We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Meraki MX based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet FortiGate and Meraki MX have a similar user rating regarding ease of deployment, pricing, service and support, and ROI. In terms of features, users of Fortinet FortiGate had mixed reviews on the interface, and felt the reporting feature needed updating. On the other hand, users of Meraki MX felt there was a need for better and more monitoring capabilities.
"So far, it has been very stable."
"The ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the graphical user interface, works out, and Cisco keeps it current."
"It has a good security level. It is a next-generation firewall. It can protect from different types of attacks. We have enabled IPS and IDS."
"The most valuable Cisco Secure Firewall features are options, features, and ease of deployment because it's an appliance."
"The feature my customers find the most valuable is the exportability."
"The most important features are the intrusion prevention engine and the application visibility and control. The Snort feature in Firepower is also valuable."
"When I was managing these firewalls, I found them easy to understand, easy to deploy, and easy to maintain as compared to some of the other firewalls I have been involved with earlier. The opinion of my coworkers is that it's easy and quick to establish new zones, expand, and maintain."
"The most valuable feature is the anti-malware protection. It protects the endpoints on my network."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution."
"The solution is stable."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"Easy to deploy with a simple configuration."
"To me, the analytics feature is one of the most valuable in Meraki MX. I also find that it has good usability as it's cloud-based. Another valuable feature of Meraki MX is that it's simple to use and it's user-friendly."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"What I like best about Meraki MX is that it's easy to deploy remotely. The product works. It has automatic updates. I also like that Meraki MX is a brilliant device. You turn it on, stick the key in there, activate it, and then you're done. Meraki MX does what my customers need at the end of the day, so I also like that."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki MX is I can manage the solution from anywhere remotely, I can throttle bandwidth, and create all rules. Additionally, it is secure for our customers."
"Dual WAN connections are greatly simplified and point-to-point VPNs automatically connect regardless of what WAN connection is active."
"Point-to-point VPNs can dynamically follow IP changes with no need for static IPs."
"We have seen some bugs come up with Cisco Secure Firewall in terms of high availability. The solution should be improved to avoid these bugs."
"We have encountered problems when implementing new signatures and new versions on our firewall. Sometimes, there is a short outage of our services, and we have not been able to understand what's going on. This is an area for improvement, and it would be good to have a way to monitor and understand why there is an outage."
"We only have an issue with time sync with Cisco ASA and NTP. If the time is out of sync, it will be a disaster for the failover."
"We cannot have virtual domains, which we can create with FortiGate. This is something they should add in the future. Additionally, there is a connection limit and the FMC could improve."
"I would like it if they made the newer generation a bit simpler. You can do ASA code and FXOS. It is just a bit confusing with the newer generational equipment on what it can do."
"One of my colleagues is using the firewall as an IPS, but he is worried about Firepower's performance... With the 10 Gb devices, when it gets to 5 Gbps, the CPU usage goes up a lot and he cannot manage the IPS."
"There is room for improvement in the stability or software quality of the product. There were a few things in the past where we had a little bit of a problem with the product, so there is room for improvement."
"The solution is overcomplicated in some senses. Simplifying it would be an improvement."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"The pricing could always be better."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"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."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"They're very complacent and I find the rule set to be a little arcane."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"Meraki has some hidden features and information that is only privy to their engineers. If that information became available to us, then it would improve our ease of management, and we would be able to make certain adjustments instead of having to go to them."
"We had minor issues with Meraki MX. We had a couple of RMAs, so that could be an area for improvement, but in terms of how the RMAs went, the turnaround time and getting those back into redeployment were quick. Another area for improvement in Meraki MX is that when you're scaling for multiple locations, you need to use the same model, but the model you'd need is only available for a short time. The specific model you require could be out of stock, or Meraki isn't making that model anymore, so Meraki should improve that."
"Meraki MX firewalls are great for small to medium-sized businesses, but other solutions are better for enterprise-sized companies."
"We have been having a problem with the VPN. When the energy goes down and is back again, the VPN link doesn't get established. We have to manually turn off the modems and other pieces of equipment and manually establish the VPN. It has been around one month since we have been having this problem, and we don't have enough support from Meraki to solve the problem."
"MX can only be managed via a web interface, but I'm accustomed to using a CLI or a graphical interface. I would also like to see more reporting features. It doesn't provide enough information for me to know precisely about some clients."
"An area for improvement in Meraki MX is that it needs some provision, as supplying the unit through Cisco can be tedious at times, but as far as the product itself and its offerings, Meraki MX is five-star all the way."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 99 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 9 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Meraki MX is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Provides good visibility, easy to configure and manage, and good for small businesses". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with pfSense, Sophos XG, WatchGuard Firebox, Check Point NGFW and Cisco SD-WAN, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, pfSense, SonicWall NSa and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Meraki MX report.
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definitely the FortiGate , I can assist you with configuration and support if needed .
I recommend that using a Sonicwall as the peripheral firewall as you can easily configure the firewall rules to block certain countries. Its ease of use and SSL inspection and many other features and reporting features are more than sufficient for a small company.
You don't need a dedicated IT department, Sonicwall provide cloud-based support services that can assist you 24hrs/ 7 days.
To enhance the firewall protection further, we also deploy ZoneAlarm and webroot security firewalls at the desktops level. We also have several firewalls routers to safeguard very important servers, giving an onion-like "layers defense" structure.
We have Meraki Mx devices now, we are looking to replace them. But that is because the Meraki MX platform lacks SSL Inspection, Granular Firewall rules (Block only, no allow setting), client vpn relies on windows vpn setup (we would prefer a software solution).
But when we bought Meraki's we were switching from something with little to no visibility into the network. The visibility we got with the meraki and the content filtering and ability to block countries was quick and easy to setup. If we weren't looking to lock things down further, we would renew our Meraki's rather than replace them.
We are also looking at the fortigate series, but we would be using the latest generation - I think the 60f would be the newest of the 60 size.