophos, Fortinet FortiGate is 20% to 30% more expensive with our current cost."

"Fortinet FortiGate has different licensing models, depending on what you're going to do. Services included would depend on the license model. Licenses can be renewed annually."

"Fortinet has more device options that are affordable for small businesses than Palo Alto, and its enterprise-level models are also cheaper. Palo Alto also has a separate license for VPN connections and SD-WAN, but FortiGate offers these features standard."

"If the customer is looking for SD-WAN, it comes free with FortiGate."

"We have the full version of Fortinet FortiGate and we are on a three-year contract with a commitment of five years."

"Their licensing costs are annual. The UTM feature license along with their support is called FortiCare. We include that as a part of the annual maintenance cost. Palo Alto or Juniper also have an annual subscription charge for UTM. Price, of course, can always be more competitive, but it is not the most expensive product. The price-performance ratio is quite high for FortiGate."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"The price of the solution is competitive. Fortinet FortiGate-VM had a lot of advantages when it came to pricing. However, the competition has also geared up to a larger extent and it has become comparable now to the other solutions."

"There should be a reduction in the setup price and licensing costs."

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

"It would be nice to have the ability to extend FortiGuard subscriptions at a reasonable yearly cost versus a bulk three year pricing."

"We are on an annual license for this solution and it could be cheaper."

"It is an expensive solution if you are migrating from an open source solution."

"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."

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

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pricing and cost advice

"The price of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is good compared to other similar products in the market."

"This gateway is pretty cheap."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

18%

Retailer

Real Estate/Law Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?

As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

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...

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...

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

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

What do you like most about Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?

The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?

The price of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is good compared to other similar products in the market.

What needs improvement with Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?

If you have very secure data, Zyxel Unified Security Gateway will not be very useful. My company doesn't have to deal...

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

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WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

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Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 26% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiOS vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 3% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 3% of the time

Sophos XGS vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 16% of the time

OPNsense vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

Compared 12% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Sophos XG vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

Compared 5% of the time

Sophos XGS vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

Compared 5% of the time

More Zyxel Unified Security Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Fortinet FortiGate

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Download Fortinet FortiGate-VM product report

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

March 2025

Download Zyxel Unified Security Gateway product report

Also Known As

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

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM

No data available

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

ZyWALL USG Series delivers high-access quality to help businesses satisfy the demand for always-online communications. For internal deployments, the ZyWALL USG Series provides active-passive High-Availability (HA) service to support device or connection failover.

With Device HA Pro service, the ZyWALL USG Series also supports instant failover, so connections are always maintained when a failover event occurs. For external deployments, the ZyWALL USG Series features multi- WAN load balancing/failover and a comprehensive mobile broadband USB modem support list for WAN backup operations. The ZyWALL USG Series also supports IPSec load balancing and failover, providing additional resilience for mission-critical VPN failover with VTI Interface deployments.

ZyWALL USG110/210/310 thoroughly protects networks with industry-leading firewall, Anti-Malware/ Virus, Anti-Spam, Content Filtering, IDP, and Application Patrol functionality. Regulate unauthorized use of Web applications over your network, such as Facebook, Google apps, and Netflix, among others. Zyxel security measures are enhanced with SSL Inspection, blocking threats hidden in SSL-encrypted connections while facilitating deeper policy enforcement. Furthermore, newly improved Content Filtering 2.0 enhances HTTPS Domain Filter, Browser SafeSearch, and Geo IP Blocking for an array of security enhancements to ensure clean Web connections.

Zyxel

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

Information Not Available

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway