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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
6.8
Number of Reviews
594
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
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (32nd), Access Management (34th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the ZTNA category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 7.1%, down from 7.5% 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 FortiGate7.1%
Safe-T Secure Application Access1.9%
Other91.0%
ZTNA
 

Featured Reviews

Yati Gharat - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at Litmus
Unified security management has simplified data center protection and optimized branch connectivity
In my opinion, a potential area of improvement for Fortinet FortiGate is that while it has a pretty good dashboard, which is not an issue as such, when we talk about hardware parameters, sometimes the hardware gets pretty heated up. Given the amount of traffic going through it, that is fine. However, the heat of the hardware has to be looked into. Fortinet FortiGate firewall is good, but other products like the switching part and all that fabric, in handling very audio-video traffic, sometimes it struggles on the switching part, but on the routing part, it is fine. On the firewall part, it is good; there is no issue as such up till now. Additionally, I suggest that Fortinet can add software which is in a controlled way, particularly regarding AI and ML. It should not happen that the AI/ML takes certain decisions which are not beneficial for the organization. The control should remain with the team members who are responsible for configuring this firewall.
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

"FortiGate also makes GRE tunneling possible."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The solution is extremely reliable."
"The technical support is good."
"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall has a simple configuration."
"The interface is very good."
"We are very well satisfied with the Fortinet technical support."
"The solution protects the environment from internal and external threats."
"If you need a solution for sending big files to customers or for receiving large files from them, this is a very good solution."
"Safe-T SDA has allowed my organization to secure my office applications and makes it harder for hackers to be able to hack into my internal office web applications."
"It's easy to use over the web. A user who is not in the office can use it and securely insert files."
"Safe-T is very good for users because it has a plug-in for Outlook."
"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"
"We use only it for scanning files for viruses."
"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

"In FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW), my concern regarding improvements is the licensing model."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"The configuration part was challenging, especially converting configurations from another OEM to FortiGate."
"The user interface needs a bit of upgrading."
"The interface could be better."
"I do not foresee the product being easy to scale. We find it so hard."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
"When we have something that we want improved, it takes a little bit of time until it can be fixed."
"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."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
"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."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a bit pricey for small businesses, but it is still bearable in terms of cost."
"The price is relatively expensive compared to other solutions which are providing similar features."
"We pay for the license of Fortinet FortiGate IPS annually. There are not any extra costs."
"The price of the license and warranty can be better because it is very expensive."
"The cost of Fortinet FortiGate is competitive and not expensive compared to other enterprise- grade solutions. On average, the license cost per year is around seventy percent of the firewall's purchase price."
"It has a competitive price."
"It's not the cheapest, but it's value for money. Given everything we've got out of it: the DMZ port, the VPN, and the high availability, it's a pretty reasonable price."
"It is a cost-effective solution that meets the user's needs."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
13%
Performing Arts
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business372
Midsize Enterprise138
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: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.