Fortinet FortiOS vs Menlo Secure comparison

Fortinet and Menlo Security are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Fortinet is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.7, while Menlo Security is ranked #52. Fortinet holds a 1.1% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to Menlo Security’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Fortinet users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Menlo Security users who would recommend it.

Fortinet FortiOS

Read 82 Fortinet FortiOS reviews

5,585 Views
4,021 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Menlo Secure

Read 5 Menlo Secure reviews

2,923 Views
731 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Fortinet FortiOS

Menlo Secure

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Menlo Secure and Fortinet FortiOS compete in advanced cybersecurity solutions. Fortinet FortiOS has the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set.

Features: Menlo Secure's efficient threat isolation, seamless cloud integration, and user-friendly interface are valuable. Fortinet FortiOS offers advanced firewall capabilities, robust network security controls, and extensive threat intelligence features.

Room for Improvement: Menlo Secure needs to enhance reporting capabilities, improve threat detection accuracy, and optimize user interface customization. Fortinet FortiOS could benefit from a more intuitive configuration process, better documentation, and streamlined software updates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Menlo Secure provides a straightforward deployment process and responsive customer support. Fortinet FortiOS involves a more complex deployment but is supported by prompt customer service and comprehensive support resources.

Pricing and ROI: Menlo Secure is noted for competitive pricing and favorable ROI. Fortinet FortiOS, while more expensive, delivers strong ROI due to its extensive feature set and long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiOS vs. Menlo Secure Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiOS vs. Menlo Secure

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 902,988 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Menlo Secure

Ranking in Firewalls

52nd

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (26th), ZTNA (25th), Cloud Security Remediation (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiOS is 1.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Secure is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiOS	1.1%
Menlo Secure	0.3%
Other	98.6%

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

Mitul-Shah

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.

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reviewer2701794

Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are many useful features, such as web security and advanced threat detection."

"The solution constantly adds features that are useful and user-friendly such as the ability to tweak firewalls through the CLI."

"As an end user, I was pretty much satisfied with Fortinet FortiOS 40F; there were no lags, no issues, and no hanging of the firewall, and once configured, unless any policy change is required, it works in such a way that you can just forget about it after configuring it because it is that smooth, robust, and sturdy."

"It's very easy to use."

"Compared to other firewalls like Palo Alto, FortiOS is easy to deploy and upgrade - for example, an upgrade of Palo Alto takes at least thirty minutes, but Fortigate can be done in around ten."

"Fortinet FortiOS's valuable features include intuitive policy creation and deployment, precise parameter settings to determine thresholds, and security profiles such as web filtering and remote application filtering, among others."

"Security and authentication are the most valuable aspects of the product."

"I find Fortinet to be on the higher end of the scale in terms of technical support."

More Fortinet FortiOS pros

"Either you have access to something or don't have access to it, and if you do, we can ensure, 100 percent of the time, that there is nothing malicious that is going to impact our system in any way."

"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools prior to implementing them had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged."

"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."

"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."

"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."

"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."

"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."

"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."

More Menlo Secure pros

Cons

"The GUI could be improved to make it more usable, easier to administer, and easier to configure."

"There is room for improvement in the reporting part. The reporting is only for logging data, and it's just a tabulation of the log in the report. I would like to be able to take down more information in the event of an incident."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the pricing could be lower. The price is very steep."

"I believe there could be improvements in the Fortinet FortiOS operation system, such as better integration and a more centralized dashboard."

"Fortinet FortiOS need to manage its memory and CPU utilization better. It peaks at times, which sometimes can be challenging."

"While it is a solid solution, there are some product limitations which exclude it from deployment in some situations."

"You can enable and disable certain modules in it. However, with disabling, nobody can really tell us if that module is disabled."

"Their technical support needs improvement."

More Fortinet FortiOS cons

"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."

"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."

"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not cheap; it is also not expensive. It is somewhere in the middle."

"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."

"The program is expensive."

"Regarding the cost, the initial purchase is relatively cheap because it comes bundled. However, the subscription renewals can be quite expensive. The renewal costs are high, even though the initial purchase might include discounts."

"There is a license required for the solution and the price is fair."

"Be sure to choose a licensing plan that leaves a little headroom so performance is not an issue."

"The price of Fortinet FortiOS is reasonable and it is paid annually. You are able to select the features that you want."

"We pay $100,000. That covers the cost of the hardware that we run the VN's on. That also includes any SGNA costs for the internal support tech."

More Fortinet FortiOS pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."

"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."

"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

14%

Construction Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	43
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	23

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiOS?

See all answers

What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic access, and by doing it that way, it has multiple use cases. For example, it man...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some of these functions, people typically choose another technology for those specifi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Fortinet FortiGate vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 13% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 8% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 5% of the time

Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiOS Competitors

Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 18% of the time

Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) vs Menlo Secure

Compared 13% of the time

Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway vs Menlo Secure

Compared 10% of the time

Cloudflare One vs Menlo Secure

Compared 9% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Menlo Secure

Compared 7% of the time

More Menlo Secure Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiOS

June 2026

Download Fortinet FortiOS product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

June 2026

Download Menlo Secure product report

Also Known As

No data available

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

Overview

Fortinet FortiOS is recognized for its intuitive interface, ease of use, and comprehensive security features, making it a valuable tool for network security and management. Its integration capabilities and affordability prove beneficial for small to mid-sized businesses.

Fortinet FortiOS stands out as a firewall operating system, offering solutions in network security with a user-friendly design. It provides strong management tools like Unified Threat Management, web filtering, intrusion prevention, and antivirus functionalities. Its scalability and robust support make it ideal for diverse business environments. Users can benefit from high availability, seamless integration with other networks, and SD-WAN capabilities. Though there is room for improvement in monitoring and logging features, as well as VPN complexity and browser compatibility, its comprehensive range of features supports secure operations.

What are some key features of Fortinet FortiOS?

Unified Threat Management: Consolidates multiple security features into one platform for streamlined protection.
Web Filtering: Blocks access to harmful websites to enhance browsing safety.
Intrusion Prevention: Identifies and mitigates network threats in real time.
Antivirus Capabilities: Detects and neutralizes malicious software before it infiltrates systems.
Advanced Threat Detection: Uses analytics to uncover sophisticated threats.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiOS?

Scalability: Easily adapts to an organization's growing security needs.
Stability: Provides consistent and reliable performance for network infrastructures.
Robust Support: Access to extensive resources and customer support for issue resolution.
Integration: Harmonizes efficiently with existing networks and third-party solutions.
Pricing: Offers a competitive and reasonable cost structure.

Fortinet FortiOS is leveraged across multiple industries for its strong security capabilities. Companies utilize it for secure connections, VPN setups, and traffic management. It is essential for organizations seeking to protect data centers, ensure secure branch connectivity, and deploy SD-WAN. Its design supports implementation in cloud environments and enhances virtual infrastructure protection, making it particularly suitable for small to mid-tier businesses looking for comprehensive security measures.

Fortinet

Menlo Security Secure Application Access

Menlo Security Secure Application Access makes zero trust access easy, giving users secure connectivity to private applications, including web and legacy applications. At the core of Secure Application Access is the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser, which fetches, secures and delivers the content for users.

In addition to providing simple-to-deploy, clientless ZTA, Secure Application Access and the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser protect applications from attacks such as session hijacking, cookie manipulation, and other tactics that employ protocol manipulation.

Secure Application Access protects applications from Internet threats and provides granular controls for added protection of the application and associated data. These security controls include Read-only/Read-write, Upload/download, Copy/paste, AV scanning, Sandboxing, and Data Loss Prevention.

Last Mile Data Protection

Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection identifies and prevents sensitive data from leaving your company by meticulously inspecting all file uploads and user input across browsing sessions. Leveraging the Secure Cloud Browser, users are protected from the internet and you can protect your organization from data loss with comprehensive traffic monitoring and controls. This approach addresses the growing concerns surrounding data leakage in the age of AI tools like ChatGPT.

By identifying sensitive data through file types, regular expressions, or predefined libraries, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection empowers security teams to regulate data input into AI platforms and prevent unauthorized uploads. This capability provides crucial protection for intellectual property, PII, and other confidential information.

The solution leverages the Menlo Cloud Security Platform's visibility and control over traffic to reliably detect and prevent data leaks originating from both browser submission forms and non-browser traffic. With the ability to inspect encrypted web traffic, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection enforces DLP policies consistently across all users and devices, ensuring comprehensive data protection.

Menlo Security

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiOS vs. Menlo Secure

June 2026

Free Report: Fortinet FortiOS vs. Menlo Secure

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