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Fortinet FortiGate pros and cons

Vendor: Fortinet

4.2 out of 5

574 reviews
92% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Fortinet FortiGate excels in threat prevention with its intrusion prevention systems enhancing network security. Its pricing offers strong value against competitors, while firewall capabilities meet most edge requirements efficiently. Stability ensures reliable performance, supplemented by SD-WAN for optimal routing. However, logging needs FortiAnalyzer's support, and technical assistance has been criticized for delays. Users note a confusing pricing model, performance issues under heavy load, and challenges in scalability for growing networks.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Fortinet FortiGate is known for its strong Unified Threat Management (UTM) features, including Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications.

The device offers excellent scalability, supporting multiple virtual domains (VDOMs) and serving numerous user needs efficiently.

Fortinet FortiGate's SD-WAN capabilities provide reliable, cost-effective connectivity for businesses, enhancing uptime and prioritizing applications during outages.

The easy configuration and management, along with subscription options like IPS, threat management, and application control, make Fortinet FortiGate appealing to organizations.

Fortinet FortiGate provides efficient integration with other security solutions, allowing centralized management with tools like FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer.

CONS

FortiOS is not simple and poses challenges for users.

The web-filtering capabilities in FortiGate are inadequate and need enhancement.

Technical support from Fortinet requires significant improvement in responsiveness and effectiveness.

FortiGate lacks integration with CASB and zero trust solutions.

The pricing model of Fortinet FortiGate is considered expensive and could be more competitive.

Fortinet FortiGate Pros review quotes

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Apr 20, 2023

Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable.

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Presales Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Jun 5, 2023

The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall.

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JH

Chief Technology Officer at Future Point Technologies

May 24, 2023

Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility.

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Fortinet FortiGate

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Learn what your peers think about Fortinet FortiGate. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2025.

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reviewer1294776

Owner at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Dec 2, 2020

The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us.

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AR

Reviewer:734513

Network Security & DataCenter Architect at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 20, 2023

The technical support in our region is excellent.

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ES

Solutions Engineer/Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Dec 23, 2020

One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them.

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JC

Network Security Engineer at Social Security Commission

Nov 10, 2020

There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth.

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DO

Network Solutions Architect at Yazata Solutions

May 2, 2022

FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features.

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DK

IT/DevOps at a legal firm with 11-50 employees

Jun 5, 2025

I would rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) as a solution a 10 out of 10.

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Manager Network (IT/OT) at a consumer goods company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 17, 2023

The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 516)

Fortinet FortiGate Cons review quotes

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Apr 20, 2023

For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial.

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Presales Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Jun 5, 2023

Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem.

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JH

Chief Technology Officer at Future Point Technologies

May 24, 2023

From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement.

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Fortinet FortiGate

Free Report: Fortinet FortiGate Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Fortinet FortiGate. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2025.

867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer1294776

Owner at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Dec 2, 2020

The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall.

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AR

Reviewer:734513

Network Security & DataCenter Architect at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 20, 2023

I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution.

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ES

Solutions Engineer/Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Dec 23, 2020

FortiLink is the interface on the firewall that allows you to extend switch management across all of your switches in the network. The problem with it is that you can't use multiple interfaces unless you set them up in a lag. Only then you can run them. So, it forces you to use a core type of switch to propagate that management out to the rest of the switches, and then it is running the case at 200. It leaves you with 18 ports on the firewall because it is also a layer-three router that could also be used as a switch, but as soon as you do that, you can't really use them. They could do a little bit more clean up in the way the stacking interface works. Some use cases and the documentation on the FortiLink checking interface are a little outdated. I can find stuff on version 5 or more, but it is hard to find information on some of the newer firmware. The biggest thing I would like to see is some improvement in the switch management feature. I would like to be able to relegate some of the ports, which are on the firewall itself, to act as a switch to take advantage of those ports. Some of these firewalls have clarity ports on them. If I can use those, it would mean that I need to buy two less switches, which saves time. I get why they don't, but I would still like to see it because it would save a little bit of space in the server rack.

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JC

Network Security Engineer at Social Security Commission

Nov 10, 2020

There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering.

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DO

Network Solutions Architect at Yazata Solutions

May 2, 2022

My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint.

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DK

IT/DevOps at a legal firm with 11-50 employees

Jun 5, 2025

In our case, the deployment options of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) are not scalable, but in terms of connectivity to other companies, that's exactly what we needed, and that's exactly what it does perfectly, what is needed.

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Manager Network (IT/OT) at a consumer goods company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 17, 2023

The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 506)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

Firewall Solutions for Enterprises

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

Firewall Solutions for Enterprises

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

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Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

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