Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

There are various use cases for Fortinet FortiGate, including firewall protection for internet access, data centers, branches, and SD-WAN. We use the firewall in multiple locations throughout our network, taking advantage of its many features, such as the promising CDR feature and security profiles like the WAF filter and application DNS security. We deploy these features in different parts of the network. Additionally, some customers use Fortinet FortiGate in the cloud to safeguard their cloud servers within platforms like Microsoft tenants.

Our customers are using Secure SD-WAN for connecting different branches. For example, oil and gas companies have different branches all over Egypt, which are not in the main city, so they need a secure connection and stability for certain protocols, such as voice and things like that. They also need visibility. They need to understand which applications are consuming SD-WAN. 

Some of the customers are also using SD-WAN for load balancing. For SD-WAN, you need at least two internet connections, so some of the customers are using it as a load-balancing technique. Overall, there are a lot of features for which customers are using SD-WAN.

For our customers, Secure SD-WAN is very useful for giving the right priority to the applications and controlling the proper use of the application.

Secure SD-WAN's interoperability with other systems and applications in the environment is very good. The integrated application protection provided by Secure SD-WAN is also good. There is a very good integration with all the applications and portfolios. We don't integrate the firewall with the application itself, but it does what is needed to control and reroute the traffic.

Secure SD-WAN has a lot of benefits. There is a calculator on Fortinet's website. When you feed the right information to that calculator, it tells you how much money you will save by acquiring SD-WAN. The first benefit is that you're going to save money. Instead of buying multiple ISP connections, MPLS, and other such things, you can use the normal internet and apply SD-WAN on it, so you can save a lot of money. You also don't need to increase the bandwidth. SD-WAN helps with the routing of your traffic and the optimum use of your links. It's efficient and secure, and it saves you a lot of money, and of course, there is the security of the firewall that's applied on SD-WAN. If we're comparing it with other vendors like Cisco, you are not getting the firewall features.

It's very efficient. There is a lot of visibility. It reduces the number of incidents. If there is any problem, you can immediately log in to the firewall, and you will know if there is a notification about bandwidth consumption or any other issue, or if there is any drop in connectivity. It makes the operation very easy. It makes it easy for the teams to respond to incidents and manage issues. SD-WAN helps to remediate threats more quickly and efficiently because, with SD-WAN, there are a lot of applications going through different links, so if you can know which link an application is using and what's on the link, you can make the right decision in a very fast way to fix it. It provides both visibility and efficiency.

It reduces your mean time to detect (MTTD). In the new version, which is version 7.x, of the FortiGate firewall, through the main dashboard, you can know what is going on. If you've done the dashboard and you're putting these statistics in front of you on a screen, once you look at it, you'll know what's going on and what's the problem. It, of course, will give you the tools and the right information to reduce the time to solve.

It's hard to say whether it has reduced help desk tickets because it's more on the operational side, but it helps them a lot. The operations team is not handling the firewall. It's either the network team or the network security team. Generally, once it's up and running, it just works. It's different from having an antivirus or something else that can be changed from day-to-day activities. With this one, once you turn it on, the service will be stable unless you have a problem with your internet. It doesn't cause a lot of problems.

In terms of helping to future-proof business, from a partner perspective, it gives you a lot of flexibility to enhance the customer network. It opens a lot of doors for sales, for a new business, and for new potential. That's from the partner side. From the customer side, you can save money and solve a lot of problems. If you need to connect with a few branches all over the country, it's efficient. You don't need to travel for five to ten hours to reach the second branch. If you have proper SD-WAN technology and it's connected in a good way with good vendors, you can save a lot of time, effort, and money. You can have proper connectivity between branches as if the guy you are talking to is next door. So, SD-WAN gives a lot of benefits at the vendor level, partner level, and customer level.

Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable.

When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, ease of use is valuable. The visibility and reporting are also valuable. A cool thing is that SD-WAN is free of charge with the Fortinet firewall. You can just use it just by using the Fortinet appliances that you already have in the branches. You cannot have appliances from different vendors. Fortinet customers can use the feature in a very easy way. It takes one click to integrate with the firewalls. It's very very easy to deploy. You don't need to build anything.

In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets.

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. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line.

The stability has room for improvement.

When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for seven years, and I have been using Secure SD-WAN for two years.

Secure SD-WAN is stable, but when it comes to the firewall, sometimes there are issues with the throughput and related factors. Improper handling of these can lead to a memory surge, a well-known bug that can cause the entire system to freeze. When this happens, the system appears to be running but no traffic is processed, causing disruptions to applications, users, and overall internet connectivity. This can be confusing because the firewall appears to be functioning correctly. Typically, the solution is to restart the firewall. However, when we contact support, they require logs before restarting, which can be challenging in urgent situations. As a result, we prioritize quick resolution over troubleshooting. This is a common drawback of the operating system.

I'd rate Fortinet FortiGate's scalability an eight out of ten.

While the technical support offered online and on-site is generally effective, there may be occasions when we need to escalate an issue to a higher level due to its complexity. 

I initially sought assistance from level-one support, but they were unable to resolve my issue. Eventually, they informed me that the problem would be addressed in a future patch. However, within a day or two, a level three engineer intervened and provided me with an update to resolve the issue. He explained that it required a command line configuration, as it couldn't be done through the graphical user interface. I was impressed with the level-three engineer's expertise and problem-solving skills. It taught me that if we persist and communicate our needs, we can achieve our desired outcomes.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We need to determine whether the firewall will be positioned in an active-standby or active-active configuration. Based on this decision, we will choose the appropriate license. If the firewall is intended for use with the Internet, we will need to include features such as a full DNS filter. However, if it's being used in a data center, these features may not be necessary. Additionally, we need to consider the speed of the interface, 1G or 10G, and the expected amount of network traffic to properly size the firewall model and ensure proper throughput. This is the initial phase of the process. Once the firewall has been deployed, it's a matter of connecting it and configuring policies. 

When it comes to the deployment model of SD-WAN, my customers usually buy the appliance. They already have FortiGates, so we're just connecting firewalls to each other. In Kuwait and Egypt, there are mostly on-prem deployments. It's rare to have someone deploying a firewall on the cloud, and if it's deployed on the cloud, it's for a certain reason. It's not for SD-WAN because you're not loading balancing or you don't need SD-WAN for cloud access. In the countries where I was responsible for its implementation, there was only on-prem deployment.

There is one single challenge with the deployment of SD-WAN, but it's not from the FortiGate side. It's from the customer side. You need to understand your traffic so you can get the best out of SD-WAN. For some organizations, it's huge because they don't know which application is doing what and which is more important than the other. Especially during the COVID years, a lot of applications popped up. Companies used to release an application every few weeks. To do a proper implementation, you need to understand your network, understand your application, and set your priorities. Once you do this, the implementation will be a piece of cake. If you have all the information, it will take a day or two days.

We implement the solution for our clients. One person can easily deploy multiple Fortinet products through the firewall including FortiAnalyzer for the logs, FortiManager, and FortiMail.

For SD-WAN also, one senior security engineer can do everything for a customer. The maintenance is easy. We haven't faced any critical problems with it.

We have experienced a positive return on investment by utilizing Fortinet's products. For instance, their website features a calculator for SDR, which enables us to measure the actual ROI in dollar amounts. We input our current expenses, the products we intend to purchase, and our connectivity plans, along with a few other details. At the end of the process, we receive data that indicates the amount of money we will save, such as two hundred thousand, for example. This provides us with clear and precise figures on our savings, making it an excellent tool.

Our customers have seen time to value with Secure SD-WAN. Its time to value is seen within weeks of implementation.

The price for the Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable. Secure SD-WAN is free of charge. If you have their firewall, it's free of charge. It's very tempting. Other vendors, such as Palo Alto, will charge you to have an SD-WAN license, whereas, with Fortinet, it's free of charge.

When purchasing a firewall, stability is non-negotiable. For small to medium businesses, Fortinet's affordability and ease of deployment make it a suitable option. However, for enterprise-level businesses, Palo Alto or Check Point would be preferred for their robust clients and immediate updates, despite the higher cost.

When comparing the pros and cons of Secure SD-WAN with other solutions, the challenge is not with SD-WAN. It's with the appliance that's offering SD-WAN, which is the firewall. So, the first comparison would be between the FortiGate firewall and other firewalls, and if the other firewalls are already offering the same service, the comparison will be between different levels, not just SD-WAN. There could be other firewalls that are more efficient or lower in cost or even more familiar to customers than Fortinet. So, the challenge is not with SD-WAN. The main reason I use SD-WAN on FortiGate is to get the benefit of the security profiles or security features of the firewall on top of the SD-WAN. Otherwise, I can use my internet router, the basic load balancing protocols, and the basic IP tunneling, and send some traffic here and some traffic there, and I'll save the cost. 

I'd rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

We use FortiGate for security. Some clients use the whole Fortinet solution, including FortiSwitch, FortiAP, and FortiExtender, but FortiGate is my bread and butter.

We have a hybrid deployment. A lot of it is onsite, and we have data center collocations. Some customers do collocations with us, but others request connectivity to Azure or another cloud services provider. Fortinet has plugins for Azure, AWS, or Google that make it easy to configure VPNs out of the data center or off-site. 

Typically, we stick with Azure because their support is better, but we do have a handful of customers that choose AWS. We have the solution deployed across Canada. One of our biggest customers is a retail company with many little stores under their umbrella. We cover everything from British Columbia to a couple of sites in Newfoundland. I estimate that we have around 1,200 users.

We need to allow a set of websites or block another set. FortiGate gives us the ability to do it based on URL domain. It's so much easier because you input the domain microsoft.com instead of adding the specific URL. Other firewalls can't do that the way FortiGate does. It helps us with compliance and security.

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.

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.

I've been using Fortinet solutions for about four or five years now.

I think FortiGate is going to be around forever. If I don't see their stock price double in the next two years, I'm going to be surprised. I think it's a very underrated solution. 

Scaling up only requires adding a router. Once you have your network in place and a basic template, you buy another router and add it to the mix. It's incredibly easy to add and configure devices. 

I rate Fortinet support 10 out of 10. The support gets better as you get more certifications. I'm trying to get my certification to see how much better it can be. With an NSE 7 certification, you can contact Tier 3 support directly. I'm already getting my cases resolved in 24 to 48 hours using Tier 1 and 2 support.

We used Juniper firewalls in the past. The two solutions are similar in terms of features, but Fortinet blew it out of the water with regards to pricing and user-friendliness.

The main difference is CLI versus GUI. You have to know what you're doing on a Juniper because it's all command-line based, but Fortinet is 99 percent GUI-based. You log in to Fortinet and check off what you want to allow or block. 

Our biggest Fortinet solution was 500 plus retail sites. This customer chose the whole nine yards, including FortiGate, FortiSwitch, FortiAPs, and the FortiExtender, which is the LTE router. 

I made the templates for the configuration for our bottom tiers because they were the ones rolling them out. I made a standard template config and wrote notes specifying necessary changes for each site. 

The primary difficulty was trying to understand our customer's requirements and concerns because they were with an old provider. The provider had a lot of things on-site that weren't necessary. Deploying the Fortinet solution itself wasn't hard. 

Getting there was hard because we had to sit down with the customer and their tech team to determine what was needed because they had old Cisco routers. That took about three weeks and required a lot of on-site visits, but it wasn't hard to deploy the solution once we got an understanding of the requirements was not hard.

We trained the customers to manage and maintain the solution themselves. The only maintenance we do is emailing them monthly when we get notifications from Fortinet about router upgrades. You can configure it and then forget it. 

We are the integrator/consultant for the solution. We are the one in between the client and the internet service provider.

FortiGate firewalls pay for themselves. We bought our first FortiGate when they came out with the 50Fs and thought we would never see the return on investment. However, they paid for themselves because we rent them out, and customers loved them so much that we just retired our Juniper and Cisco solutions.

Fortinet's pricing is more straightforward than other solutions. If Fortinet doesn't stick out when you're searching for a solution, you are a glutton for punishment. You only need to know two things when purchasing a Fortinet solution: your total bandwidth and bandwidth at the site. You need to estimate the future bandwidth with other solutions if your customer plans to upgrade.

You have to consider whether you'll need to resell your licenses or wait until they expire and get new ones. You need to worry about out-of-pocket costs with other solutions, but you could pay for a higher-tier Fortinet license. You don't need to worry about it for 10 years and still be under budget.

Fortinet encourages people to buy their base product and then add what they need. That mentality goes a lot farther in the game because it affords people security. That's how they got into the market and became so competitive.

We evaluated Meraki, Dell's old SD-WAN, and Cisco's Viptela. Price and flexibility were the main factors. Viptela, Juniper, and others make it so hard to pick a solution. You have to be highly specific about what you want, including the amount of bandwidth and encryption level at every site. You have to pick a different router per site, depending on your functionality and requirements.

I rate FortiGate 10 out of 10. It's a tremendous little firewall. It takes care of all your security concerns.  When people say, "I need to make my organization more secure," the first thing that comes to mind is Fortinet. Everyone is talking about Cisco, Juniper, Palo Alto, and Check Point but overlooking Fortinet, which is a relatively new player in the game. 

Fortinet's next-generation firewall is more affordable and user-friendly. They also have an extensive knowledge base online. Good luck finding that community support on a Palo Alto, Cisco, or Juniper website without paying.

The primary use case is for security purposes, mainly at the gateway level and for internal security, such as virtual training. We also use it for cybersecurity and internal communication, like having a portal. The main goal of implementing the product is to resolve security problems.

We have seen benefits. Recently, Sophos Firewalls and Palantir have also entered the market. However, FortiGate provides a higher throughput at a lower cost than these features and licensing. Our company acts as an integrator, and we work based on the customer's needs and requirements.

Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain the box in small to large organizations. Even if we configure and hand it over to them, they can easily consider and register policies. And it's easy to monitor the end-to-end network through the firewall.

There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes. FortiGate's renewal cost is quite high, and our customer care team also receives complaints about it. The renewal part of the firewall is expensive. If a customer pays for the license in advance, they may lose their privileges.

For example, if the license of a box expires in one or two months, and the customer wants to upgrade, there are three to four months between the operation and the end of the current license. If I purchase a new license, it will only take effect from that date. So, it fails in the backward fetch, and I am currently busy setting it up. But if the customer is not processing the card for six months, they will not benefit from the system.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for two to three years.

I would rate stability a nine out of ten. It's a stable product. For the most part, it's very reliable.

It is also a scalable solution. However, as integrators, the scalability depends on us. There are many options available, and we can choose the size of the box based on our requirements.

The customer service and support are very good. Once we create a ticket, we can contact them using the ticket number, and they will provide the support we need. As for the contact names, there is no rate, but there are more challenges.

Neutral

We have used Sophos Firewall, Check Point Power EOL, and others. But none of them were like FortiGate. When we upgrade the license, it shows another one, two or three years from that date.

There are no challenges in the initial setup. The people required to deploy the situation are based on the customer's expertise. We handle various types of configurations, and sometimes there are additional requirements with load balancers on top of the firewalls. We need to integrate these firewalls with that ALG.

Generally, we consider security as a separate thing. These firewalls and the LOBs will take care of some further issues based on the customer's requirements. For smaller organizations, one person can provide or ensure a sort of service. We will need three more administrators or developers if there is more traffic or high-cost tech.

Generally, most of the customers maintain their solution on-premises, not on the cloud. I am a technical guy. I am involved in deploying the solution to our customers. I take care of the HCLM upgrade, inflation rate consideration, automation, and other technical aspects of the solution.

We evaluate the area first and then proceed with the implementation by creating a DMZ zone and policies such as CRM and CAP.

FortiGate is a bit pricey, but its unique features and specifications make it an excellent option for certain customers.

As an integrator, we have observed that the licensing cost and the upgrade process are important considerations. When we purchase a new license for one or three years and upgrade it to the existing box, the expiry date does not change from the original. It can create a gap of three, eight, or even twelve months for the customer. Consequently, they buy another box instead of going through the ticket process to get it fixed.

We definitely explore the options. We always understand the customer's requirements first and then offer solutions accordingly. We ask what the customer needs and what their budget is. If their budget is INR 10,00,000, and we find a product that matches their requirements, we will offer it. If FortiGate provides the same features and throughput but costs INR 11,00,000, we might still offer it to the customer. However, if FortiGate doesn't match the customer's requirements, we won't suggest it.

So the main differences between products are the features and specifications. If a product has the same throughput and features as another product but costs more, we may not suggest it to the customer.

The challenge is licensing. Hardware-wise, it's supportive, and the support is good. But the licensing and renewal costs should be lowered, and renewing the license and data for the new license is tough. So, only for licensing, we face challenges. I would rate it a seven.

We have many boxes, and we have changed all the boxes to other products because of this licensing factor only. Even for FortiGate, such a thing happens. If I have a hundred boxes and I want to renew the license, they suggest taking new boxes with three or four at least. So that is why customers are not liking FortiGate. They could provide the same license card along with the box, which is why customers are unhappy.

Overall, the product is a four out of ten because scalability, box performance, and support are all great. However, once it's commercially used, you can only use this box; no other options are available.

We can recommend it, but FortiGate's ability to capture the market, fix the order, and meet the requirements or opportunities is also important. As an integrator, we don't have any issues with it.

It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything.

The GUI is good. I'm really happy with the ease of use of the firewall. Fortinet's support is also great.  

I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself.

I've had different models of Fortinet since 2009. They all are physical appliances. I had 300As, and now I'm on 300Ds. I've got a remote site with a different model, which probably is 60F. They are great little firewalls, and for bigger size places, they have 300 models.

I don't have virtual appliances. I don't have a virtual infrastructure. I have an older virtual environment with Hyper-V, and the servers are not up-to-date. It was a money thing. So, it was better to go with the appliance itself.

I'm happy with what they got. It is a great product. Sometimes, you're going to get a lemon—the way it initially happened with FortiAuthenticator 300F—but that doesn't happen very often.

If there is a problem, the next business day, they send it and get the replacement, and they help me configure it.

In terms of its users, everybody uses the firewall because they're going out. That's our egress point. So, there are about 20 users for that. We have a dozen IPsec tunnels with which we connect to different companies. So, security is a big part of it. I also have a remote location with about 10 users who use a different firewall.

We probably won't be increasing its usage. Now that I got Authenticator, it nicely compliments the Fortinet firewall. The size of the company isn't going to grow any more than what it is. So, we're good.

Their support is great, but it also depends on who you get for support. From the support perspective, they can help you do it yourself, which is always more beneficial to both parties. They can stop being so time-sensitive about the call duration and let a user help himself a little bit more.

It takes time to study this stuff, and I don't always have time to do it. So, I'm looking for a quick answer because I get interrupted all the time during work. I don't always have the time to study something and figure it out. So, I have to call them, but I don't always get somebody who really knows what they are doing. They don't know deep enough to help you. They're troubleshooting with you, and that's the difference between Level 1 and Level 2 support.

When I first got here in this job in 2007, they had Cisco ASA Firewall, but it was too cryptic. You had to enter all these CLI commands for a configuration. It also didn't do everything that Fortinet could do. It was very limited, and it wasn't easy to use. I know what I want to do, and I don't have to learn a special language in order to do it. I just want to be able to use some basic programming code that they have put into the firewall and use the GUI interface with it to actually visualize what I am looking at. Some of the Cisco products are not visual enough. That was one of the reasons I stayed away from it. Cisco is also very high-priced. They price themselves out of business a lot of times for equipment, but Fortinet is just great.

I've also used SonicWall before. It was okay, but it is better for bigger places. I was looking for a midrange-size firewall for a couple of hundred users, and I felt Fortinet was the right fit.

Its deployment and maintenance are easy. 

I pretty much used the support from Fortinet to do it. They're good about their support. I did it myself by being a nuisance to Fortinet. I kept calling them to ask questions. They had to remote on to it and see you do something you don't know how to do.

It was probably about $2,500 per firewall. It was all included. It included support, services, threat management software, and 24/7 FortiCare on it. Cisco products are more expensive.

Fortinet has got great firewalls. They do everything. They do FortiTokens for two-factor. They do the IPsec VPNs, SSL VPNs. They have a great GUI for you to know, but you still got to know the CLI commands. 

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. It does its job, and it is easy to use. The support is great.

Most organizations use the Fortinet firewall as perimeter security at the gateway level.

FortiGate has threat protection, antivirus, and even SSL encryption and decryption. So FortiGate is primarily used for security purposes. And a few customers also use this firewall for web filtering and application control. So these are the two features for which people use FortiGate.

FortiGate is primarily a gateway,  but customers also use web filter threat protection and application control. And some people use it as a special VPN for remote access. I recently deployed one virtual firewall where they're only using the FortiGate firewall for VPN. I can't say one feature is the most valuable because it's a bundle solution. So no one uses FortiGate for just one single feature. 

Currently, FortiGate is providing SSL VPN. But they're missing some features that are available in Palo Alto's SSL VPN. Palo Alto provides a compliance check along with the VPN, and they have a very broad checklist. So Palo Alto's global protection can scan and check multiple things, and we can choose what access users can have based on compliance with policies. So I think this is one area where FortiGate can improve. Also, multi-factor authentication isn't native to FortiGate. If you want to incorporate multi-factor authentication, you have to add a secondary or third-party solution. 

I've been using FortiGate for around five years.

Before version 6.0, FortiGate's firewall performed well enough, but lately, they've introduced so many features. After that, its stability has been somewhat lacking. This is because they're constantly updating their firmware. So it was pretty stable, but nowadays, it's not that stable.

I haven't worked on the scalability side because most of the time, the pre-sales tools are relatively bigger devices. So right now, I haven't faced any issues with scalability. They have some larger devices for the data center. So if we talk about their hardware, I think they're capable of handling around 10,000 to 15,000 people on a single device. But if you go with the virtual environment, I don't think there is a problem. Fortinet has a single OS that we can deploy on whatever hardware capacity we want to configure over there or through virtualization.

Fortinet support is good. They resolve tickets relatively fast. So we've had no issues with that. And I don't know about other regions, but in my region, the salespeople working with Fortinet are strong. They're aggressively working on the sales part. So in the Pune region and the rest of Maharashtra, they're winning more contracts, and people are using FortiGate Firewall.

The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution. But you need some good hands-on experience for advanced configuration. The amount of time required to deploy depends upon the project and also the organization. So it takes around four to five days to deploy a smaller device. And for the largest device, it takes around a maximum of two months. We do the deployment on our own. So we have a sales team, a pre-sales team, and a deployment team. Our sales team gets this and handles the sales end. After that, we come into the picture. So we do the whole migration, as well as the new implementation and everything. It should take no more than two people to deploy. If we want to migrate from one Fortinet device to another, then we use the command line. They have some script in their firmware, and we can migrate the script directly from the older firewall to the new one. So it isn't too complex.

I'm somewhat aware of the pricing, but most of the time, the pre-sales staff only defines their requirements. And we get the licenses at the time of implementation, then register and activate them. But I think Fortinet has multiple packages. They sell licenses for a period of one, three, or five years. They also have special add-on licenses for various things. So, for example, if you want to get a security rating for the firmware configuration and everything, you need to purchase an additional security license. And if you want to do some IoT-related security, you also need to purchase separate licenses. 

I rate FortiGate eight out of 10 based on the performance, stability, performance, management, rights, and features. So most people lack SSL encryption and the certificate part. Those servers are running behind the FortiGate firewall. And most of the people I've seen are not using SSL encryption over there. And even for internet purposes, they're not using deep scanning.  So my suggestion to people thinking about using FortiGate is to prepare a plan before implementation and implement those things in inbound inspection and outbound inspection. This is recommended. And also, if you have multiple band links, then you must use SD-WAN. They have SD-WAN options in the FortiGate firewall. It's a pretty good feature. So you can use that to improve your stability and performance.

We use Fortinet FortiGate for web filtering, IPS reporting, and firewall policy routing.

What we like about Fortinet FortiGate is that it's fast. You can also use it immediately, e.g. you don't have to wait and apply the policy before you can use it. It's robust and offers immediate usage, unlike Check Point, which we noticed was a slow product.

Fortinet FortiGate is also more secure, depending on how you set up the SD-WAN technology.

We also like the zero trust access, arrays, and the EDR features on this product. It's also 100% more user-friendly, e.g. even when I worked with them configuration-wise. The availability of the support hotline and their knowledgebase articles, e.g. the Cookbook, help a lot. Those articles are accessible to everyone, and they're free.

Whenever you implement a solution, you can run through Cookbook, then you can install the Fortinet certificate if you aren't able to, if you're stuck, but most of the time you are likely to get it right. The Cookbook explain everything straight to the point, and this makes it much easier.

Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%.

I've used Fortinet FortiGate for three years, and the last time I used it was last year.

The product is very stable. It's a powerful product.

Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable product.

Installing Fortinet FortiGate is straightforward. The Cookbook tells you where the issue is, then the packs that come with the software, they are quick to advise on what bugs you can expect, and how those bugs can be fixed. I enjoyed installing the product.

The initial setup for Fortinet FortiGate took less than a week. We spent another week migrating the policy, or recreating the policies on the new object, because of the incompatibility with Check Point. We had to recreate the policies, otherwise, the change was quick, and we just had to mount them and connect the HA link and the other internet link. The setup was quick.

The product has different licensing models, depending on what you're going to do. For the IoT service, initially the program was for free, then the IoT service and the mix firmware that we had, we had to pay.

Services are separate in terms of Fortinet FortiGate license models, e.g. you could have IPS, AV scanning on high availability, etc. The license could be on annual renewal.

I evaluated Check Point, but my problem was that it was too slow to install, and you have to wait long while your environment is down. With Fortinet FortiGate, it was instant. Fortinet FortiGate is very easy to install, unlike Check Point. Fortinet FortiGate is a better product.

I have experience with Fortinet FortiGate. I used to manage the product in the past, but in a different company. I transferred to another company into a new position, and Fortinet FortiGate is being used in my current company.

This product can be deployed both on-premises and on cloud. We use version 300E for on-premises, and VM04 on cloud.

They are doing a lot of things to improve Fortinet FortiGate, that I can't think of anything else I'd like added to it. There's zero trust access, the EDR, and the arrays. I can't really say that there's anything that they have not started. They're able to provide what I want.

We started with 100 users of Fortinet FortiGate in the company, then it went up to 270 users, because we also had a child company with end users of this product.

We didn't have to contact technical support for Fortinet FortiGate, because we had a third-party guy who was helping us, and we seldom contact him. If we find an issue, we just email, and he'll write back to us. We also get advise on the old firmware, for example, that there's a higher chance it's static and could be affected by vulnerabilities. Any help was done quickly, and it was nice. Nowadays, we are doing all the work, e.g. not having to contact our third-party guy.

We don't really need a team for deployment and maintenance. There's another engineer we're sharing ideas with, otherwise, deployment and maintenance are both very straightforward. You just need to know what you're doing, e.g. a good path, IPsec channels, etc., and it'll be much easier.

I can recommend Fortinet FortiGate to others, especially because I understand it the most now. We do know everybody won't choose it, because Check Point, Cisco, and other competitors are coming up with robust devices. Everyone wants to win against their competitors, but I'm happy with FortiGate. It's a product I can recommend to others.

I'm rating Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten, because it doesn't give me any issues. It's very easy for me to rate it a ten.

It is our primary router here in the office with all the firewall policies.

The solution has many valuable features. I like all of them.

Its stability is great. On a previous job, we set probably up to 100 FortiGates, and during the three years they were set up none of them failed.

It's a very scalable solution.

The pricing is great and very reasonable. 

The initial setup is simple. 

We use a yearly subscription for a unified protection model. I like the features that it gives me. It is actually a built-in proxy server and it allows me to use great protection and so on. In terms of application control, the built-in anti-virus is okay. One of the things that I like the most is it has a built-in SD-WAN solution - its price is included in the hardware. I don't need to buy anything else to use SD-WAN. This is the feature that I like, in Fortinet, probably the most. All other vendors sell SD-WAN as a separate solution and you must buy a separate controller which has to be installed somewhere, on-premise or on the cloud, and it costs money. Fortigate does not.

I can't think of an area of the product that needs improvement. Even the cost is okay. I have no real complaints. 

It would be good if they had fewer updates. Almost every update has bots that are either critical or something small yet valuable. Whenever I try to do an update, I always fear that something will break.

I've used the solution for a few years. I used it on a previous project and I use it now as well.

The stability has been excellent. It's very reliable and the performance is great. They have not failed in three years. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability of the product is great. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

Up to 100 people use it right now, and likely we will increase usage so that it covers 150 to 200 users. 

If our other branch offices open in other cities or other countries, I will buy another firewall for them as well.

I've contacted technical support in the past.

For example, I tried to update my firewall to 7.0.4 and there was a block with the DHCP server. Some devices did not acquire an IP address. Really, it was something about FortiGate. I asked Fortinet for technical support and I created a ticket, and the next day they replied to me they agree that this was a bug that they would work on. As far as I can see now, there is already an option of 7.0.5. While I didn't test it myself, in the changelog I can see that this bug is fixed.

So far, we have been satisfied as they have answered us by the next day typically.

I did not previously use a different solution.

It's an easy setup. Everything is very straightforward and simple to understand. It's not complex, not difficult. A company won't have any issues with the process.

The deployment might take up to one week. I don't remember exactly. I continued to add some features, however, in the instant deployment, when it came here I had another router here, it wasn't too long of a process. Later, I asked my bosses to buy a firewall and when it arrived, on a Friday in the evening, I installed it and everything was fine. It was very fast.

I handle the deployment and maintenance myself. We do not need a big team to manage everything. It's pretty low-maintenance. 

I handled the implementation myself. I did not need a consultant or an integrator.

The pricing is very fair for a firewall. There's nothing to complain about in terms of licensing.

The price model is fair. I have to pay only for the features that only Fortinet gives me. Things like routing are free. Other vendors like Cisco, make me pay for things that should be free.

I would recommend the solution to others.

Fortinet has an education platform that is named trainingfortinet.com and many courses are on there. All the video lessons are free. Users can view them to learn about the features that Fortinet has. It's an excellent resource.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

I use it for a VPN. I use it as a gateway between locations. That's what I use it for.

They're Point-to-Point Networks, Metro Ethernet Networks, and over across the internet. We set it up with an AD VPN tunnel in between the various connections.

We use it for interconnectivity between the various sites to provide VPN tunnels. In contrast, service providers, even on Metro Ethernet and Point-to-Point Networks, cannot provide a secure connection between two points.

We've actually replaced 30 or more Cisco routers that were doing these VPN connections, and we replaced them with the FortiGates in order to provide Point-to-Point connectivity. It increased throughput on the various links, and it increased security.

Their VPN connection, their routing capabilities, their layer three throughput, and their firewall management capabilities that limit access from one VLAN to another are all the most valuable aspects for us. 

The solution is stable.

It can expand easily.

Support is helpful.

The product is significantly cheaper than, for example, Cisco. 

The user productivity has been good as they can, for example, transfer files easier. There is no slowdown. 

In their IPS Web Security Gateway, the reporting functions need to be a little bit more user-friendly for how to get the reports from it. That's one of the reasons why we don't use that function.

With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic.

I've been using the solution for two years. 

The stability is very good. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

We've been able to scale pretty well. It's not a problem of you need to expand. 

End users will be passing through it. Most of the accounting passes through it to various other locations. We have about 1,500 people on the product, technically.

We do have plans to increase usage. We have not completed the entire County yet. We've done 80% and still need to action the last 20%.

Technical support is very helpful. 

Positive

We used to use Cisco. We switched to FortiGate due to its throughput, ease of use, and cost.

Our needs are a little bit more complex than others. That said, overall, I would say it's about average in terms of the ease of setup. We got to do a VPN tunnel across, and it was AD VPN, it was something brand new. 

When I set things up now, it's pretty straightforward. When I first started, it was different as I'd never seen the technology before. When I first started, I'd never seen this technology, I didn't have a clue. Others may be in the same boat. 

Now that we're familiar with technology, this is very easy to set up. We've deployed 30 of them. I've got junior engineers that can follow my instructions and set up the FortiGate, and we're up and running. It gets easier over time. We've been doing this over the last two years.

We have up to two people needed for deployment and maintenance tasks. 

The deployment is completely done in-house. We didn't have any outside assistance. 

We did use Fortinet's tech support when we came into some problems. However, we didn't use any extra vendor.

Licensing is renewed every three to five years. They are less expensive e than Cisco. It has reduced the overall cost of maintaining a Cisco environment.

It's a package deal. There are no extra costs. 

We did not look into other solutions. 

I'd advise potential users to just implement the right size for you and what your needs are.

I'd rate the product nine out of ten. 

We are just a customer and end-user.