Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

We primarily use the solution for security.

The security on offer is very good.

It's very simple to use.

They have a very good technical center.

It's, overall, a very good product.

The solution is stable.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The scalability could be better.

I've used the solution for three years. 

It's a stable solution. The reliability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The product can be scalable. However, it could be better. You are limited by the hardware.

We have more than 100 clients using this solution.

I've dealt with support in the past. I've also dealt with Palo Alto support. I find them to be very good. 

We also used Check Point and Palo Alto. Fortinet, however, scores very high against security threats, when you compare the three.

The initial setup is great. It's not complex or difficult. It's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. 

We installed it within a day with no issues. It doesn't take much time. 

We have five to six technicians that can handle deployment and maintenance responsibilities. We are all engineers that are managed centrally.

You do need to purchase a license in order to use the product.

I'd recommend the solution to other companies that want to try it out.

I'd rate it at an eight out of ten. We don't have any real challenges with it at the moment. 

I like its interface. It is a simple solution. As compared to Sophos, its interface is easier. It is easy to create a policy, and you can easily understand it. 

The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy.

Its reporting and pricing need improvement.

I have been using this solution for five years.

Its stability is good. It has 90% stability.

Its scalability is good.

It is more expensive than Sophos. Fortinet is overall more expensive than Sophos. The small range of Fortinet, such as 60F and 80F, is more expensive than the small range of Sophos. Sophos is cheaper. In addition, if you jump from 80F Series to 100F Series, the price doubles.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

We primarily use the solution for a firewall plus as an overall UTM. We do not, however, use it as an SD-WAN.

The solution is very, very easy to use.

The user interface is very nice.

The product seems to offer pretty good customization.

The configuration of the product has been very straightforward and simple.

The reporting on offer is quite good.

The initial setup is straightforward as well.

We've found the pricing to be pretty good.

Technical support from the partner has been very helpful.

The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on. We haven't actually tried to implement that, however.

I've been working with the solution for close to ten years. It's been at least a decade at this point. It's been a while.

We haven't had any issues with the solution's stability. It's very reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. I can't recall experiencing bugs or glitches at all over the time I've used it. 

The scalability of the solution seems to be pretty good. We haven't had any issues in that respect.

Currently, our organization has about 125 users on the product.

While I don't have a direct line to Fortigate, I have used our partner support. They have been excellent and we are quite satisfied with the level of service we receive from them. They are knowledgeable and responsive.

The initial setup is not complex at all. I found it to be very straightforward. This was due to the fact that we had this solution procured along back in 2007 or 2008, as a smaller firewall, a FortiGate 60C.

We don't have anyone that handles maintenance full-time. It's an on-call situation. If we have issues or need maintenance, we raise a ticket and it is dealt with.

The pricing of the solution is fair. We don't find it to be overly expensive.

I've never looked at other products and therefore would not be able to really compare this solution to anything.

We are just customers and end-users of the product. We don't have a business relationship with Fortinet.

I'd recommend the solution. It's very simple and easy to use. On top of that, it offers peace of mind.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Our clients' main use case for Fortinet FortiGate is for the firewall on the outside perimeter to the internet. Some of them have started using it for SD-WAN.

We are software integrators. 

Our clients like the packaging because it's an appliance. It has specific chip sets to accelerate different features in the product.

Additionally, it's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there.

In terms of what can be improved, they do have certain features that you can only configure through a CLI and there's no GUI interface for it. That's a pain. But it's nice that the user can do everything one way or the other.

They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for at least the last 12 months.

Fortinet FortiGate is pretty stable.

It is hard to judge this year because of everybody working from home. Everybody is using up a lot of bandwidth so I'm not sure if that is a cause for some of the instability with the Forti client. The only place we've seen instability would be updating Forti client with their software called EMS.

So pushing out the client with EMS, like a client update to remote users, has proven a pain in the butt. But that could be because the end users' VPNs are maybe a little bit unstable just because of the high bandwidth demands. It is hard to determine. Maybe it is because some of these users are in remote areas, or non-urban or smaller towns, as opposed to being in an urban area where bandwidth is a little better.

We never jump ahead and say, "Oh, yes. 6.5 just came up. Let's jump on that." We'll probably just wait six months and see what goes on first. And I guess that's probably what a lot of people do because it's protecting your intellectual property and everything which that company owns.

I'm not saying that there's no instability. People will generally just wait and not jump out unless they're testing in the lab. They're not going to jump out and put the first revision that comes out on their firewalls.

In terms of scalability, it scales very well.

They have different models for different sizes. Obviously, if you buy too small and you have to upgrade, then it's a box swap. Some other vendors can just add another unit and you cluster them together. In their case it's more of just switching the box out for more performance boxes if you go too low.

Their technical support is very good.

Every time we've had to open up a case or get their help, if we surpass that person's ability, it gets escalated right away. So it's very good. It usually gets resolved within a day or two.

The initial setup is fairly straightforward.

In terms of ROI, they're inexpensive. Because they're inexpensive, they're just everywhere, in the Federal Government, schools, everywhere where budgets are fairly tight. And it is a very good product. It's a product that's built that if you need to you can add a different box and remove that feature from your main FortiGate and just run it on a different box.

So if you need to expand, you can always do it that way too.

They have good integration if you have multiple firewalls and it allows you to be able to push out policies to all of them at the same time.

Fortinet FortiGate's pricing is pretty hard to beat.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Fortinet FortiGate a 10 out of 10.

I specify, configure and deploy firewalls  in organizations with 500 or fewer employees and 15 or fewer sites.  Primarily I choose between Cisco, Sonicwall and Fortigate small and medium sized appliances.  Occasionally I deploy virtual appliances in AWS.   I prefer to use Fortigate firewalls for several reasons- remote access is simple and the included client works with MacOS Windows and IOS devices.  The level of security works well for most clients and the authentication with AD/LDAP makes the solution easier to deploy.  I also find that the clients  appreciate the lower price point than other vendors.

We have a standard build. We give the client the laptop, and, especially with the pandemic, we send them home with the laptop or FedEx the laptop already configured, and the user is ready to go. 

I don't even need to know the client's password. I can just install the software and create a profile. The client fills the profile in with simple instructions, types in their password instructions, and connects it and they're good. It's really simple. 

That's why we have standardized recommending Fortinet. That doesn't mean that I don't support other solutions as well, however, the device that I like the best is the one that's easy to use for me and it's easy to use for the clients. The price point is not bad as well.

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

The most valuable aspect that differentiates it from other solutions is that the client (the SSL VPN client or the IP sec VPN client, the same clients) is included in the solution. We don't have to pay extra for the software and the clients. 

I have had some issues, but no more than others and I don't have to buy an expensive add-on license to do it and it's managed and it's updated automatically. That's the key thing, that the client is included and it updates itself so I don't have to do too much to manage it and it's very transparent to the end-user.

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. 

If I wanted a unified console, I have to pay extra. And that's the downfall. That's the only needed improvement that I would say for the Fortinet solution, is that they should have it web-based from the get-go. You should not have to buy an extra bundle or an extra device.

If I have to make an update to a web filter, and I have 12 devices, I've got to do it in 12 places. If I don't want to do that the client can pay for a pretty expensive device or virtual appliance that does that for them. It's like an expensive centralized management tool. That's the big downfall of Fortinet. It doesn't come included, you have to pay for it. Their web-based one, that's sort of just like an inventory manager. It's not really good for distributing roles. With Cisco, you don't have to do anything. The one from Aruba HD has one too. Fortinet should try to be similar to those options.

In the next release, it would be amazing if they could give a better tool for upgrading, so that if I upgrade from an older version to the other, it can read the configuration and processes it for me so that I don't have to rewrite it from scratch. In FortiConverter, they have a tool like this, however, it doesn't work well. It's really more for bringing items in from other vendors, not from one version to the other.

That was my last experience where they operated from version five to six. However, that's really the only big thing. The main thing is to include the FortiManager cloud software like Cisco does. To have one solution. If you paid $150 a year for the support, you might as well get that too so I could manage all the devices at one spot. They do have FortiCloud, however, it's not the same as the way Cisco does it. They are selling another product called FortiManager. FortiManager should be included with the support, and that would make it more of a business solution, rather than a feature request.

I would say that I have been using the solution for over 10 years. It's likely been between 10 and 15 years at this point.

Fortigate firewalls are very reliable- in the past 15 years I believe only 2 devices in a 100 have failed.  The failures were due to harsh environments (dust and water will ruin any electronic device).  The input I can give to any technology person or client looking to choose a firewall / threat management device I would highly recommend the stability / reliability of fortigate.  Once installed it will do it's job efficiently and effectively for several years.

I will tell a client not to go with Fortinet if they have no firewall or they have a very, very old firewall. If this is from scratch, I'd say let's not go with Fortinet, let's go with Meraki if you have the money. I always say create the budget for it if you have a lot of sites, as Cisco does a better job if you have a lot of sites. If you have two sites, then it's fine to go with Fortinet. It'll scale to that scale. However, if you want to go over a couple of sites, it's not the best option.

The solution's initial setup is straightforward. It's actually gotten better. I got good at doing it from scratch from the command line, or even from the GUI with all the 50 steps to set up stuff. However, now they're wizards and it's much better. It was the thing that probably a lot of people commented on initially, and they just worked hard to fix it. They updated the software from version four to five to six. They did a good job at making it easier.

If the client had a lot of downtime or a lot of issues with older equipment, or they did not like the fact that they had to pay every year just to be able to use the device, then the return on investment of spending $900 for a Fortinet 60E per site for a three-year contract will hands-down beat pretty much anybody. 

It is definitely set it and forget it. There's very little input. You'll save money on consulting. If you were to call me and you're doing Juniper or you're doing Palo Alto, there's a lot more configuring and it's a lot harder to add stuff and therefore, as a consultant, I make more money, and I'm being serious. Once I set up a Fortinet I really don't have to touch it for years.

Maybe I have to log in to check that I need to do an update, however, in that case, they usually send me an email saying hey, your license key is up and maybe you want to buy a new one. I take the old one out and put a new one in, that's when I get paid again. It's boiled down to that. 

I'm not only an authorized reseller. I am a consultant that uses their equipment and recommends them on a routine basis. I am not a Fortinet partner, however.

I use a series of FortiGate products, including the 60, the 90, and the 100. Some of them are E's, some of them are S's; it all depends. However, they have pretty much the same user interface.

If a company is considering the solution, I'd advise that they consider purchasing the FortiManager if they really like the feature set and the way that Fortinet works. For example, a company we work with has these large scale solutions, and they use FortiManager. If you're a very large implementation, definitely look into Fortinet. If you're small, for example, under 20 devices, consider joining Cisco Meraki as it's so much easier. That's what I would tell any client. 

FortiManager and FortiGate are really good. If you like the way the GUI works it's more flexible than Cisco. There are more bells and whistles, however, Cisco is going to be the way to do it if you're going to do 50 sites. If you were to do a lot of sites, consider Cisco. If not, you can do Fortinet.

At the end of the day, the solution is very flexible, and if the client has special business partners that want a special type of nailed up VPN or special configuration for the clients, it offers that. The lesson I learned using the solution was to go with the solution that's most flexible for the client and at the same time is as low touch as possible. That's why I've standardized on FortiGate, as it's low touch for me and I'd rather spend time fixing other stuff or troubleshooting the other problems for clients than this particular solution.

You want to spend less time fighting with your remote access solution or your firewall solution and work on other problems. It should not be a difficult thing, and yet, a lot of people struggle with that. Especially today with the pandemic, they have to be able to have access to their stuff and that's crucial. That's the biggest takeaway. Is it easy to manage it, is it easy to connect? If so, it's worth the investment.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. If they included FortiManager in their offering, I'd give the product a perfect ten.

We deployed Fortinet FortiGate SD-WAN into one of our customers, and they are satisfied. We utilized Fortinet FortiGate's data center solution; we took in three units: FortiGate ADC 1101 and 2600, and we deployed them into a customer, with no issues so far. The impact of these services on data center protection at scale is still on the launch side; the production will be up maybe this month, but so far, there are no issues.

The best features I have already seen in Fortinet FortiGate are the automatic updates, the easiness of deployment, and the capacity. These three features are the best.

A shorter response time when we have questions could improve Fortinet's first-level support quality. The knowledge base is comprehensive, so that is okay. For additional features that could make Fortinet FortiGate even better in the future, they have the SD-WAN, but I do not know if they have quantum VPN. 

I saw one brand that has a quantum random number generator, so maybe that could enhance security, along with a smaller version of their product to fit into the budgets of smaller departments.

I have been dealing with Fortinet FortiGate since April.

I think Fortinet FortiGate is overall stable.

There are a lot of people using it, maybe more than a thousand.

The technical support by Fortinet is okay; they are very responsive, and they know what they are doing. If you ask them questions, they can easily answer.

I have no experience working with any other firewalls before using Fortinet FortiGate.

I was not a part of the technical team that deployed Fortinet FortiGate for integrating SD-WAN capabilities. I am actually with the research team, and I relate the feedback I get from their experience with Fortinet FortiGate.

The pricing of Fortinet FortiGate is a little pricey from my perspective. It is expensive comparatively to its competitors. The brand has its own price concerning the licensing model of Fortinet FortiGate.

We are dealing with other vendors besides Fortinet; we are constantly searching for brands and comparing their features side by side. Besides Fortinet, we are currently dealing with Palo Alto, Sophos, and my friends also did Check Point and another Korean brand. For Sophos, we are mostly dealing with firewalls. The Sophos products we are dealing with are firewalls. For Palo Alto, we are in the same category with firewalls.

I would recommend Fortinet FortiGate to others, specifically for larger companies but not for smaller companies because of the price-sensitive Philippine market, where you would not find a lot of companies buying premium products. I do not know if I can see room for improvement in Fortinet FortiGate because I am not so techie myself. I would rate Fortinet FortiGate as a product an eight out of 10.

We use the solution for network security.

The solution works quite well for us.

The solution is user-friendly in terms of configuration and implementation.

The solution's after-sales service needs improvement.

We have been using the solution for five years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

The solution's customer service is satisfactory but could be even better.

Neutral

We used Sophos earlier. We switched to Fortinet for its price.

The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely.

The solution has generated ROI for our customers.

The solution's licenses cost the same for different subscription plans. But the additional costs vary from client to client.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it as a seven.

The case of FortiGate is for firewall and VPN connection. We are partners and resellers of Fortinet and I'm a director. Our company is based in Malaysia.

FortiGate has improved our operational efficiency. 

The solution provides good firewall security and has great VPN features. The product is generally very simple to deploy and is quite flexible. 

They need to improve features related to mobiles with more and more customers adopting that as their way to manage things. They need to look to the future with their features and meet filtering requirements which the solution cannot currently do. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

The solution is stable. 

The product is not scalable. 

We are self-sufficient in terms of support. 

Initial deployments can be complex depending on the customer's requirements. Implementation can take up to a couple of days. There aren't usually too many issues. The solution requires some maintenance, mainly monitoring. 

The licensing costs are reasonable. You get value for your money. 

It's important to understand your customer's requirements. Once we work that out we then do a round of checks on the security vulnerabilities.

I rate this solution eight out of 10.