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Fortinet FortiOS vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway 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 FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
581
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), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Fortinet FortiOS
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (21st)
Zyxel Unified Security Gateway
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
reviewer2399337 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales and technical consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
User has benefited from stable performance and effective completion of security tasks
I use it mostly for VPN and for some firewall solutions When considering my main use case with VPN, I can say that I got the Zyxel Unified Security Gateway, and it works fine. However, we are thinking about using a different solution based on open source because Zyxel Unified Security Gateway…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The setup is easy."
"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate include everything about networking, such as routing and VPNs."
"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"We’ve gone from only selling Fortinet FortiGate as an accessory to creating an entire department in our business dedicated to selling Fortinet products in the span of three years."
"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."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"I find filtering traffic, filtering web traffic, session traffic, and managing the network as valuable features."
"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."
"The user experience is great. The graphical user interface is also good."
"It has a lot of scalability abilities which makes it easy to scale."
"Firewall and overall management are valuable features."
"The solution is very user friendly."
"The pricing is excellent."
"FortiOS allows us to set up alarms for blocked websites and SSL verifications. When someone tries to access a blocked site, the solution sends a notification to the IT manager's mailbox."
"The solution can scale well."
"The Zyxel Unified Security Gateway solution is stable and does its job effectively."
"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus."
 

Cons

"In their datasheet, they put the throughput as huge, but once you enable all the features of the box, the performance is impacted dramatically."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"To stay ahead of the competition Fortinet FortiGate IPS needs to think about how to adjust pricing."
"They could continuously focus their improvements on network perimeter security, as that's what they're best at."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"The central management can improve in Fortinet FortiOS. It is sometimes difficult to manage all the devices."
"I would like to see fewer bugs. If you use the box with its basic features, the solution is straightforward and stable, but you can run into bugs when using newer features or in more complex use cases. They included a DNS filter as a new feature, and I had issues that required raising a ticket with customer support."
"Right now, all the features meet my requirements."
"Right now, we have to contend with CLI. We'd like it to be easier. We need the features to be in a UI."
"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."
"FortiOS's interface and monitoring could be improved."
"I would like to see more statistics in the monitoring part."
"In some specific products, Fortinet FortiOS faces memory issues, which can lead to unexpected downtimes."
"The product has some scalability and data management issues where improvements are required."
"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved."
"Sometimes it reboots when you least expect it, and that's the main issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is okay."
"The solution is cheap."
"The license is too expensive to renew. The license renewal process is also complex."
"Fortinet FortiGate IPS' licensing is quite simple to understand."
"It is expensive. You need to pay for the subscription every year, which is very expensive. The subscription includes technical support and hardware exchange in case of failure."
"I rate the pricing an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high."
"The solution is more expensive than Sophos. It could be cheaper. The licensing is on a yearly basis. We have had it for about three years. We must only pay extra for the license, additional requirements, and the hardware box."
"When you look at these end security systems and firewalls, these firewalls even five years ago were $50,000 or perhaps $25,000 to implement in some types of customer sites. Now we're talking about tools that are $1,000. In this case, it might have been $500 or something like that."
"FortiOS is affordable, but its price could be lower."
"The cost is around $40,000."
"The price of Fortinet FortiOS is reasonable and it is paid annually. You are able to select the features that you want."
"Be sure to choose a licensing plan that leaves a little headroom so performance is not an issue."
"The Fortinet solutions can be a bit expensive."
"A medium 100 or 200 Series box costs around $3000, and the software cost is around 55% of the hardware cost."
"The program is expensive."
"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."
"The price of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is good compared to other similar products in the market."
"This gateway is pretty cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Comms Service Provider
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Non Profit
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business357
Midsize Enterprise133
Large Enterprise189
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise23
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
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From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
I cannot definitively comment on whether Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is an affordable product as I haven't done co...
What needs improvement with Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
The integration capability is quite challenging. The system is very complicated, and many features are hidden. I'm lo...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
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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
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
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Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiOS vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,565 professionals have used our research since 2012.