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Fortinet FortiOS vs Hillstone A-Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 FortiOS
Ranking in Firewalls
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Hillstone A-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
48th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiOS is 1.1%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hillstone A-Series is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiOS1.1%
Hillstone A-Series0.3%
Other98.6%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

MS
Associate Director IT Operations at Procento
Single-pane management has simplified firewall control and has improved risk mitigation
I would not say that Fortinet FortiOS is not very scalable. Generally, what happens is that for enterprises, we hire consultants who do the capacity planning and sizing to determine what kind of firewalls to put in place. At the same time, it is not only the number of users; it also depends on the number of WAN links coming in and everything, because we have been using Fortinet for bandwidth shaping and many other bandwidth-related functions. They should improve their machine learning AI capabilities of Fortinet FortiOS because there is too much competition. Other players are also improving and making a lot of changes in their UI and overall operating system.
Albert-Wang - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Consultant at SiS Technologies
Good performance, responsive support, and an easy setup
We use the product for small and medium-sized businesses. Their scalability is good. They have a lot of choices based on their performance. Even on one unit, they have multiple ports to support customers so that they can connect to different devices. I'd rate the scalability nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the ease of use, and the overall simplicity, everyone can use it with a small introduction."
"We've been happy with the pricing."
"You are getting a very good solution with all these features combined into one box."
"The solution has proven to be stable and reliable."
"This is a user friendly solution and offers comprehensive integrations."
"I am satisfied with Fortinet FortiOS. It's a cool product and has a lot of UTM features. It has application control, web filtering, antivirus, IPS/IDS, DNS filtering, and many things in that firewall. It also has a web application firewall WAF feature. On the feature side, it's a good firewall."
"Feature-wise, the solution is strong, with SD-WAN, site-to-site VPN, load balancing, and application-based load balancing, and it is very user-friendly."
"We found the initial setup to be straightforward."
"The antivirus is very good."
 

Cons

"The solution's switches are lacking. They need more features added to them to build them out a bit."
"Right now, we have to contend with CLI. We'd like it to be easier. We need the features to be in a UI."
"Fortinet ends up being more expensive because of the pricing scheme."
"Stability is a seven out of ten because during version migrations, and sometimes with new versions, Fortinet is not as good. Palo Alto is more stable than Fortinet, but this depends on the configuration."
"In terms of what needs improvements, the troubleshooting could use improvement. When we work with other products like Cisco ASA, Palo Alto, and Check Point, we see a big difference in the troubleshooting. It's not easy to find a report."
"Fortinet FortiOS is stable. However, last month we had an issue with a released patch. We had to receive another update to fix the firewall issue consuming all of the resources. The patches should be tested more before going into circulation."
"The complexity of the VPNs should be improved."
"I want to see a better integration or a better integration with the endpoint protection or with EDR with the security life cycle."
"It would be helpful if they could integrate more with third-party security systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is quite affordable and I rate the cost a four out of ten."
"The pricing could always be lower."
"The solution is cost effective. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The pricing is competitive for the medium and high markets but for the small markets it can be expensive."
"It would be better if it were cheaper. We have the firewall in our office, and the license is expiring in 20 to 25 days. We got a quote for almost 80,000 Pakistani Rupees, which is a little costly."
"The price of Fortinet FortiOS is reasonable and it is paid annually. You are able to select the features that you want."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiOS is good. However, central management is intuitive for the end-users. We had a lot of questions about central management, and sometimes they didn't use it and did their firewall management directly on FortiGate instead of using Fortinet FortiOS."
"We pay an annual license fee. It is rather expensive so I would like to perhaps see a drop in price in the future."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise23
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiOS?
I rate the pricing for FortiOS as eight or nine out of ten. It is an affordable solution for us.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiOS?
I would not say that Fortinet FortiOS is not very scalable. Generally, what happens is that for enterprises, we hire consultants who do the capacity planning and sizing to determine what kind of fi...
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Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Cisco, Netgate and others in Firewalls. Updated: October 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.