Fortinet FortiClient Reviews

We use the tool for our internal private network. We have many in-house servers. If we want to connect to the servers from home, we need to use FortiClient to connect to the network and access the virtual machines.

We cannot access the network without FortiClient. It can be used as an additional layer for the firewall.

We can manage users and traffic using the solution. We can use it for personal communications and virtual tunnels. Only authorized employees are allowed to access and use the VPN. Others can’t make any changes. We can create a hierarchy for the employees and allow them to access particular networks. For example, we do not allow any employee to use social media.

We can monitor and restrict some websites. The product is user-friendly. The level of security depends on how well we configure the product. We can enhance the security level by adding proper configuration. We only allow access to limited websites. There is a minimum chance of clicking on any malware links.

The tool is expensive.

I have been using the solution for more than five years.

I rate the tool’s stability a nine out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten. We are using the enterprise version. We have purchased licenses for 100 users, but our organization has 50 to 70 users.

We pay an annual subscription fee.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as anti-malware. 

The dashboard is great.

It offers good customization and integration with other software.

The initial setup is very good. 

The artificial intelligent aspect of it needs improvement. Having worked with Sophos Intercept X before, I found it fascinating, especially the integration between the endpoint agents and the file. The synchronized security in that solution was great.

However, with Fortinet, it's not as easy. Sophos was simpler. With Sophos, when you are securing your assets, you are securing not only the network perimeter but also the endpoints. And the threats are coming from all sorts of directions. They can come from the internet or a USB. Fortinet needs to cover more areas where threats can come from.  

We've been using the solution for 12 months. 

Currently, we have not had any major issues in stability. I will still say that we are still experimenting with it as the product is very new. That said, in general, it is stable. 

The solution can scale, and we can still scale it as well. It could be expanded further and it could be used more extensively used in our organization. We likely will increase usage.

Their products are very highly scalable. They know how to develop products that adapt to the demands that come in the industry. That is why even experimenting on some of their products is very easy for many organizations.

The product is very responsive. We are happy with them. 

Positive

I've also used Sophos, which is a pretty easy, broad solution. 

I've also used Kaspersky. 

The setup, the design, and the deployment are pretty straightforward.

The deployment can happen in just a matter of hours. 

How many people you need for maintenance depends on the organization's size. It can be done by one person.

I used to do the deployment. Right now, I do have a team that is in charge of that.

We looked into CrowdStrike, however, we did not go to the point of running a proof of concept. They suggested among the software that we were looking at, of course, Intercept X. Sophos, the endpoint agent, is very, very bulky, however. It tends to make most computers become slow when installed, so that was out of the question.

There is Gartner reporting that informs a lot of decisions when it comes to solutions that organizations choose to go for. The ones that are higher up in the ranking in the Gartner are what most organizations will go for. That said, we like to experiment with different industry solutions to gain insights.

We're a customer and end-user. 

We are using the latest version of the product. 

I don't interact it on a day-to-day basis. I'm not technical. 

I appreciate Fortinet as one of the industry leaders, and its product portfolio is very extensive. 

I'd recommend the solution. Fortinet is an industry leader. It is known especially for the FortiGate Firewall. 

We have not yet exhausted their entire portfolio. Still, I have a lot of respect for Fortinet. I will highly recommend them, whether it's a cloud solution or it's a network security solution, or an endpoint security solution. 

I would rate the solution six out of ten. It's still early days and I haven't looked at it exhaustively. 

We primarily use the solution as a VPN. It's to help our remote employees connect. We use it mainly for security reasons so that our staff has clean, secure, internet access.

The security is good. It helps us avoid attacks. The antivirus database is quite strong. 

It's helpful in that it allows us to create secure remote connections. 

The service is centralized.

We don't have matching infrastructure in our company for our customers as it is too expensive. It's difficult to see the licenses due to the cost. We don't find it too expensive as we do not have too much infrastructure, however, our customers have more infrastructure and need more and therefore it can get pricey.

Cloud services are very expensive for us. 

We'd like Fortinet to offer bundled options in the future. 

I've used the solution for seven to eight years so far. 

This is quite a stable solution. I'd rate it nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We have around 20 people using the solution right now. Our engineers from the system department handle the solution. 

The product is quite scalable. I'd rate the ease of expansion at a nine out of ten. 

I've dealt with support in the past and they are helpful and responsive. Typically, items are dealt with by the next business day. They are very fast to respond. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is not very simple. 

The time it takes to deploy depends on the environment. If you are adding some rules in, it could take a few hours. If you have everything organized ahead of time and you have all of the rules decided beforehand, it is pretty easy. An implementation like that can go pretty fast. 

We handled the setup ourselves. 

The solution is expensive. We found the cloud to be very expensive. 

Licensing is usually paid yearly.

We are Fortinet partners. 

We're using the latest version of the solution. We renewed our hardware just last year. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate the product nine out of ten. 

We are using the solution completely for VPN purposes. We have infrastructure VPNs, and our clients are completely relying on FortiClient.

We are providing SSL VPNs with separate IDs for all the clients. With the FortiClient software, they can use our service even from home, with all kinds of solutions - like public VDA. They can access the VDA from their home with FortiClient. They just need to connect to the solution and be directly accessible to this local VDA service.

It's a completely user-friendly solution for any kind of platform, including Linux, Windows, Mac, et cetera. Our clients rely entirely on FortiClient.

It has a great split tunneling feature. The split tunneling feature is good in cases when we want to browse the internet through the ISP connection without going through our organization. It's for the client to browse the internet without going through our organization. The remaining traffic will go through a web firewall, and only the public features will go through their ISP.

The solution is stable.

You can scale the product.

The solution is easy to set up, deploys quickly, and doesn't take too many people in terms of handling the setup.

Technical support is good.

It works well with other Fortinet products.

FortiClient is not great in Linux. Our clients report issues from some of their Linux versions where FortiClient has some issues. In Windows, it is perfectly fine. In Mac OS also, it is excellent; however, in Linux, it is somewhat tough to handle.

We would like to see user-based authentication. It is already there. However, we are not able to save profiles completely in many of the releases. We will need to type these user-based things again and again on each connection fail. Therefore, once it gets connected, it is not completely up. We need to connect again after a session time-out.

I've been using the solution for eight to nine years.

It is a stable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable.

The solution scales well. It's not an issue at all.

We have between 4,000 and 5,000 users on the solution. Maybe 3,000 students will use it, and around 2,000 faculty.

We do have plans to increase usage.

The technical support has been good. We've found them to be helpful and responsive.

We have used other private VPN solutions. For example, OpenVPN. FortiClient, however, completely works well with FortiGate solutions which is why we moved on with FortiClient.

We required two people to handle the setup process. It's completely configurable. We were able to have everything up and running in two or three days. It's pretty straightforward and doesn't take a long time. Our network administrators handled the setup. We have two people handling maintenance.

We didn't need any outside assistance. We handled everything in-house.

We have seen an ROI as it allows our users to work from home, which saves in-office resources. It's helped us cut down on our budget.

We license FortiClient as a VPN and don't require any other licenses.

I'm a customer and end-user.

I can't say which version number we are on at this time. We're likely on the most up-to-date version.

We like that the solution provides us with a more secure feeling. Also, client connectivity is not that difficult to configure. With the DNA in FortiClient, we can directly use the server from home. It is completely user-friendly and less time-consuming. Users can improve their production time greatly.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

It's useful to permit users working from home to connect to the internal infrastructure, sort of as an on-prem resource, in a secure way.

I find it very easy to configure and also very stable. It integrates well with Windows 10.

An area of improvement could be better integration with the active directory. I did not find it easy to configure.

I worked with different versions of Fortinet for two years, specifically in 2019 and 2020. I used it to configure the server part of the FortiClient.

It is a stable solution.

It's not very scalable. We don't have a lot of availability. We only have one gateway and the clients connect to it.

It depends on the product you buy based on the performance, but you can start from 200 and above.

The customer service and support are good. Although, the only point I don't like is that they take too much time to escalate the case. You have to do a lot of things yourself, even if it's something that needs their attention, so it's quite difficult to escalate it a little bit.

The initial setup is quite easy. It's not so much about the technical staff as it is about the initial configuration on the firewall side. This includes setting up certificates for secure connections and creating groups for users. It requires understanding what is needed for each group and user and then configuring it accordingly. If it's a new deployment, it's quite easy. However, it could be more difficult if you need to replicate it from other systems.

The deployment process involved several steps to ensure the solution was properly configured and accessible.

First of all, we had to configure the company's firewall to ensure it was deployed correctly. Then we had to configure the interface to connect to the system, set up certificate group user policies, and configure all the necessary steps. After that, we had to install FortiClient and configure it correctly to ensure the resources were accessible.

The deployment process took around two weeks to complete, but that was because we had to ensure everything was configured correctly and tested thoroughly before it could be fully implemented.

There are no licensing fees for the VPN.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution support on the customer's network. It's a VPN product. We enter into their network and give support. 

It's good to use the solution with other solutions. There's good connectivity.

It is very powerful. 

The solution is good for scalability. 

If you are knowledgable, it can be set up rather easily.

The solution requires skillful users. 

There are a lot of requirements. It makes it a bit complex to use. 

Security could always be improved. This is true for every VPN provider. We are seeing quantum computers, and it's only a matter of time before we will be using something like this we'll need security to match, including quantum-safe keys for VPNs and so on. 

I've used the solution for two to four years. 

The solution can scale, at least for my purposes. I'm not sure if there is a limit to how large it can scale. It can scale security-wise. Users can move from a simple password to two-factor authentication. 

Technical support has not been used. We don't have any issues with the problem.

I work with a lot of clients and therefore use a lot of VPN solutions. For example, we also use Palo Alto or OpenVPN. OpenVPN is simpler to use. 

I find the solution very easy to set up as I am knowledgeable. 

The solution can be deployed in ten minutes. If you need to configure something, it might take five minutes more on a new computer. 

The deployment is very easy. You simply download the solution from Fortinet, and the installation software is simple to click through, so long as you don't need too many configurations. 

I can't speak to the pricing. The customer handled the costs. 

We're using the latest version of the solution. 

We use the solution personally as our clients use the product. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd recommend the solution to others. It is a very good product. OpenVPN is also quite a good solution as well. 

We primarily use the solution for the VPN.

The VPN capabilities are good. 

It's very stable. 

It can scale well.

Techical support has been helpful.

We'd like to have a guided config process. We'd like it so that, when you want to configure something or allow new segments or servers, you launch a wizard, which will guide you on how to configure it.

We'd also like to see a deployment wizard to help implementation become streamlined. 

I've used the solution for four years. 

The stability is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. I'd rate the stability five out of five. 

We have about 300 people using the solution right now. 

The scaling is pretty good. I would rate it four out of five in terms of its scaling capabilities. 

I've had a positive experience with technical support. They are very good. 

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution. 

I was in the company when they were refreshing the hardware. I handled the setup. It's not very straightforward in that there are many steps involved. You have to define the separate routing and then deal with the portal for separate applications, and then have a policy for that. It took one or two days to do the deployment. 

We only need two people to maintain the solution internally. 

We had the help of a consultant, a reseller. 

We may have compared this solution to Check Point. We found Fortinet to be simpler and had better compatibility.

We are customers and end-users. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our primary use for FortiClient is just for its capability to securely connect VPN users from outside our environment during the lockdown. It has strong authentication.  

We use it for a VPN client for our network users. They just connect to our network in order to get access to our enterprise environment and for the EFT (Electronic File Transfer) system.  

FortiClient is valuable because it is free for us to use to provide VPN services to the people who need to access our network from external locations.  

This product is very good. Graphically, it is okay, but this may be one area where it could be better. It should be more graphically inviting. It is okay as it is, but it could be improved.  

If I compare FortiClient VPN and OpenVPN, FortiClient VPN takes too much time while installing on someone's computer or laptop. I do not know why that is. The installation takes too much time compared to OpenVPN. OpenVPN is a very light software. It is installed in a couple of seconds. It does not make sense that FortiClient takes so long to install. I just feel it is a problem that could be addressed.  

We have been using Fortinet FortiClient since February or March of 2020. So it is a little over six months.  

This solution is definitely stable.  

I think this solution has good scalability. Originally when I installed it I thought maybe 30 or 40 or 50 users could be connected with this extra VPN. It would have been okay if it could just do that. But now, I connected about 200 users and they are able to connect using this VPN software and they can securely access my network from outside our physical location. The performance has not degraded.  

I have had some experience with Fortinet's technical support. If I feel I have the need for some support, I can contact the local Fortinet representative. I can also contact some good local vendors. I can talk with them as well and get support easily. I do sometimes reach out to get support from the local vendors that I have a good relationship with. That is why I can get good support from them as well as from Fortinet. Support is no problem.  

We used another VPN solution before FortiClient VPN. It was called OpenVPN. That is an open-source solution and we still use it.  

Both of these VPN solutions are good. But, also it depends on routing or which kind of traffic I am permitting. With my Fortinet VPN, I grant access to those users who want access to my EFT network. I just connect with them through FortiClient. Other VPN users can connect still with OpenVPN to access the corporate network.  

We were interested in implementing an SD-WAN (Software-defined Wide Area Network) for better access for our employees during the lockdown. We just wanted to implement SD-WAN technology to help remote workers access the office network. We configured the FortiClient VPN just for these users. That is the reason why we took on Fortinet FortiClient.  

We have a long-term plan. We just want to use one firewall in our data centers. At present, our whole network is in our head office. This network will not be there anymore. It will be migrated to one of our data centers.  

There are about 200 users who we have currently given this VPN access to.  

Other than OpenVPN we used Cisco for an internet solution. It was three years back that we were using the Cisco-based system solution. But, this is not exactly the same as what we use Fortinet for now.  

I think FortiClient is very easy to configure, definitely. That is the VPN only. There is also an option to use FortiClient as an antivirus solution and it is also free. Some of my colleagues told me that they are using FortiClient already for an antivirus solution. I have not yet used that or tried to configure it so I do not know if that is more complicated.  

The product we are using is not subscription-based. This is a free version. I just downloaded from the Fortinet website and it is free to use.  

I can definitely encourage other people to use the FortiClient VPN. FortiClient is a pretty great solution for the VPN.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I can rate FortiClient as a seven-out-of-ten from my experience with this product over the past six months.