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Fortinet FortiGate vs Safe-T Secure Application Access comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
Ranking in ZTNA
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
592
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Safe-T Secure Application A...
Ranking in ZTNA
20th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (33rd), Access Management (33rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the ZTNA category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 7.6%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Safe-T Secure Application Access is 1.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate7.6%
Safe-T Secure Application Access1.9%
Other90.5%
ZTNA
 

Featured Reviews

JK
IP Network Security Specialist at MTN Ghana
Process-Level CPU Visibility: Introduce detailed CPU-usage metrics per subsystem (e.g., IPS engine, logging) so administrators can quickly identify and address performance spikes.
Analytics with FortiAnalyzer. Being able to pull in logs not just from our FortiGates but from all our other firewalls and then get them in one view has been a game changer. Whether I’m building an executive dashboard or doing a deep dive forensics session, I get everything I need without navigating consoles.Straightforward Application Control. FortiGate spots and blocks unwanted apps (eq. like BitTorrent or streaming services) with accuracy. Segmentation with VDOMs. We’ve carved our data center into four logical ‘mini-firewalls’ enterprise, core, billing, and WAF—all on one box. Each has its own rules and logs, and any traffic between them still gets inspected. It’s like having multiple appliances without the extra hardware. Always-Up-to-Date Threat Feeds. Daily signature updates and AI-driven threat sensing mean we’re blocking the latest vulnerabilities almost as soon as they’re announced.
it_user787671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer
Needs to be easier to configure and to display logs more simply
We use only it for scanning files for viruses. That's the only feature we use in this product It needs to be easier to configure, it should be something that's working well with other sources. It should be something that allows me to see the logs simply. One to three years. Sometimes it doesn't…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The enterprise-level support is excellent, and we receive quick assistance from Fortinet FortiGate."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"Onboarded three times more customers without adding firewall hardware, cut network expansion capital expenses by roughly 40 percent through VDOM consolidation, reduced vulnerability remediation costs by about 60 percent thanks to automated FortiGuard updates, shortened policy-deployment time by over 50 percent, freeing up 10 plus hours of engineering effort weekly, and achieved payback on the initial FortiGate investment within 9 months via increased tenancy revenue and lower OPEX."
"The benefits Fortinet FortiGate provides include easy connectivity, user-friendliness, scalability, and easy configuration management."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"It's very similar to a Cisco firewall, yet less expensive."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"In almost every case, I've experienced (or had customers experience) an ROI within 12 months, based on better performance for the same price or increased functionality for the same (or less) price."
"If you need a solution for sending big files to customers or for receiving large files from them, this is a very good solution."
"You can easily integrate it and fit the system to your organization's needs, and that's a very huge advantage."
"We use only it for scanning files for viruses."
"From a technical point of view, products are stable and scalable, and we do appreciate the personal touch the sales engineers (SE) support and development bring, as well as the personal touch of the sales support, the free online, and web-based training."
"If you want a very flexible system that you can easily integrate, and develop interfaces for it or plug-ins to other application environments, it's probably the most flexible"
"This product allows us to actually send it straight from our email to the other person's email in a safe way, where we can meet all our regulations and still keep the data in our control."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
"the security level is very high. After we tested it and checked all the security aspects of the product, we found that it's highly secure."
 

Cons

"Integrating OpenVPN with FortiGate would provide a powerful combination of secure remote access and comprehensive network security."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"FortiWAN was supposed to help in doing intersite linking, but we've realized that most of the ISPs use BGP."
"We faced some technical issues on the Fortinet side."
"The solution is not scalable."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
"When we have something that we want improved, it takes a little bit of time until it can be fixed."
"One important thing that we haven't found in this product is the ability to provide a read-only view for documents. Also, the ability for the customer to add annotations to these documents."
"Setting up Safe-T SDE is very complex. It is not straightforward, and it requires much understanding on the concepts of the product."
"In terms of improvement, they need to be much more strict regarding the roadmap, about timelines and when new features will be up in production."
"Better UI. A better UI for the people that manage all the processes of Safe-T. Some of the UI is not as intuitive as you would like it to be."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is quite good. I don't have a public site, such as in Azure, where I can see the pricing. I always have to go through the distributor, and that could take some time to get the real price for each appliance."
"FortiGate SWG is reasonably priced."
"Fortinet is the least expensive solution."
"We find the most valuable aspect of this solution is the price. It is affordable, and cheaper than other firewalls."
"It is not a very costly product if you compare it with other products. The return on investment is also good. If you compare the return of investment and money that you are spending on this product with Palo Alto, Cisco, Check Point, and other solutions, the investment is very less. We are happy with this solution. The optional licenses are there, and you can choose which one you want and which one to avoid."
"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."
"It has been two years. I don't remember the actual price, but it was affordable. We buy the boxes and then use the license for three years."
"Its pricing is fine. It is on a yearly basis. Other than the licensing fee, there is no extra fee."
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Comparison Review

it_user216600 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Consultant with 51-200 employees
Jan 3, 2016
Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate
I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Religious Institution
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business369
Midsize Enterprise139
Large Enterprise195
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 at large. In my opinion, Fortinet would be the best option and l use Fortinet too...
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 the firewalls change every 5 to 7 years as stated but you really do need to upg...
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 good. The most valuable features for me are their web and email filtering. I wou...
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Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
Safe-T SDA, Safe-T, Safe-T Software-Defined Access
 

Overview

 

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
Government of Israel, eviCore Healthcore, Glen Imaging, Sarin, LBG, Rollomatic, Boegli-Gravures SA, Banque Heritage, Groupe Minoteries, Temenos, ZEK, RLM Finsbury, Harel Insurance, Meitav Dash
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiGate vs. Safe-T Secure Application Access and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.