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Fortinet FortiOS vs Hillstone CloudEdge comparison

 

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
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Hillstone CloudEdge
Ranking in Firewalls
46th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiOS is 1.1%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hillstone CloudEdge is 0.4%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiOS1.1%
Hillstone CloudEdge0.4%
Other98.5%
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
Comprehensive cloud security with robust threat protection and VPN capabilities
Hillstone CloudEdge is compatible with all the mainstream public cloud providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba Cloud. This solution has a unified OS system for security products, ensuring that the virtual firewall has similar features to the on-premise solutions. Important features include a VPN, VTech VPN, SSL VPN, QoS, antivirus, threat protection, and sandbox capabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best solution in the category including the price in Thailand is Fortinet FortiOS."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiOS is great."
"This solution has helped our organization prevent multiple attacks."
"I personally think the site-to-site VPN is the most useful feature. A lot of firewalls have that, but to me, that's one of the features that's essential."
"It has worked well for us overall, and we are happy with its capabilities."
"It's simple to use in terms of inbound and outbound traffic management, traffic shaping, and connectivities, as well as the VPN."
"We switched to Fortinet because it's easy to use and deploy, and in recent years, Fortinet has worked to combine the SD-WAN and next-gen firewall into one device, improving the ease of use."
"The solution seems very stable once you have everything up and running."
"I'd rate the solution nine out of ten."
"Hillstone CloudEdge is compatible with all the mainstream public cloud providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba Cloud."
"I would recommend this product to any business that wants to protect its cloud environment, cloud server, or on-premises virtual servers."
"The solution is very easy to download and configure. The initial setup was very easy. The technical support is very good."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more statistics in the monitoring part."
"I would like to see a drop in the license fees because it is a rather expensive program."
"Right now, all the features meet my requirements."
"Fortinet's central management needs to be improved. FortiManager's technical tool provider ability should manage all Fortinet security products. Right now, FortiManager only manages the configuration of FortiGate."
"There are some features for FortiGate using FortiOS that can only be enabled via a command line. These aren't very advanced features they have been part of FortiOS for quite some time but they still aren't accessible from the graphical user interface. It makes it a little bit harder than it should be for us to manage the solution. That's my main concern with the user interface. Another concern we have is some elements for the user interface, if they're not properly configured, it could lead to hardware and performance degradation."
"There should be more documentation on how to use the CLI or how to perform CLI versions of tasks that can be done through the GUI."
"They're using a lot of application-specific IC, so that may be causing some performance issues. And whenever a Fortinet adds new features, it can affect performance."
"The solution is good, but they have poor marketing in Nigeria. They need to market their product better."
"There is room for improvement in AI features, particularly for zero-day attacks and providing maintenance guidance."
"The solution needs more granular level reporting on system usage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Fortinet FortiOS is less than $10,000 annually. The price of the support is reasonable compared to competitors."
"We pay an annual license fee. It is rather expensive so I would like to perhaps see a drop in price in the future."
"FortiOS is affordable, but its price could be lower."
"The best solution in the category including the price in Thailand is Fortinet FortiOS."
"The pricing is competitive for the medium and high markets but for the small markets it can be expensive."
"A medium 100 or 200 Series box costs around $3000, and the software cost is around 55% of the hardware cost."
"Pricing for the tool can vary. Sometimes, aggressive pricing is offered at the start, but later, as subscriptions and expansions are needed, the costs can increase, and customers may have to pay whatever is required."
"Be sure to choose a licensing plan that leaves a little headroom so performance is not an issue."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
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...
What needs improvement with Hillstone CloudEdge?
There is room for improvement in AI features, particularly for zero-day attacks and providing maintenance guidance. More AI features would be beneficial.
What is your primary use case for Hillstone CloudEdge?
Our primary use case is to provide cloud-based security solutions for customers using public cloud platforms. We distribute Hillstone CloudEdge and work with its various solutions to ensure securit...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
LinkTime
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiOS vs. Hillstone CloudEdge and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.