Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

We are using Fortinet FortiGate SWG for web filtering, application control, and IDPS. Additionally, we utilize it for VPN and the main features of a firewall.

Web filtering is very good, as well as IDPS. SD-WAN is a perfect feature. Additionally, the VPN is stable and very good. These features have proven effective in protecting our network, handling large volumes of traffic smoothly without any issues.

More improvement in AI would be a good edge. We would like the VPN to act as a web filtering solution because users outside the company don't have web filtering. It supports web filtering with an additional license.

We have been working with Fortinet FortiGate SWG for more than nine years.

We did not face any challenges during the installation. The process was very smooth.

Fortinet FortiGate SWG works well, handling the whole traffic smoothly with no problems. We have not faced any issues with stability.

The solution is very scalable.

We haven't needed to work directly with Fortinet support recently. Seven years ago, the experience was not good, warranting a rating of five based on that past experience.

The initial setup took just a few hours, as it was completed on the same day.

The implementation involved two engineers.

There are financial benefits as Fortinet's products are considered good value for money due to their robust features, despite being priced higher than competitors.

Fortinet products are very expensive compared to competitors like Sophos and SonicWall. From a pricing perspective, I would rate them a six.

Fortinet FortiGate SWG is a leader regarding Gartner. It has a friendly user interface and is very secure compared to others with many features. I recommend it to other companies because of these advantages. I would rate the product a nine. The overall product rating is nine.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

We use Fortinet FortiGate IPS to enhance our network security. It is especially necessary to secure the edge of the company.

The whole IPS suite is valuable, especially with the updates from FortiGuard. It provides real-time updates, offering a good vision on any changes. For example, if the rating of a certain website changes, we can investigate potential malicious content with FortiAnalyzer.

The pricing of Fortinet FortiGate IPS could always be improved.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate IPS for two and a half years.

The deployment of Fortinet FortiGate IPS was moderate in complexity. It took approximately two hours to deploy, depending on one’s knowledge, and it was carried out by four or five engineers in the company.

Stability is generally good, but if you include FortiOS underlying in the FortiGate, there are often some patches to do and some loopholes. I would rate the stability as eight out of ten.

The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate IPS is good, and I would rate it nine out of ten.

The technical support from Fortinet is rather good, and I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

I worked a little bit with WatchGuard, but I do not know a lot about it. I am only here for two years and do not have experience with other vendors.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate IPS took about two hours and was of moderate complexity.

The implementation of Fortinet FortiGate IPS was carried out by my team internally with four or five engineers involved.

I rate the pricing with an eight out of ten. They could always improve the pricing.

No, we are not considering any alternatives for Fortinet FortiGate IPS. We are quite happy with the product.

I would recommend Fortinet FortiGate IPS as it is a core component of cybersecurity for our company. Having a FortiGate without IPS services doesn't make sense for us. I would rate the overall solution nine out of ten.

On-premises

We use different solutions from FortiGate, focusing primarily on their firewalls within our department. However, due to a reorganization, the operational maintenance of FortiGate is now managed by someone else.

The most helpful features of FortiGate include its firewall policy, specifically the user-based policy, which I find to be quite beneficial in managing our network security effectively. FortiGate has also provided reliable protection against many attacks, although it lacks the ability to detect specific attacks like SQL injection, which usually requires a web application firewall.

The main area needing improvement is the user-friendliness of FortiGate's integration with other Fortinet tools like FortiAuthenticator and VPN services. Configuring these services is quite complex and not very user-friendly, requiring technical steps that are difficult for normal users to understand. Fortinet support's resolution of issues is slow, and the research on making the solution user-friendly needs to progress further.

I have worked with FortiGate for more than eight or nine years.

We have not faced any stability issues with FortiGate since we specified sizable RAM and CPU, and our size was adequate for our traffic.

Fortinet provides a prompt response. However, the resolution process is slow. While their response time is quick, their ability to resolve issues takes a long time.

Neutral

We have previously used a solution called Cyberoam, which has been replaced with a new brand. There are also managed firewalls offered as a cloud solution that we have not considered yet.

In terms of cost-effectiveness, Fortinet tools like FortiGate are costly for us as a higher education institute in India. Our expenditure is focused on minimal levels, however, FortiGate's pricing is positioned for corporate levels, which can be inflexible.

We are considering replacing Fortinet with a different solution, taking about a year to change configurations and rules.

Fortinet should consider developing a pricing scheme for the education segment since educational institutions in India operate on non-profit terms and under government regulations. They could potentially follow Kaspersky's example, which provided a more affordable pricing model for students and educational institutes. 

As a product, I would rate FortiGate around seven out of ten.

On-premises

We are using Fortinet FortiGate 200F. Our main use cases are firewall and security.

It is very stable and scalable.

We are utilizing SD-WAN by Fortinet FortiGate. My experience in integrating SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate in my network is good, and it has worked well with no cases so far.

The effectiveness of Fortinet's unified SASE in providing consistent security policies rates at nine on a scale of ten.

I find the management console not very straightforward, so that's an area where Fortinet FortiGate can improve. They should simplify it and make it more user-friendly. In the next release, I would prefer a more simplified GUI; that's one area I would want to see a quick change.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for three years.

I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten because it hasn't had an outage.

In terms of scalability, it has excellent features. I would give it a ten out of ten because there's still more we can do with it.

We have not contacted Fortinet directly for technical support. Currently, we are working through the local dealers, and our local dealer is Safaricom Telkom. We also purchased Fortinet FortiGate through them.

Positive

Before Fortinet FortiGate, we had a South African product called Kerio. We also had a Cisco router, which we had configured to provide some of those benefits, but the problem is it's cumbersome to configure, scalability is limited, and it's very expensive to acquire the hardware and the licenses, so in terms of ROI, I wouldn't recommend it.

We outsourced the initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate. We had the vendor do it. The implementation took about three weeks.

I have seen a return on investment with Fortinet FortiGate. Before this, we used to have many manual systems with overheads in terms of manpower, licenses, and so on, but now there's a lot we have automated, so ROI is exceptionally good.

We are also using FortiAnalyzer and Fortinet VPN, and I have been generally satisfied with them. 

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten, with the only drawback being the management interface.

On-premises

We are using Fortinet FortiGate for enterprises. We are a partner of Fortinet.

Its features are very good for the price. Their support is also very good. A lot of expertise is available in the market in terms of engineers. 

The best features of Fortinet FortiGate are its simplicity, ease of installation, and ease of functionality. It is very easy to learn and implement, and everything is clear. The deployment of Fortinet FortiGate is very straightforward. 

I would like to see improvements in Fortinet FortiGate regarding the active-active scenario. The active-active scenario is supported but not recommended, whereas other vendors are implementing active-active without issues. Perhaps in the future, we could effectively use both firewalls to increase the throughput. If there are two boxes, they both should be able to work.

Other than that, I don't have anything. I'm very happy with the features.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate regularly for a few months only, though I have previously encountered one or two installations.

Fortinet FortiGate is very stable.

There are multiple options available for small, mid-sized, and large-scale deployments.

My experience with the technical support for Fortinet FortiGate is very good. I only had one bad experience. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

It is very straightforward to deploy.

In terms of maintenance, many features are automated, including antivirus updates that happen regularly without intervention. Simply connecting the firewall to the internet enables automatic downloads of everything.

It was recently implemented, so it is too early for that assessment.

It is very cost-effective. You get features similar to other firewalls, such as Palo Alto, but at a lower price.

I have not worked extensively with Palo Alto, but from various comparisons, Fortinet FortiGate is understood to be a cost-effective version of Palo Alto. While Palo Alto has more features, Fortinet FortiGate offers similar functionality.

Currently, we are not using SD-WAN, but we will implement it as it is a very impressive built-in feature. We will implement it for one of our customers in the near future.

Fortinet FortiGate is a very good next-generation firewall. It is not very expensive and offers plenty of models to suit various needs. The licensing options are extensive. The day-zero protection is very good. FortiCloud is also excellent. The geo-protection is effective and serves its purpose. 

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten.

On-premises

The main use cases for Fortinet FortiGate are for small, medium to large enterprises, and they also have products for SOHO (small office/home office). That is where they stand out.

The main benefits that Fortinet FortiGate brings to the table include the ease of configuration, stability of the product, and excellent support. When a customer is using Fortinet FortiGate, they will not look at any other products for expansion or upgrades. In terms of price and performance, it gives a very good, balanced product.

One of Fortinet FortiGate's best features is in terms of the configuration; it is one of the easiest to configure. It is very easy and based on ASICs. In terms of performance under scalability and stability, I would rate it amongst the best. I have not come across a product that I have had to replace or generate an R&D for to date.

There has not been any impact in terms of performance for customers because Fortinet FortiGate is dependent on the architecture, which is totally different. They have security processors, network processors, and they work on a different architecture compared to other products. To be very frank, we have not had any performance issues when deploying SD-WAN and a next-generation firewall together.

Regarding improvements for Fortinet FortiGate, there is always room for improvement in any product. In information technology, things fade away quickly, and new technologies come in. It is how quickly each of these companies adapts to that and brings in more value to the customer.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for over fifteen years.

For scaling Fortinet FortiGate, I am not sure about scaling down as we have not had any instances, but scaling up has presented no challenges.

I would rate the Fortinet FortiGate technical support as extremely good so far. I have not had any issues, and I would rate it the same as Cisco.

Positive

One pro for the Fortinet FortiGate compared to Palo Alto, Cisco products, and WatchGuard is that the architecture is different because they use specific processors to handle different types of traffic, both security traffic and routing traffic. They keep enhancing the processors as they improve the capabilities of the product. As for cons, I do not see anything at this point in time.

The initial setup for Fortinet FortiGate is extremely simple. It takes about five minutes to get it up and running. It is that easy. Nothing beyond that.

The deployment process for Fortinet FortiGate is generally very simple. We give the prerequisites to the customer in terms of a number of man links they want to connect and what the LAN subnet and number of subnets are. These initial details are gathered from the customer. Once the appliances are in place, we begin with the contribution to the content management interface. Most of the time, we start with the LAN configuration and the LAN network configuration. Then we move to firewall policies based on the organization's requirements, licensing the product on the cloud, and subscription licenses. In some cases, we configure VPNs and site-to-site VPNs. That is about it, and there are certain features that need to be enabled, which we will enable.

One thing I would definitely state about Fortinet FortiGate is that, in terms of performance, if compared with a product of the same price point, Fortinet FortiGate will outperform it. This way, the customer has a better ROI because they do not have to look at changing it or looking at an upgrade frequently.

I find the pricing setup cost and licensing for Fortinet FortiGate reasonable.

I work with Fortinet FortiGate SD-WAN extensively. My experience in integrating SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate in the network is that it is very easy.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate as a highly mature product. I have been working with them for quite a long time and have multiple implementations across India. I have not come across any instance where I had to replace the product.

My advice for others looking into implementing Fortinet FortiGate is to plan the capacity properly and right-size the product for the specific customer, which is most important. When choosing the wrong model, some run into issues where it is not supporting that procedure, the system going under load, and similar issues. It is primarily important to spend more time on the design and finalize what is required in terms of the appliances.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution 10 out of 10.

I used it as an IT provider, and our main firewall was the Fortinet series FortiGate. Currently, I am just a user on the end user side of the fence.

The Fortinet gear is really easy to use, intuitive, and pretty powerful. It has been great because we haven't had to change it out very much. The operational return on investment has been great as we don't have to keep replacing it.

I really liked the interface because it was extremely user-friendly. Unlike Cisco, where you didn't need to be certified to use the interface effectively. The consistency across all models has also been beneficial as it simplifies learning and usage. They put in a thing called the FortiCookbook, which is very easy to read with real-life scenarios that make networking tasks like joining networks very straightforward.

I just don't like giving products ten out of ten. There's always something new that can be added or fixed.

I have been working with the Fortinet FortiGate overall since 2006, which is quite a few years now.

We haven't had to change it out very much. It has been stable and reliable for us.

I would rate its scalability as a nine out of ten. They scale up really well from smaller models like the FortiGate 40 and 50 to bigger sites with the FortiGate 100 for more throughput - up to enterprise datacenters.

Customer support is quite good. We purchased the 24/7 support, and they usually respond within an hour, even in the middle of the night.

I haven't switched from FortiGate. We still use the Fortinet solution as our firewall.

The initial setup is very straightforward and easy, with wizards helping to configure the device efficiently.

The ROI has been very good because it's operationally efficient, and we haven't needed to replace the equipment frequently.

I would definitely recommend it to other businesses with similar security needs. For smaller businesses with just a couple of computers, the standard ISP-supplied modems are fine.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

On-premises

In the last months, we use Fortinet FortiGate for internal segmentation firewalls and also for the OT for the production to separate ICS components; that's the most reason why we implemented a Fortinet FortiGate firewall.

The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate that I found are its next-generation firewall capabilities with stateful inspection and antivirus, along with features such as a reverse proxy that are missed by some other firewall products such as Palo Alto or Check Point. We have a product suitable for the mid-sized market where we can handle all necessary features without the need to build every security feature with a separate device or product; thus, Fortinet FortiGate offers the completest feature set for a firewall on the perimeter to the internet or for internal segmentation.

The main issue we have dealt with in the last few months is the number of vulnerabilities, which has caused concerns for both customers and integrators regarding whether Fortinet is a secure product; this has affected my rating, as it is why I do not give a ten, instead rating it an eight. The feature set works, but the excessive vulnerabilities bring risks, necessitating upgrades and patches, which complicate matters.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate firewall for more than 10 years.

We do not have any problems with the stability of the Fortinet FortiGate product, but we have had problems with vulnerabilities. There are many vulnerabilities in the last few months, leading some customers to question whether Fortinet is a really secure product, which has created issues for us.

For Fortinet FortiGate's scalability, we have many different appliances available, and for the internal segmentation as well as the firewall components in the OT, the scalability is very good, so we do not face any problems there. That's one of the main reasons we use Fortinet FortiGate—because there are many different appliances available and we can select the one that we need without having to buy a bigger, more costly appliance.

My experience with Fortinet FortiGate customer service and technical support is that when we need assistance, we receive fast and competent support. We are certified with this product, and we do not encounter any problems, as they are quick and possess the know-how that we need.

Most issues are related to integration and operations, and since I'm only a consultant, I am not directly involved in these aspects. Engineers handle the implementation and operations, and while I know they use third-party products to integrate different firewall policies, I do not have any negative feedback regarding the implementation, so I cannot compare Fortinet FortiGate against other products.

In the last 12 months, I only worked with Guardicore, but now other products are coming up: ColorTokens and Illumio, though I do not have any experience with these two products. We have many collaboration tools such as Webex Teams and others; however, I only use them as a usual user and not as an administrator of these tools. I do not have any experience with Fortinet FortiGate's SD-WAN. I know the product but do not have experience with Fortinet Unified SASE; as I mentioned earlier, my focus in the last months was on internal segmentation, which means I could not use a cloud solution. I do not have any experience with Fortinet FortiGate's data center solution. There have been no benefits or improvements for the organization since the deployment of Fortinet FortiGate. 

Overall, I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

On-premises

I use Fortinet FortiGate to secure our infrastructure, user data, data encryption, and to prevent DDoS attacks. 

I also have experience with FortiManager and FortiCloud. I have experience in integrating SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate because I am using SD-WAN with multiple ISP lines, using it as a load balancer and for specific route traffic.

Fortinet FortiGate has positively impacted our organization by preventing hackers from accessing our network.

The performance of hardware-assisted DDoS protection in Fortinet FortiGate when managing data center traffic is very good.

One of the best features of Fortinet FortiGate is VLAN. Dynamic Segmentation and SD-WAN are also very good. 

It is stable and easy to use. There are a lot of good resources available on the web.

Fortinet FortiGate could be improved in terms of user friendliness at the policy level and assigning URL based and keyword based features.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for around three years.

Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution and the best solution.

The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good.

I would rate technical support from Fortinet a ten out of ten.

Positive

Before choosing Fortinet FortiGate, I was using Sophos Cyberoam, which is outdated. I switched from Sophos to Fortinet FortiGate because the Sophos device was outdated, not providing the same SD-WAN features at the same cost and central level.

We got our ROI in the second year due to its stability.

The licensing cost is at the intermediate level.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten. 

On-premises

I am reselling FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) or handling the administration of this product for various customers such as universities and those in the hospitality industry.

FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is more realistic in application, allowing for more specific, customized security policies without the extensive work involved with static rules. This feature is what I desire from the next-generation product. Its segmentation capabilities allow me to apply rules based on team needs or social networks, automatically updating for new networks. This removes worry about what happens when a new social network appears.

It would be better if there was more transparency regarding what the automatic rules do. When a site is blocked, it is necessary for me to consult the logs to understand what the Next Generation Firewall policy has blocked. There is usually no information about what is included or not included in these automatic rules.

I have had about five years of experience with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW).

The support is not good because I generally search for solutions online. When I open a case, they usually identify it as a bug they are working on. I must study the best version to install to avoid previously found bugs.

Neutral

The initial setup of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is pretty straightforward and easy.

For one implementation, only one person is needed for configuration. However, for tasks like interconnecting, putting the device in a rack, and other physical requirements, more people are required.

The licenses are expensive, and whenever a customer needs to renew the license, it becomes a significant expense. However, the hardware itself is relatively inexpensive compared to the license costs.

Netgate pfSense and FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) differ significantly in terms of pricing and features, with FortiGate offering many more features.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) a seven.