Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

I use Fortinet FortiGate for SD-WAN, specifically for branches, and for firewall purposes. 

Fortinet FortiGate is sold to everyone, including banks, mining companies, and oil companies, as it's one of the most popular SD-WAN products that we sell. These are mainly medium-sized businesses or enterprise businesses because we only sell business-to-business, B2B, and we don't sell to normal clients, only businesses.

We usually do not have any problems. It's a very easy-to-use product. We also have a SOC or service operations center. They are certified in Fortinet FortiGate.

From the point of view of a reseller, Fortinet FortiGate improves our business because it is one of the products that we sell the most. We also use it on our backend because the devices have many slots and support substantial bandwidth.

The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are its SD-WAN capabilities, such as dynamic routing, and other features, including security options such as antivirus, IPS, and IDS—all integrated into one device. 

Another beneficial aspect of using Fortinet FortiGate is that if you have a LAN network, you can integrate it with FortiSwitch. You can manage everything from Fortinet FortiGate. It is easy to manage and integrate with other Fortinet devices.

Fortinet FortiGate is a very good device overall, though it can be improved in certain areas regarding the licenses, particularly the big one called unified threat management, which has many capabilities. The big license options have web filtering, IDS, and a lot of other things, but it's not like they are all good. That's the only thing I would change because the rest is very good.

I have about 4 or 5 years of experience with Fortinet FortiGate.

I find Fortinet FortiGate to be quite stable, as I have never heard of any issues where they broke or malfunctioned; they are always working. I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability for Fortinet FortiGate as an eight out of ten

We don't usually use that service. We only engage with Fortinet support when a device is broken and needs RMA, so I am not familiar with their operational teams.

We used to use Cisco firewalls and devices, which are also quite good. However, Cisco is more expensive, approximately twice their prices, but they are similar in functionality. With Fortinet, we are partner experts, which is a big advantage, whereas with Cisco, we are premium partners, which is not the biggest status, so if we are going to resell to our clients, we don't have the best discount or prices.

I am not part of the initial setup or deployment process since I work in presales. The setup or deployment is quite easy, as you can do a one-touch deployment that automatically connects to the FortiManager cloud when you connect it to a broadband or dynamic IP, allowing you to start the configuration from that point.

We usually sell it for on-premises setups.  It's on the cloud only when the client has virtual machines or their own service. Sometimes they have a service on the cloud like AWS, but it's more difficult to sell now because AWS has an e-commerce option where you can buy FortiGate directly. The only thing you need is someone to manage and configure.

For deployments at one site, it usually requires only one person, and if we are talking about 1 to 50 sites, it still only takes one person because the same template is used for all sites.

In Argentina, we service about 100 locations. There are about 200 companies in Colombia and Brazil. 

We service about 100 locations with Fortinet FortiGate in Argentina, but if we account for all the company's clients, it can be around 2,000 across Colombia and Brazil, since we have clients in all of these countries.

Fortinet prices are around $600 for the small 40F model, and for licenses, the simplest option is about $300 for a year. They sell licenses that can last for 1, 2, 3, or 5 years.

Before using Fortinet, we evaluated other options such as Versa and Meraki, but Meraki is also from Cisco. Fortinet is better than Versa. One of the main differences between them is that we don't have many partners or distributors for Versa here in Argentina, making it difficult to sell something that you cannot pay for locally. It has been easier in the past to handle payments, but Versa doesn't have many providers or distributors in Latin America, making it a less viable option. Fortinet offers more products that are easier to integrate into our clients' networks, such as firewalls and access points, so that was one of the main reasons we didn't use Versa.

My advice to other businesses or people considering using Fortinet FortiGate is that it is the starting product from Fortinet, and when you start using Fortinet FortiGate, you can then move on to the next products they offer, which are numerous. 

We sell the 40F, 60F, 80F, 100F, and 200F models. There are the ones we sell readily from the bottom to the top. Sometimes, we sell bigger ones such as the 300 model.

Overall, I would rate Fortinet FortiGate around a nine out of ten.

Fortinet FortiGate serves as our perimeter network firewall for our internal needs, and we also use SD-WAN to combine several internet service providers. I have experience with integration of SD-WAN capabilities, and I can explain my feedback on this.

The impact of SD-WAN on my network performance is clear, and if we speak about Fortinet Unified SASE, it is effective for me. My experience with this unified agent brings some examples to mind.

There are some areas for improvement in Fortinet FortiGate, including some small challenges I have faced.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for about two years.

I do not work with Fortinet FortiGate Data Center solution, and in general, Fortinet FortiGate is stable. I never see any crashes or downtime; it performs fine overall, but I wonder if it is also scalable or if there may be some limitations, possibly regarding cost to scale.

I never see any crashes or downtime; it performs fine overall, but I wonder if it is also scalable or if there may be some limitations, possibly regarding cost to scale.

I would give technical support from Fortinet nine points as well, noting that only the licensing model could be a bit improved, and all the rest is fine.

Positive

In terms of pricing, the solution is a bit expensive, but I think it was a better option than Checkpoint, which is why I replaced it.

Since implementing Fortinet FortiGate, I have not seen significant changes in ROI, but what I can share about deployment is that Fortinet FortiGate is easy to deploy.

I deploy the solution on the cloud.

Since implementing Fortinet FortiGate, I have not seen significant changes in ROI.

In terms of pricing, the solution is a bit expensive, but I think it was a better option than Checkpoint, which is why I replaced it.

In terms of pricing, the solution is a bit expensive, but I think it was a better option than Checkpoint, which is why I replaced it.

I am working with Fortinet FortiGate as a customer. I purchased the product from Fortinet directly, and if we speak about integration of SD-WAN with Fortinet FortiSASE, it has a positive impact on application performance in my case. For SD-WAN, I am not using it, so I would rate my overall experience with Fortinet FortiGate as nine out of ten points. I don't want to see new features included or new integrations for now.

We are using Fortinet FortiGate for the SD-WAN solution between our branches. We also started using Fortinet's access points, wireless solution, and full fabric with switching. We are using many products from Fortinet.

We don't use Fortinet FortiGate for data center solutions; we just use Fortinet FortiGate for perimeter firewalls and wireless and switching.

The main benefits that Fortinet FortiGate provides is the security of the network.

Fortinet FortiGate has many functions, and it is one of the best next-generation firewalls with an affordable cost than other vendors. 

Fortinet FortiGate is useful for network performance, and it helps to optimize the links between branches and the applications that are used from the data center to other branches. 

The integration between SD-WAN and FortiGate is easy. It accommodates our needs.

They can add automation for monitoring and policy optimization on the firewall. I think using AI to do some optimization on the policies would be beneficial, such as providing alerts about policies that haven't been used for a long time or identifying overlapping policies.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for at least six to seven years.

I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate as eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Fortinet FortiGate as eight out of ten.

I would rate technical support from Fortinet as seven out of ten. While there are no issues, there is improvement needed for fast response and clear response from Fortinet's technical support.

Positive

The initial setup for Fortinet FortiGate is very simple.

Palo Alto is the main competitor in the market. Fortinet FortiGate provides a simple solution. It is less expensive than Palo Alto and meets our requirements. 

We do the exercise from designing and planning with Fortinet FortiGate, and then we purchase through a partner.

My overall rating for Fortinet FortiGate is eight out of ten.

My use cases for Fortinet FortiGate mostly involve perimeter-based security and fire-walling.

I find that Fortinet FortiGate is pretty easy to use and integrated, offering many features in one box at a decent price compared to other enterprise vendors. When I first used it as a one-for-one replacement, the functionality was basically the same, but the ease of use compared to the old solution increased, so I definitely saw benefits immediately.

Fortinet FortiGate could improve by enhancing FortiManager, which is the centralized management system. It has many inconsistencies and errors with respect to pushing policies, especially when we have a large network team that needs to push different rules. Improving the consistency and allowing proper stability with many users managing hundreds of firewalls would be beneficial. Regarding cloud deployment in public cloud, it is less flexible and scalable, and customers need to provide and take care of resiliency, scalability, and redundancy. This could be a future improvement for Fortinet FortiGate to better adhere to cloud philosophies.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for approximately 10 years.

The stability and performance of Fortinet FortiGate have been good, as it has been running at the company for quite a few years since we first implemented it.

Regarding scalability, we have hundreds of physical appliances deployed, which are running adequately. However, in cloud deployment such as public cloud, it is less flexible and scalable. Customers need to provide and take care of resiliency, scalability, and redundancy, which could be a future improvement for Fortinet FortiGate to better adhere to cloud philosophies.

I have contacted technical support regarding FortiSwitch integration issues with Fortinet FortiGate. They are good at responding, though I don't need to call support often. For myself, the experience has been good. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give Fortinet FortiGate's support an eight. I did have some minor issues with the person I talked to, but overall, they were able to resolve the issue.

Positive

I have used alternatives to Fortinet FortiGate.

For someone with a network background deploying Fortinet FortiGate for the first time, the switch is very easy and the UI is easy to navigate. However, their CLI is very difficult to learn, though changes and configurations in the UI are very understandable.

For the deployment of Fortinet FortiGate, it depends on the project, but for smaller or even bigger deployments, one person can easily handle it, excluding data center rack installation.

Fortinet FortiGate requires maintenance, including updates and firmware updates to fix bugs and security vulnerabilities. Overall, it runs fine, but it has security vulnerabilities with respect to some features that may have affected its reputation. Keeping up to date is a normal part of having any product vendor, and their upgrade process has been smooth.

I don't necessarily know directly about their pricing, but Fortinet tends to be lower than Cisco based on the separate projects I've been involved with. In general, Fortinet FortiGate has very competitive pricing.

Cisco Firepower is one alternative to Fortinet FortiGate. Comparing both, ease of use is a major difference. Cisco Firepower's ease of use is very poor, with many bugs and issues that made it non-functional - some things break and pushing policies is very slow.

Previously, I was a customer of Fortinet, but now I am also a reseller partner. I rate Fortinet FortiGate 8 out of 10.

We have configured it in our data center.

The best feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the IPS or IDS implementation. I appreciate most the agility or the flexibility to create hashes to block incoming threats, and I can integrate with third-party threat intelligence with our FortiGate.

SD-WAN is another beneficial feature of Fortinet FortiGate. It offers flexibility in terms of adding multiple network connectivity and building your own network. It's the replacement for traditional VPN solutions. With SD-WAN, I can connect my remote office quickly and add additional or multiple network connectivity to provide redundancy on my network. This is the simple part of that.

The effectiveness of Fortinet unified SASE in providing consistent security policies across multiple locations is very good. In FortiSASE, they have integration with FortiGate. As a network security individual in a company, you can provide a single view of policy, monitor them, audit them, or in one screen, you can see the activity of your users, the behavior of your users, and in contrast, you can see the possibility of tracing the users whenever they have some threats.

Whenever I perform a firmware upgrade or any upgrade on a VM, there are instances where the routing gets lost in the configuration itself on the running VM. 

They have recently acquired a CNAP solution which should be integrated into FortiGate boxes natively for protection at any application layer. Since Fortinet FortiGate has Layer 7 protection, they should integrate that as soon as they can for threat detection and network detection. At the moment, if you don't integrate any third-party solution with a simple Fortinet FortiGate box, the box would not function as expected for superb protection. Compared to others, Palo Alto has more integration. 

I'm waiting for Fortinet FortiGate to be more mature in terms of integrating AI. They already have AI automation in the configuration, but that's just the configuration. They need to address AI in threat intelligence and how they integrate with threat intelligence sources to protect customers using their Fortinet FortiGate boxes or Fortinet FortiGate VM instances.

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

Whenever I perform a firmware upgrade or any upgrade on a VM FortiGate, there are instances where the routing gets lost in the configuration itself on the running VM. Whenever we do any upgrade or patch, we ensure we have a latest backup, and then validate every single configuration whenever we finish the upgrade or deploy the patch. This ensures there are no concerns in terms of connectivity or services that get impacted after the upgrade.

This is not a criticism of FortiGate; it reflects my experience deploying several FortiGate instances across different public clouds such as AWS, OCI, Azure, and GCP. My main concern with FortiGate in OCI is its lack of support for features like auto-scaling. When you need additional CPU or bandwidth, it doesn't automatically provision those resources. Currently, in OCI, if you want to scale your FortiGate deployment, you have to shut down the instance and rebuild the virtual machine to accommodate increased capacity. For instance, when you purchase a VM instance, it may come with only four CPUs and a limited bandwidth of four Mbps. In scenarios where you need to scale up quickly, this can be a significant drawback compared to what can be achieved with Azure, AWS, and GCP.

However, I've deployed FortiGate on physical appliances in data centers in the past without any issues, as long as proper planning is done regarding the capacity of your firewall requirements. For example, if you need ten gigabits per second throughput, you should change the module and connect a ten-gig interface to the switch. The key lies in anticipating your design from the ground up, taking into account the growth in the number of users and the increase in the services you provide to your customers. This is my primary concern.

Their support is very good. They respond quickly through their hotline number with an active subscription.

I would rate the support from Fortinet FortiGate as a nine out of ten. Sometimes if I don't escalate to our account manager, it will take the next business day for the interaction.

Positive

I previously used Cisco ASA firewall but didn't find it to be as straightforward as Fortinet FortiGate. 

The initial setup for Fortinet FortiGate is very straightforward. As long as you have the foundation of networking and understand the east-west and north-south firewall terminology, it's quick and easy. 

The deployment would take a maximum of 30 minutes for edge layer protection and end-user protection. After that, you can enrich or enhance the policy, IPS, IDS tweaking, the built-in DDoS or UDP flooding integration.

I performed the deployment of Fortinet FortiGate myself, and it was very easy.

I appreciate how Fortinet FortiGate, particularly in Saudi Arabia, is not as expensive compared to other competitors. The investment value is good, and technically, the value invested is worthwhile. It's a very useful tool to mitigate and protect your enterprise. I cannot speak to the financial analysis as I'm not involved in finance.

It is cheaper and more competitive compared to other options. For example, when comparing Palo Alto products to others, Palo Alto tends to be more expensive. If you compare Cisco's platform, including Cisco Meraki, with Fortinet products, you'll notice that Cisco's offerings are generally higher priced than Fortinet's firewall solutions.

Before working with Fortinet FortiGate, I evaluated other firewalls such as the open-source firewall pfSense. pfSense is suitable only for small startup companies that need more financial consideration. However, in the long run, it's difficult to maintain and support without a subscription. 

I also evaluated Sophos UTM, which was acquired by Sophos from Vyatta Networks, which began as open source but was later locked down for commercial purposes.

The biggest benefit of Fortinet FortiGate among other firewalls is the community. Many adopters and companies globally are already using FortiGates. Everyone in the community is sharing, and their support is very good.

I can recommend Fortinet FortiGate. It's a very stable next-generation firewall where the majority of the firewall features and services are in one box.

My total rating for Fortinet FortiGate is nine out of ten because there are still some missing pieces that need to be integrated with the box itself.

My main use case for this product is a firewall.

I appreciate the ease of use, ease of setup, and the different abilities it has. I have been very pleased with it over SonicWall. The interface of Fortinet FortiGate is a lot easier to use and more robust, plus their VPN option is much better; SonicWall is ridiculously slow. I have been very happy with the effectiveness of the unified SASE for providing consistent security policies across multiple locations. It has positively impacted my organization by freeing me up regarding administration; I spend a lot less time on administration. It probably saves me about 30 to 45 minutes a week.

They could continuously focus their improvements on network perimeter security, as that's what they're best at.

I have had four years of experience with Fortinet FortiGate, going on four, possibly five. I cannot remember if we switched over to them in 2020 or 2021, but I think it was 2020.

Fortinet FortiGate is very stable. I don't have any issues with Fortinet FortiGate freezing up or needing frequent restarts. The firmware updates are automatic, and I have just been really happy.

While we're a single office with a single server, I can say that it can definitely be scaled up.

I had a little help from Fortinet FortiGate support, but other than that, it was just me deploying it. I would rate their support a 10; they're fantastic. Their knowledge makes them fantastic; if they had to research something and get back to me, it was very quick, and usually I get an answer right away.

The unit itself is probably comparable in price, maybe a little more expensive than SonicWall; however, the yearly maintenance is quite a bit more, but it is more robust and worth it.

For a firewall, the initial setup was pretty straightforward for us.

I had a little help from Fortinet FortiGate support, but other than that, it was just me deploying it.

I believe all use cases could work for this solution. For us, Fortinet FortiGate is deployed on-premises. We purchased Fortinet FortiGate through a Fortinet reseller. Their knowledge makes them fantastic; if they had to research something and get back to me, it was very quick, and usually I get an answer right away.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an 8 or a 9 overall; everything always has room for improvement, but I'm pretty pleased with it.

The main use case for Fortinet FortiGate is as a perimeter firewall between the internet and the LAN to protect the networks from the internet.

We are using Fortinet FortiGate in the education industry.

One of the best features of Fortinet FortiGate is that it's a very powerful equipment that gives many security features in a single box with good performance, and the user interface is friendly to use and configure. The performance is good compared to other vendors that I have used, and the price is competitive. 

I am utilizing Fortinet FortiGate's SD-WAN, and my experience in integrating the SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate in my network has been good. It was easy to integrate the SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate, and from my experience and background, it was easier with Fortinet FortiGate compared to other vendors. The monitoring after installing the SD-WAN is also easier. It is easy to see how it behaves and how the traffic goes through the different links. It's improving our performance with SD-WAN.

If you want to conduct some statistics or generate a report to understand the status of your configuration or filtering, you need FortiGate Analyzer for long-term data retention. FortiGate can only retain logs for 24 hours or 7 days. I'm not sure if it holds them for a longer period, such as for a month. It will be useful for assessing our strategy and monitoring our environment without investing in FortiGate Analyzer. It would be beneficial if Fortinet could enhance the FortiGate by providing more statistical and monitoring views for a longer timeframe, rather than requiring access to FortiGate Analyzer. Without Fortinet Analyzer, currently, I cannot see past events.

I have had more than 10 years of experience with Fortinet FortiGate.

Fortinet FortiGate is very stable, and I have never seen a Fortinet FortiGate get stuck because of performance or memory issues. They have good hardware and ASICs, and I have not experienced any performance issues with all the features I have implemented in it.

Fortinet FortiGate scales effectively, and even though I can't recall a specific use case regarding scalability, I am sure it is very scalable.

Their support is very good. I would rate them a nine out of ten. When I open a case or provide feedback, they are very responsive. If I don’t get the answer I need, I can call them directly, which also deserves a nine.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward and easy.

The duration depends on the size of the installation and the features you want to implement. It can take anywhere from one day to several days. In our case, we had to install it across all our campuses. We have 12 campuses with FortiGate devices installed at the central location. The main setup took about two to three days at the main site. After that, I prepared the templates for the other sites, which took about half a day to install once they were ready. Overall, if you are trained and familiar with the FortiGate environment, it can be quite straightforward. If you're not familiar, it may take some time to read and prepare everything; however, it’s not particularly difficult.

Typically, we have a variety of roles in our environment, so I deal with multiple tasks. We need someone who understands the network, so I also function as a network engineer. It requires knowledge of both networking and security, hence network security.

It reduces the cost of operations by automating many tasks that I would do manually. It also helps to be proactive by detecting things and proposing features to improve the security posture. In that regard, I have seen a return on investment because it reduces the cost of operations. It saves about 20% of time per month.

The pricing is comprehensive and clear. You can easily understand what you are purchasing, including which features correspond to each license and maintenance contract. Overall, the information is straightforward. Additionally, compared to other vendors, their prices are competitive.

I have not yet tested or installed Fortinet unified SASE, but from what I read and my knowledge, it is something that may be good to integrate with existing systems. However, I cannot confirm its effectiveness as I haven't tested it yet. I do not utilize Fortinet FortiGate's data center solution at the moment.

I didn't work with all the FortiGate equipment. Based on the equipment I worked with, I would rate it an eight out of ten. It's very good.

There are many main use cases for Fortinet FortiGate for my clients, including network firewall, VPN, ZTNA, and SD-WAN. The firewall is basically the primary function and one of the best features in Fortinet FortiGate.

The AI aspect has helped to protect data centers at scale by improving the reduction of false positive errors and handling unknown threats.

I have hands-on experience with demos and implementation of Fortinet FortiGate. The AI and ML enhanced FortiGuard services are quite new, and I have some experience but not much since they are a new feature.

The stability and performance of Fortinet FortiGate are mixed, as some features are quite good and very stable while others are quite new and very buggy.

There are quite a lot of bugs in Fortinet FortiGate, and they introduce new features every day that come with problems. I think they introduce them too fast.

Fortinet brings in new products every year and acquires new companies while inventing new products, which is good but also bad because they introduce a lot of workload and problems or bugs onto the table.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for almost three years.

The stability and performance of Fortinet FortiGate are mixed, as some features are quite good and very stable while others are quite new and very buggy.

Scalability highly depends on the purchase decision. If the user bought the appliance, then it is not scalable, but for the VM on the software side, it can expand.

I have some experience with Fortinet's customer service and technical support. I would rate the technical support of Fortinet on a scale of 1 to 10 around a 7 or 8, primarily because they have local operations in Thailand, so they have at least some people who can speak Thai.

Positive

I do have experience in working with technologies other than email security solutions.

If talking about the general product, the initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate is quite straightforward, simple, and easy. However, it depends on the DNA of the product. If the Fortinet product was acquired from another company, that is a different story.

My role is usually on the pre-sales and the POC role in integrating SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate. I am not involved in the implementation side and cannot tell much about it.

In Thailand, the concept of unified SASE is not very popular because the traffic has to go through the cloud, and they are not very afraid of the cloud or highly adopting it at this time. 

I know about dynamic segmentation in Fortinet FortiGate from the book and theory side, but on the implementation side, there are not many projects that implement it that way. It is probably never done.

There are several benefits that Fortinet FortiGate brings to the table, and I cannot speak of only one or two as it is too extensive. It highly depends on the use case, and the only word I can tell is that it is very multi-purpose or all-purpose and highly usable in many use cases. 

Fortinet FortiGate is quite a mix for organizations considering it, as some products are very easy and straightforward to start, making it easy to sell, and then they can expand to other more complex and advanced products.

The main use cases for Fortinet FortiGate usually include security to filter traffic to inside the network, load balancing and QoS for the user side, as well as Zero Trust Network Access, allowing users outside and inside the network fabric to connect to our application that is under the firewall.

The most useful features in Fortinet FortiGate are the security features, where we can analyze what kind of traffic is inside our network, and we also utilize ZTNA for limiting and managing our network access. 

The issue with Fortinet FortiGate is the many security CVEs around; I have read there are probably multiple critical CVEs above 9.0 in Fortinet FortiGate products. There appear to be fewer issues with other brands such as Palo Alto or Check Point, but especially with Fortinet FortiGate, there are many vulnerabilities that can be found. The way we manage this is by applying updates whenever new ones are available, but the high critical CVEs generate concern, as we buy security products for our safety and when we find that attackers can easily breach them, it makes us question the safety of the product itself. 

I hope we can deploy the product in an active-active configuration since we currently have two units in an active and passive setup. There are limitations when trying to install it with active-active, but we hope to run it that way.

I have been working with the Fortinet FortiGate firewall for two years.

Stability wise, Fortinet FortiGate is quite good; we rarely have issues with stability, and compared to the previous solution we had, which was much worse, Fortinet FortiGate has had no issues so far.

Fortinet FortiGate is not very scalable. We use the appliance, and once we are out of capacity, we have to buy a new one, as there is no way through scalability. I would rate scalability as a seven out of ten.

I rarely use customer support, but there are a few cases where I tried to reach out before, and it was handled and closed properly, so I had no issues. I would rate the support as nine, based on my experience.

The previous solution we used was Sophos. Sophos had stability problems.

The setup is not complex. It's quite straightforward.

The return on investment after implementing Fortinet FortiGate has been quite okay, allowing us to get the value of what we paid for.

The benefit is more like we are buying insurance. All of the security products may be optional, but having them helps us feel safer and assures us that our network is protected from attackers.

It's affordable. We usually pay about 10K USD annually for the license on a yearly basis.

We have experience with integrating SD-WAN capabilities in Fortinet FortiGate. It is only useful if we have multiple internet operators; if we use a one-to-one connection, there are no benefits. Some of our sites do have multiple internet access, allowing us to use SD-WAN to manage the connection, making it easier to treat it as a single connection while SD-WAN helps manage and load balance between those two.

We do not use Fortinet Unified SASE now, but we are considering implementing it. In the data center, we actually have another solution, but Fortinet FortiGate is used only for our customer-facing side.

My advice to those planning to use Fortinet FortiGate is to check for updates often. We had several issues before due to the firmware we used, but after upgrading to the 7.4 firmware, a lot of issues were resolved just by applying the update regularly. Actually, compared to other firewalls, it is on the very affordable side.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

We use Fortinet FortiGate for any of our customers or clients that need to have more security features built-in, whether licensed or not. 

For instance, if it's a medical firm doing VPN to ensure no traffic leaks, that would be a use case. We use Fortinet FortiGate for anything that needs specific features, such as SD-WAN or other security features, including malware checking and blocking. We also use it for Zero Trust.

It differs for everyone with Fortinet FortiGate, but one benefit was checking for malware on incoming traffic or security issues, compared to a users using a residential router off the shelf. 

The second benefit was properly dividing up the network, which helps us significantly.

Users benefit from a recognizable brand and good security features. 

Ease of use is one feature of Fortinet FortiGate, and the Cloud Controller and Cloud Connector are the second one; these are the two main features that are quite useful. For example, with the Cloud Connector in Fortinet FortiGate, if a user has an issue, we can see it directly without having to build a VPN tunnel or something of that nature.

From time of deployment, users tend to see benefits once there's a major event that stops. From my end, I see benefits right away.

For Fortinet FortiGate, their code development would definitely be something they need to improve on to reduce vulnerabilities that need to be patched. 

Additionally, if I were to suggest another improvement, it would be their competitive pricing.

I have had experience with Fortinet FortiGate for six years.

With Fortinet FortiGate, scalability is good; it's very easy to scale with them. 

The only downside is sometimes you can't just cut over, so if you go from a bigger model. Or if you need to upgrade the model, you would have to reprogram it, compared to just importing and exporting, which can be time-consuming. 

The scalability is easy with switches and access points that are basically plug-and-play for the most part.

I've never had a problem with Fortinet FortiGate support, so I'd rate it ten out of ten. However, if you don't have a support contract, it's not easy to get support.

Positive

I've dealt with many firewalls, such as SonicWalls, UniFi, pfSense, and Cisco. We found SonicWall very confusing for the average network engineer or network administrator. I don't recommend SonicWall due to its hard-to-find auditing process for exploits. Although they have fewer exploits, when they do occur, they're significant.

With Fortinet FortiGate, you can access the whole firewall, with no hidden spots. pfSense is great, however, it requires a lot of manual work and has no Cloud Connect or easy management from an MSP's perspective. 

Palo Alto is another option that's great, but their price point isn't for everyone, especially for medium and small businesses; a $10,000 investment doesn't necessarily fit into most budgets.

UniFi is another product we've started to use more alongside Fortinet FortiGate, as they have almost all features without a license, with advanced rules that are relatively inexpensive compared to Fortinet FortiGate's $1,500 a year. 

Fortinet FortiGate and UniFi are the two firewalls we primarily deal with. My opinion is that UniFi has better integration and oversight of the environments compared to Fortinet FortiGate.

From an average user's perspective, setting up Fortinet FortiGate is quite complex; most people don't understand the terminology, so I'd rate that complexity at a high nine out of ten. From an MSP's perspective, it's probably about a five or six out of ten in terms of difficulty; it's easy for us as an MSP. For the end-user, it would be really complicated. 

For Fortinet FortiGate, deployment takes approximately two to three hours.

From our side, as an MSP, we require one person for Fortinet FortiGate. That job role is network administration.

For Fortinet FortiGate, calculating the return on investment is complex. 

The ROI is seen almost immediately in terms of security and protection against malicious attacks. While you never really get your money back in terms of direct investment, you get the security and protection benefits immediately. 

Fortinet FortiGate provides cost savings since you wouldn't need extra security features; you don't have to have four other programs for all the other parts of the environment, as it takes care of most of that.

I'd rate the pricing eight out of ten. 

The Fortinet FortiGate security features cost approximately $1,500 a year. The firewall itself doesn't have a recurring cost. It's the security features on top of that that you pay for.

I recommend Fortinet FortiGate. 

It's always updating the security package and security features. 

I have not looked into the solution's AI features.

Overall, on a scale of one to ten, I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine. I'd recommend the solution to others. It's always updating its security features.