No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Fortinet FortiOS vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (18th)
Zyxel Unified Security Gateway
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (11th)
 

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.
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

"Their classification inside of that database of the various threats is typically very, very good."
"There are many useful features, such as web security and advanced threat detection."
"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."
"The built-in SD-WAN is the most valuable aspect of the product."
"Besides the few issues we have experienced in the past, this is a stable solution and the high-availability feature is very, very good."
"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."
"We primarily use Fortinet FortiOS for site-to-site VPNs, reporting features, and wireless capabilities. It is well integrated within the Fortinet ecosystem."
"The solution is extremely scalable."
"The solution can scale well."
"The cost is very low."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like to see smaller and more frequent updates."
"It would be better if AWS instances were available. If I want to upgrade from T2.small to T2.medium, it should be available rather than having a big instance and paying a lot of money for that. The issue is that we had deployed in AWS Cloud, and we were using a very small instance. Recently we wanted to move in-house and deploy it on the big instance because it was struggling with the RAM. If we use T2.small, we cannot upgrade it to the T2.medium. It has predefined instances in the marketplace with a lot of cost differences. If I can increase the RAM, I have to choose the T3.large instance. If I'm paying $270 for the small instance, I have to pay more than double the cost for T3.large. It is about $850, and this is not good. So, it would be better if it was cheaper. I think both AWS and Fortinet should think about that. They should provide it on lower instances as well. If I want to upgrade it from T2.small to T2.medium, it should be available, but it's a problem."
"I would like to see more statistics in the monitoring part."
"A switch should be introduced."
"The support could be improved, Fortinet's response time is very slow. Setting up the VPN could be made much easier, especially when deployed with Azure."
"The threat time interval lags a little, especially if there's a heavy load on the firewall."
"Sometimes it is difficult to get support. It can take time to get an answer to our problems."
"The product has some scalability and data management issues where improvements are required."
"The integration capability is quite challenging. The system is very complicated, and many features are hidden."
"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved. The advanced UI allows me to do whatever I want, but this is where the issue of speed exists."
"Sometimes it reboots when you least expect it, and that's the main issue."
"I have never seen it in any company that I've worked with before, and I would advise other companies not to buy it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing for FortiOS is good, with a security license included when we update the main license."
"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."
"It is not cheap; it is also not expensive. It is somewhere in the middle."
"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."
"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."
"A yearly subscription might be around $20,000 to $30,000."
"The cost is around $40,000."
"This gateway is pretty cheap."
"The price of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is good compared to other similar products in the market."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
6%
 

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 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 comparisons with other solutions. When our license expires, we plan to explore ope...
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 looking for something new that is slightly simpler. Regarding user experience, the...
What is your primary use case for Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
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 thin...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiOS vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.