Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

To protect network perimeters.

Security. The main options feature protection and security against attacks.

Reliability and performance, those are key factors.

I have only one request and that is to have Fortinet as a market download in Azure. 

So far, so good.

I'm an integrator, so I use SonicWall, Sophos, and Fortinet.

I am using it as an IPS, intrusion protection system.

The first benefit is the cost. It is very affordable.

Also, it's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls.

It's a complete solution. You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. That's a very nice feature because with, for example, Cisco, you need to set the switch, you need to set the firewall, and you need to test it. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it. It's very easy.

In the last version of the FortiOS - the operating system of the firewall - they put a lot of new features to support communications in a firewall. Whatever the communication that you have, you can put that in the firewall, and that's great.

For me, at this time, it's very complete.

Stability is very good. I have no problems right now with any of my customers. I haven't had a call from a customer in about three months, other than to make new policies. That's it. They are not complaining about the Fortinet, that it is damaged or something like that.

Scalability is very good. We just did a quote for a university here that has about 25,000 students, and all the solutions that we put in the RFP, they were accepted. The only thing is the cost. As far wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you.

Technical support is very good. If you have any questions, they have a forum and, apart from the forum, depending on the FortiGate that you purchased, they have very good support from second-line engineers. Whatever your problem is, you call and at least you get a callback.

I was using a SonicWall. The problem with SonicWall is that they were purchased by Dell, and apparently, Dell is not putting any research money into the devices. That is the reason I changed because there are a lot of new things, new generation firewall technologies and they are not using them. Also, apparently, the price is very high right now. If you compare the price with a FortiGate, which has a lot of additional features, it's not worth it.

When selecting a vendor the most important criteria are support and cost.

Setup is very straightforward.

Pricing is good. They offer a lot of things, the most important is the support. Every time you upgrade your license, you also get insurance for the equipment. If you have any problem with equipment, they send in new equipment.

We did a total cost of ownership analysis against Sophos and also Palo Alto, but that was out of scope, it was too expensive. Another one was WatchGuard. When you start looking at the cost of the license for all the things that you get, Fortinet is by far the best option. The problem with the other companies is the licensing.

I rate FortiGate a 10 because every time I need to use the support, they are there. There were times when I went to a customer to give support, I called Cisco, they pass me to Brazil, and on another call, they passed me to India. After I gave the guy in India all this information for an hour, he asked me, "What's the problem?" So there was a communication issue with them and they don't know the problems very well. With Fortinet, they are in the US, not in India.

Do a total cost of ownership analysis with all the features you are looking for and, based on that, make the purchase. Also, reviews are very important.

The main use is to protect from outside attack, from any side. Because we work with sensitive data, we have to protect our work. We use it mainly for security, not only for content control.

We have peace of mind. We do work in a very dangerous environment, the internet, and this device gives us alerts. It gives us the opportunity to know what is going on.

The filtering that you can do with the firewall.

I would like to be able to do segmentation, for a specific user, with more priveledges. I would also like to see an easier user interface to implement that.

Sometimes we found that the traffic to the internet froze, I don't know exactly the reason. The only way to get it to work again was to turn it off and then run it again, a hardware reset. Overall it is a very stable platform but sometimes there is this problem.

The scalability is fine. The problem is the licensing. To do more you have to pay for it. In this market, where you can find a lot of devices to do the same things, to charge for them in the license is very difficult. Also, sometimes Fortinet changes their products, they drop devices from the market very quickly.

We have guys who are certified to work with Fortinet, so right now it's fine with them. We never really have serious problems, something to escalate to Fortinet. Only when there is a very difficult issue with the performance or something like that have we had to go to Fortinet, but it has been great.

One of the main reasons we're considering switching from FortiGate is because many companies have a lot of features and you don't have to pay for. If you compare side by side, you find a lot of things that new brands do as well for fewer dollars.

When selecting a vendor the most important factor is the prestige of the vendor. Also the cost, renewing licenses. Our customers are looking for more features for less cost. We have to look at what is going on in the market, who the main players are, who is doing well, and who has a good reputation.

I was not involved in the initial setup of the devices. I only had to check it out and make sure it was working fine. But I saw the guys working with the configuration. Occasionally they had to reference the manual but had to find the answers on Google.

Fortinet and Sophos are the main players for this type of solution.

I would rate FortiGate at seven out of 10 because, although they are doing well, the problem is the licensing, the cost is too high, and how they support their own devices needs improvement. They have to focus on more features with less cost for the customer. If you see the market, where it's going, there are a lot of players offering more features for less cost. FortiGate is a great product but they have to look out.

My advice would be, look at the time on the market. FortiGate is doing well, but right now they have many competitors that are doing well.

Firewall/Web Filter management. We have over 30 sites, and it is imperative that one person (myself) can plan, implement, and deploy these devices to our sites and manage them when finished.

Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter. 

The web filtering was the most valuable, because at a school board, we need to make sure the students are not tying up our bandwidth and also to keep the bad guys out.

One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering. Each manufacturer has their own way of filtering and each one needs improvement in categories, URL, and/or application filtering.

We saved a bundle by not needing all the past appliances from an NGFW.

I use this product on AWS. FortiGate's VM GUI is slightly different than the hardware devices.

It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements.

I have found FortiGuard Services to be valuable.

It needs to improve its ISP load balancing.

No issues.

No issues.

I would rate technical support as a seven out of 10.

We had a previous solution, but switch because FortiGate is a one box solution.

Initial setup was not complex.

Easy to understand licensing requirements.

• Palo Alto Networks
• Cisco ASA

Easy to implement, and it is also reliable.

The company has integrated the LDAP with the UTM to control user traffic in senses and have a high availability for Active/Passive to assure uptime in case of physical failure. Our company is cloud driven and downtime becomes critical.

The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall. If the employer BYOD, we can accommodate it the need by having an isolated networked exclusively for that equipment which does not comply with the internal policies.

The value is the capability of having multiple services with one unique license, not having the limitation per user licensing schema, like other vendors.

Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance.

1. The prompt and knowledgeable support behind them. 
2. Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed.
3. The simplicity and clarity of their user interface and documentation.
4. Their 'cookbooks' that walk you through the most common installation scenarios.

I am a one-man show, so there is not much that can be done to improve the way that I function. However, these products provide best-in-class security at reasonable prices. 

One of the most helpful features is their VPN, the client could not be any simpler to set up and use.

I can't think of too much which they can improve upon. I just have not come across any situation where they have fallen short of expectations.

I am a consultant who supports these units for my clients who use them. I have had over 10 years of experience with Fortinet products.

The products are extremely stable. I have only had one instance where a unit did not function as expected, and Fortinet replaced the unit, despite the fact that it was still operational.

Scalability is the one area where there is room for some improvement. Currently, customers need to purchase more powerful units as their network traffic and requirements grow. Fortinet will occasionally offer trade-in credits in such situations, but this is not always the case. Their product line allows customers to scale from SoHo through enterprise-level requirements, which is what I like about them so much.

Their tech support is outstanding.

I have sold and supported other solutions in the past. Fortinet is not always the least-cost solution available, but from a value standpoint, I find them hard to beat.

Initial setup complexity will vary with the complexity of the installation. It is relatively straightforward and simple to set up basic configurations. More complex requirements entail reading through a lot of documentation in order to complete the firewall configuration because of the myriad of features and options that are available in their O/S. The 'cookbooks' are a big help in these instances.

Pricing and licensing have to be taken in context with value. Fortinet is usually not the least expensive alternative when considering an upfront investment, but if you take into account the support costs over several years, they are often as cost-effective as the 'cheaper' solutions.

In this particular instance, Fortinet was evaluated against an equivalent solution sourced from D-Link. I also evaluated a solution from Xirrus (now Riverbed) which promised better signal strength. However, when I ran the various WiFi planning tools from each supplier, the coverage differences did not merit the more expensive Xirrus solution.

Anyone evaluating this product should consult the documentation available and plan out their solution before making a decision. From personal experience, I find that I am able to save hours of planning and implementation time because Fortinet's documentation is so helpful.