Fortinet FortiOS vs Menlo Secure comparison

Fortinet and Menlo Security are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Fortinet is ranked #21 with an average rating of 8.6, while Menlo Security is ranked #54. Fortinet holds a 1.2% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to Menlo Security’s 0.1% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Fortinet users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Menlo Security users who would recommend it.

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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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiOS vs. Menlo Secure

September 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.4%, up from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiOS is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Secure is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	20.4%
Fortinet FortiOS	1.2%
Menlo Secure	0.1%
Other	78.3%

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.

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Harshama Silva

Senior Manager at ITX360 (Pvt) Ltd

We have improved network security with user-friendly controls and high threat intelligence

FortiOS is very user-friendly and easy to configure for L1, L2, and L3 personnel. Its web filtering, application control, and IPS features are very user-friendly, easy to manage, and deploy. The threat intelligence in FortiOS is very high, and the system is scalable without additional licensing costs. FortiOS allows us to expand the number of users and devices as our network needs grow.

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Olivier DALOY

Group Information Systems Security Director - CISO at Faurecia

Secures users wherever they are and enable us to inspect SSL traffic, but we encountered too many issues

The solution should have no impact but it does have a bit of impact on end-users. For example, we encountered some issues in the downloads that took longer than they did without using Menlo. That is clearly not transparent for users. We expected not to have any latency when downloading anything from the internet with Menlo compared to without Menlo. 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. In other words, we hope to get the same level of protection, while reducing the number of visible bugs, issues, latencies, impacts on performance, et cetera, that we have today with Menlo. We already solved most of them, but we still have too many such instances of issues with Menlo, even though it is protecting us for sure. The weak point of the solution is that it has consumed far too much of my team's time, taking them away from operations and projects and design. It took far too much time to implement it and get rid of all of the live issues that we encountered when our users started using the solution. The good point is that I'm sure it is protecting us and it's probably protecting us more than any other solution, which is something I appreciate a lot as a CISO. But on the other hand, the number of issues reported by the users, and the amount of time that has been necessary for either my team or the infrastructure team to spend diagnosing, troubleshooting, and fixing the issues that we had with the solution was too much. And that doesn't include the need to still use our previous solution, Blue Coat, that we have kept active so that whatever is not compatible or doesn't work with Menlo, can be handled by that other solution. It is far too demanding in terms of effort and workload and even cost, at the end of the day. That is why we decided to transition to another solution. If we had known in the beginning that we would not be able to get rid of Blue Coat, we probably would not have chosen Menlo because we were planning to replace Blue Coat with something that was at least able to do the same and more. We discovered that it was able to do more but it was not able to replace it, which is an issue. It is not only a matter of cost but is also a matter of not being able to reduce the number of partners that you have to deal with. In addition, they could enhance the ability to troubleshoot. Whenever a connection going through Menlo fails for any reason, being able to troubleshoot what the configuration of Menlo should be to allow it through would help, as would knowing what level of additional risk we would be taking with that configuration.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is useful for protecting and segregating the internal networks from the internet. Most of our customers also use the FortiGate client to connect to their offices by using the VPN client, and of course, they usually activate the antivirus, deep inspection, and intrusion prevention services. They are also using it for web filtering and implementing various policies dealing with forwardings, NAT, etc."

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is inspection."

"This solution has a unique range of features that are not available with any other product."

"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."

"It is complemented by other equipment, such as the Fortinet switch, and it is integrated with other tools that help to prevent cyberattacks, including a web filter, IPS, and application control."

"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."

"By utilizing features such as dynamic path selection and application-aware routing, we've been able to reduce latency for critical applications such as VoIP and video by 20-30% during peak times."

"My clients appreciate it for its features. It is easy to install and manage, and it offers all-around protection, including web filtering, content filtering, IPS, and IDS."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The firewall options in FortiOS allow us to open up access to our vendors for EDI and all its features."

"In my opinion, Fortinet FortiOS provides significant benefits to users, such as saving time, saving money, and streamlining workflow processes."

"This is an easy means of setting up high-availabilty firewall protection."

"We primarily use Fortinet FortiOS for site-to-site VPNs, reporting features, and wireless capabilities. It is well integrated within the Fortinet ecosystem."

"The interface is easy to understand, so when there are threats you get alerts. It's quite intuitive, but if you are ever confused they have instructional videos. For example, if you don't understand a graph there's a link to a video that explains what the graph means. It makes it very user-friendly."

"Overall, I rate FortiOS a nine out of ten."

"It efficiently manages large-scale firewall deployments."

"All of the features in this solution are effective and efficient."

More Fortinet FortiOS pros

"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."

"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."

"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."

"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."

Cons

"Technical support is not helpful."

"Areas of improvement for Fortinet FortiGate include the need for more training and certification, especially when dealing with distributors globally, which presents challenges in product availability and delivery timelines."

"They could simplify their deployment process, especially when customers have existing devices."

"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."

"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."

"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."

"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"A switch should be introduced."

"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."

"I can only compare it with SonicWall, and it is missing many advanced features that SonicWall has."

"Could be improved by supporting an allocation of quota base management regarding user data."

"The additional features I would like to see included in the next release is better troubleshooting and reporting."

"The solution is good, but they have poor marketing in Nigeria. They need to market their product better."

"They need to integrate more with the SD-WAN."

"Technical support could be better. Some competitors have much more responsive support teams."

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."

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"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."

"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."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is a very cheap solution."

"It's a very full-featured and it's priced well solution."

"Although the solution's pricing is high, compared with other products, it may be cheap."

"The price of FortiGate is comparable to that of most other firewall solutions and is more affordable than Cisco."

"They are very competitive, but we like to have the factory warranty taken care of."

"The cost is too high... They have to focus on more features with less cost for the customer. If you see the market, where it's going, there are a lot of players offering more features for less cost."

"This is not a cheap solution but it isn't expensive, either. It's a good solution for the right price."

"We pay for the license of Fortinet FortiGate IPS annually. There are not any extra costs."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"The solution could have a better licensing model. It's a bit more expensive than other solutions. The annual subscription is very pricy in Fortinet. The cost could be reduced."

"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."

"Pricing depends on implementation and licensing choices and is usually not a practical budget choice for small businesses."

"The price of Fortinet FortiOS has been reasonable."

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

"It is not cheap."

"The licensing for FortiOS is good, with a security license included when we update the main license."

"The program is expensive."

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."

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

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	350
Midsize Enterprise	130
Large Enterprise	187

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	42
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	23

No data available

Questions from the Community

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As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

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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...

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What do you like most about Fortinet FortiOS?

The SSL VPN is fee for use is most attractive.

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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.

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What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto....

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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 ...

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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 ...

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Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 9% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 2% of the time

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Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 10% of the time

Fortinet FortiManager vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 8% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 4% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiOS

Compared 3% of the time

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Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Menlo Secure

Compared 17% of the time

Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure

Compared 17% of the time

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

Compared 12% of the time

Silo by Authentic8 vs Menlo Secure

Compared 6% of the time

More Menlo Secure Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

October 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiOS

October 2025

Download Fortinet FortiOS product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

September 2025

Download Menlo Secure product report

Also Known As

No data available

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate excels in providing integrated VPN, firewalling, and Unified Threat Management (UTM) with centralized management and high availability. It supports remote access and comprehensive threat protection, making it a preferred choice for securing networks.

Fortinet FortiGate offers a robust security platform with features such as strong intrusion prevention, application control, and web filtering. Its integration with Active Directory and SD-WAN functionality provides scalable solutions for large networks. Users appreciate its ease of use through centralized management interfaces, ensuring robust security with flexible configurations. However, FortiGate could enhance its graphical interface and technical support responsiveness, address firmware bugs and costly licensing, improve logging, integrate better with third-party tools, and strengthen scalability and memory for log storage. Complexity in configuration and the need for intuitive features are noted challenges, and there's a demand for advanced security, zero-trust capabilities, and AI integration.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN: Secure remote access and connectivity.
Firewalling: Protects networks from unauthorized access and attacks.
UTM: Offers a comprehensive approach to threat management.
SD-WAN: Optimizes traffic routing for efficient network performance.
Web Filtering: Controls and monitors web access and ensures Internet security.

What benefits or ROI should be considered?

Centralized Management: Simplifies administration and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures consistent security and network availability.
Scalability: Adapts to the needs of growing networks.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Provides robust security measures.
Ease of Use: Minimizes the complexity of security management.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries like education, finance, and government. Companies use it for firewall protection, VPN, and SD-WAN capabilities, ensuring secure perimeter and data center security. It facilitates remote access management and traffic routing optimization, offering reliable security and connectivity solutions.

Fortinet

Fortinet FortiOS is a comprehensive security operating system that powers Fortinet's network security solutions. It provides advanced threat protection, network visibility, and centralized management for organizations of all sizes. With its robust features and intuitive interface, FortiOS enables businesses to secure their networks, applications, and data from cyber threats.

One of the key features of FortiOS is its advanced threat protection capabilities. It incorporates multiple security technologies, including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention system (IPS), and web filtering, to detect and block a wide range of threats. This ensures that organizations are protected against malware, ransomware, and other malicious activities. FortiOS also offers extensive network visibility, allowing organizations to monitor and analyze network traffic in real-time. This visibility enables businesses to identify potential security risks, detect anomalies, and take proactive measures to mitigate threats.

Additionally, FortiOS provides detailed reports and analytics, helping organizations gain insights into their network security posture. Centralized management is another crucial aspect of FortiOS. It allows businesses to manage and configure their security policies, devices, and users from a single console. This simplifies the management process and ensures consistent security across the entire network infrastructure.

Moreover, FortiOS supports integration with other Fortinet products, enabling seamless security orchestration and automation. FortiOS is designed to be scalable and flexible, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes. It offers a range of deployment options, including physical appliances, virtual machines, and cloud-based solutions. This flexibility allows businesses to choose the deployment model that best fits their requirements and easily scale their security infrastructure as their needs evolve.

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

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

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

September 2025

Free Report: Fortinet FortiOS vs. Menlo Secure

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiOS vs. Menlo Secure and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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