Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

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.

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. 

I use Fortinet FortiGate in security and policy for security profiles, blocking and allowing for certification on a day-to-day basis.

I block Gmail and personal mail along with other applications. We block webmail and allow corporate mail, Microsoft 365, and block unwanted categories such as pornography and weapons while implementing URL filtering.

Global systems use standard Fortinet terminology. We use FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer, where FortiAnalyzer is used for logging and FortiManager is used for centralized management across multiple gateway devices.

By implementing Fortinet FortiGate in our organization, we can control applications and block unauthorized apps.

Control security platform features such as policy enforcement and SD-WAN streaming particularly improve our work by reducing manual configuration across multiple devices, allowing faster change implementation, and reducing troubleshooting time.

This control typically leads to measurable outcomes across operations, security, and performance.

We use Fortinet FortiGate on-premises and in the public cloud.

In my experience, the best feature Fortinet FortiGate provides is its impressive logging system, which is very easy to read to understand what the issue is.

The SD-WAN feature is very valuable for us. By integrating SD-WAN, we can manage our ISP links and SD-WAN rules.

Using SD-WAN on Fortinet FortiGate provides lower latency and stability improvements, critical application routing via lower latency links, reduction in jitter and packet loss, with both links actively used instead of one idle backup, leading to better bandwidth utilization.

The biggest strength is the consolidated platform that combines firewall, SD-WAN, VPN, and security stack in one device.

We can improve the UI readability when working with large configurations. I chose a rating of nine because of the troubleshooting power and launch issues. We need CLI debug capabilities in addition to the UI.

I have been working in my current field for the last three years.

Fortinet FortiGate is a stable and scalable firewall.

Fortinet FortiGate is manageable on one platform, but scalability depends on how we scale. Model ranges for small branches and high-end applications are delivered easily by moving to a higher model.

Support is also good.

I previously used Sophos firewall before moving to Fortinet FortiGate.

We evaluated other options such as Palo Alto before choosing Fortinet FortiGate. We evaluated both Palo Alto and Sophos firewalls during our selection process.

It is a time-saving product.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is generally positive from a value perspective.

I advise others to use Fortinet FortiGate, considering the firewall size, throughput including IPS, SSL-VPN, web filtering throughput, VPN load, and UTM versus Enterprise bundle.

We integrate SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate frequently. Integrating SD-WAN is very easy and almost plug and play. In many cases, it's accomplished by using the built-in features. For more advanced SD-WAN configuration, it's very well documented and described in the Fortinet documents, which helps significantly. It works flawlessly most of the time and is very easy to administer.

I haven't worked extensively with Fortinet Unified SASE yet. We will probably work more with it, but since Norway is quite a small country, we don't have the same use cases as America has, which has many branches of their customers. Our big clients are usually what the US refers to as a small business. We have many smaller locations, which have fewer security needs in a SASE way, as of yet. We are starting to see that the thinking about SASE is changing and more companies are actually starting to open up for the idea of having SASE. I still haven't actually implemented it. I've done several labs with Fortinet and workshops with them. I don't have the experience to actually say how it works because I haven't implemented it with a working customer yet.

I have used Fortinet FortiGate's data center solution. In some cases, we use the high-end data center Fortinet FortiGate. We currently don't utilize machine learning in our data center solutions. We have not implemented any AI capabilities in our production environments due to security concerns. We prefer to avoid using newer and potentially untested technologies in critical environments. Our focus is on maintaining security, and we believe in having a hands-on approach to fully understand the processes involved. Although we’re not using AI, we have had a lot of success with FortiGate for data centers. They are very effective, and I personally enjoy using them. One of the advantages of FortiGate for data centers is that it operates exactly the same way as a regular FortiGate. This means you don't have to relearn everything just because you’re using a higher-end product; it's extremely powerful without requiring a significant adjustment. Overall, we appreciate the ease of transitioning to these systems.

We’re not necessarily a bigger part of the development as a partner, but I feel we’re more informed and more welcomed into the process of actually building the Fortinet FortiGate features because we can easily create a feature request and they will actually take it seriously if it’s something that they see a use case for, and they will publish it. I feel we have a great say in what could be improved feature-wise. I also feel they are very attentive when we’re giving them constructive criticism and they actually take it seriously, which not all vendors are. Being that we’re a small country, it speaks volumes that they care what we say because we’re not that big of a deal in the global picture of Fortinet sales, but they still care what we mean and what we say. It’s very nice to feel that.

The best features of Fortinet FortiGate would be the throughput for the value for money in regards to throughput and security. Many companies have security, many companies have throughput, but very few have throughput and security bundled together in the same price range. It's very easy to use compared to competitors, easy to understand, and the training material is readily available and not hidden behind paywalls as much as many competitors have chosen to do. It's easier to get knowledge, easier to get understanding, and it's a wide portfolio of training material, which is easy to access, which is very good for new technicians. It's also very good for the customer if they want to get a deeper understanding of the product they are actually buying, which they often do.

There's not much to improve except getting rid of more bugs earlier in the software versions so you don't have to be one and a half years behind on software because you're afraid of bugs in the newer releases. I do understand why they have feature releases, which are the newer software releases, but when Fortinet themselves say, don't use feature releases if you don't need the features in production environments, I would really prefer to have more stable software releases, so you don't have to be scared when upgrading.

I have worked on and off with Fortinet FortiGate for about seven years. My main focus has been Fortinet FortiGate for around four years now. It was a part of my work day earlier and now it's one of my main responsibilities to develop our Fortinet FortiGate use for customer cases in our company.

Considering the last three years, I would put Fortinet FortiGate at a seven out of ten because there have been many bugs and vulnerabilities, which forces us to do updates very hastily. I do understand that other competitors also have vulnerabilities. I just feel that Fortinet FortiGate has had many vulnerabilities in the last three years, which forces us to do unscheduled downtime for upgrades. Most of the time in large data center installations, you don’t really notice the downtime because it’s high availability, so the other one takes over. We have many customers that don’t have high availability, so it really sends a message that we are using a product that’s maybe not the most secure regarding vulnerabilities, which is unfortunate. Most customers understand it, but it’s still a nuisance to have unscheduled downtime because of a vulnerability.

The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate rates a perfect ten out of ten. Scalability is one of the biggest upsides of it. It doesn’t create a problem if the customer wants to upscale or extend or do anything to scale the solution. Even downscaling works very well.

We're taking the large customers in Norway. In the last eight months, we had the two biggest Fortinet sales in Norway's history, so we're focusing on high-end customers.

Most of the time, vendor support for Fortinet FortiGate rates a ten out of ten. They’re very helpful and sincere. They really try their best to help us with our problems and challenges, and they never back down from wanting to help. Sometimes it’s an eight out of ten because we sometimes get in the same cases as a competitor of ours, not a competitor of Fortinet, and they tend to say that they’re treating us equally, while we know they are not. I know they’re trying their best to be equal, but there are many levels of why it’s hard. Most of the time, it would be a ten out of ten with no issues at all.

Positive

As a company, we've gone from only selling Fortinet FortiGate as an accessory to creating an entire department in our business dedicated to selling Fortinet products in the span of three years.

I find that with the proper experience using Fortinet FortiGate, the deployment process is quite straightforward. However, it does take some time to become familiar with the deployment tools like FortiManager. While FortiManager is highly beneficial, mastering it requires considerable time and effort since it operates differently than FortiGate. Therefore, you need to learn a new product in order to use it effectively. Also, a lot of technicians use that as an excuse to not learn it that well and continue to use Fortinet FortiGate, which kind of eliminates the purpose of FortiManager. The skill requirements for using FortiManager are somewhat high. This perspective is based on our Norwegian segment, where most of our customers have fewer than ten Fortinet FortiGate. In many cases, they likely don't need FortiManager at all.

The initial deployment takes days. There’s tuning and everything, but the initial deployment and getting it up in production is usually completed in days. Most of the time we actually do it in one day. After hours on a weekday, we usually deploy big Fortinet FortiGate for the biggest customers. We usually finish that before the next work day. The initial setup takes days, not weeks. Completing the setup completely is a continual thing, so that’s never really done because we’re fine-tuning everything all the time. It’s not something I can put a time estimate on.

It's easy to maintain, but it does require upkeep, as all security products do. You can't just deploy and forget about it. This is especially true for security systems, since new vulnerabilities and methods of exploitation arise every day. However, this is not unique to Fortinet; it's a reality across the entire industry. Keeping that in mind, maintaining a Fortinet FortiGate is still quite straightforward, and there are no significant issues in doing so.

Implementation is usually done internally with highly trained staff in our department dedicated to Fortinet FortiGate, without extensive use of external consultants.

We're starting a new division, a group of FortiGate and Fortinet specialists. Right now, I'm focused on creating and launching this group. Currently, we have ten experts on board, with four or five who are very familiar with the product. I would categorize five to six of them as high-level experts. The remaining team members are also knowledgeable; they may not all be classified as experts by Fortinet, but I consider them to be. These individuals are well-versed in FortiGate and are capable of handling complete installations for large customers independently. I would estimate that there are about seven of them with this level of expertise.

I don't have many insights on numbers, but we’ve gone from only selling Fortinet FortiGate as an accessory to creating an entire department in our business dedicated to selling Fortinet products in the span of three years. That’s very quick in our business, which signals it’s a very good return on investment. We have a very big focus internally on getting more people on board with Fortinet, even moving people from other vendors to Fortinet to create a better understanding of the entire Fortinet portfolio to be able to take those cases because we see the customers really want Fortinet FortiGate and we want to deliver it. That’s one of the main focuses we have now, getting more people on board.

There are levels to it, but the newer FortiGate models offer a very good value for money. It's not too cheap but also not too expensive. I find it to be fairly priced and almost the standard of what the competitors should offer as well.

Regarding how I compare Fortinet FortiGate to other solutions on the market or other vendors, I feel we’re not necessarily a bigger part of the development as a partner, but I feel we’re more informed and more welcomed into the process of actually building the Fortinet FortiGate features because we can easily create a feature request and they will actually take it seriously if it’s something that they see a use case for, and they will publish it.

I would absolutely recommend Fortinet FortiGate. It makes a complex area easy to understand and easy to administer. It’s a very complex world protecting from the scary outside internet, but Fortinet FortiGate makes it very easy and they do have easy to use guidance built into the Fortinet FortiGate itself that helps you make good choices. You can also use the built-in features to scan your deployment to see if anything is done out of the norm. If you’ve misclicked something and done anything wrong, you would get a message if you just use the tools in the gate. It’s a quick and easy way to deal with something very complex.

My overall rating for Fortinet FortiGate would be a nine out of ten.

Fortinet FortiGate is used on three separate sites: one in Tehachapi, one in Simi Valley, California, and one in Memphis, Tennessee. I work in distribution with Fortinet FortiGate. 

The primary feature I appreciate about Fortinet FortiGate is the ease of setup. It's more affordable than Cisco and very configurable. When discussing configurability regarding Fortinet FortiGate, I don't have to download modules to have features such as IPSec VPN or SSL VPN - it's already there. Most of the popular features are pre-installed and I only need to configure them, unlike with MikroTik where I have to download components that may not work, and with Netgate, I can't install everything I want without uninstalling other packages.

Fortinet FortiGate is very competitive compared to Palo Alto Networks and Cisco; they are better priced than both competitors. On average, Cisco would be 10% to 20% higher than Fortinet FortiGate, and the same applies to Palo Alto.

The AI with Fortinet FortiGate is not very well integrated on their devices, and their cloud infrastructure is not as good as Cisco's. 

The support is inadequate. The support staff I have dealt with lately are very rude. Some support staff are not up-to-speed with the technology. They basically read a script. If they don't know how to fix an issue, they send me to another engineer. 

I have used Fortinet FortiGate since 2012.

The support is inadequate. The Fortinet FortiGate support staff I have dealt with lately are very rude and some of them are not up-to-speed with the technology; they basically read a script. If they don't know how to fix an issue, they send me to another engineer. The last representative I had to deal with was very rude to me. 

Neutral

I wasn't involved in the decision of picking Fortinet FortiGate, however, before we switched over, we were using SonicWall firewall appliance.

I was part of the initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate. When it was originally set up, on a scale between one to ten, with ten being really easy to set up, I would rate it about an eight or nine.

When we first deployed Fortinet FortiGate, it was just me, and one person could actually deploy it in three sites, so it's relatively easy.

Once we deployed the last time, we actually moved our whole management of it to a third party. They manage our Fortinet for us now. It's supposed to be easy, however, during the last deployment, when they upgraded us, there was some project management snafu. That said, that's not a Fortinet issue. When I was deploying it, it was relatively easy. 

Currently, we are paying about $1,500 a month for three sites. We have a company that leases the equipment from Fortinet FortiGate, configures it, and I tell them what features I want on and off and how to secure it. We paid about $1,500 on the last contract, and it's probably going to go up this year.

I've also evaluated other options. Other than price, Cisco has a better cloud management infrastructure, while Palo Alto has better security features such as deep packet inspection algorithms and AI integration on their devices.

I would recommend Fortinet FortiGate if you have a small to medium business, which we have. For a large business with multiple campuses, Fortinet FortiGate is probably not going to work for you. 

On a scale of one to ten, I give this solution a rating of seven.

We deploy the FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) mainly in education, with retail, big retails, and other industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, and some banking.

Some of the best features with the FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) particularly are its security focus, the easy to configure IPS, the Layer 7 capabilities, and the easy way to configure different VDOMs in each equipment so we can separate the different features or the different sites that the client may use in one data center.

The application control feature has helped manage the network traffic with filtering and antivirus capabilities. When we use it in SD-WAN solutions, we can apply in a unified and easy way the different profiles for each branch, and we can also have one profile for the hub if they have a data center with some servers connecting to the FortiGate. We can have different profiles, and it helps us to detect easily any threat that we may have in the network and control the outbound traffic to the internet, restricting those applications or those web services that the final users don't need to have access to.

The FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW)'s anti-malware protection is very effective, as we have demonstrated through our work with this feature.

The FortiGate's analytic tools have provided insights into network security events by implementing the IOC license, Indicator of Compromise, in some customers, which has been very helpful because it demonstrates that we can identify the threats more easily or the difference in the way that the customers use the network. We can identify the possible behavior of the customers on the network and can identify the possible threats and isolate that customer if we receive any threat for the network or the company.

The web filtering has also helped for maintaining network security because we have been implementing some filters in customers so they don't have access to potential sites that can make a threat to our network, for example, to access peer-to-peer networks or any other sites that are not allowed in the company.

The FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) could be improved in application control if they can have a bigger baseline of applications that they can identify, because this is something that is always growing. I know that Fortinet with the team is updating this database, but it's something that grows at a pace that is very difficult sometimes to keep up. This applies to all vendors, not only Fortinet.

I would rate their support for the FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) on a scale of one to ten as 7.5.

Positive

The pricing for the FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is fair.

My company has a business relationship with Fortinet as we are both resellers and we also use the technology. If they had any questions regarding my feedback on the FortiGate solution, not the NGFW, but the FortiGate, it would be okay for them to contact me in that regard. I rate the FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) 8.5 out of 10.

We deal with messaging, specifically A2P, P2P, and RCS, a rich communication service.

We use Fortinet FortiGate 500, 600, and 900E, which are mainly used for data center activities.

Fortinet FortiGate has helped us significantly in many ways. Previously, we had multiple data centers interconnected over IPsec tunnels. Each IPsec tunnel was individual, and if that tunnel went down, manual intervention was needed to reroute the traffic to the available path. To avoid such cases, I introduced the SD-WAN concept using ADVPN (auto-discovery VPN). With this solution, I have almost four sites where critical traffic flows, avoiding many impacts. The reason we prefer Fortinet FortiGate SD-WAN is that it enables automatic establishment of the next available VPN if any connectivity goes down, ensuring all hub and spoke connectivity flows through the hub. Using ADVPN, spoke-to-spoke communication is established so that hub bandwidth or hub firewall does not get overloaded.

The best features in Fortinet FortiGate are the SD-WAN, IPsec tunnel, and the SSL VPN. It is very user friendly, and we can integrate multiple underlay links to the firewall. From there, you can manage it, and by using this SD-WAN concept, the device itself will make decisions about which path to take to reach the destination. If there are any issues on the desired path, it will automatically select the best path based on the configuration defined in the SLAs. This feature is particularly impressive. Before introducing SD-WAN, I had perimeter devices such as independent routers where intelligent routing across the underlay links was not possible.

It is very informative and easy to implement. The GUI is very user friendly. Using this solution, we can easily integrate security profiles based on needs and requirements of internal stakeholders to avoid malicious traffic or security-related issues.

When onboarding any Fortinet FortiGate to your production platform with active internet connectivity, the device connects to FortiGuard to fetch all signatures and behavioral patterns based on your security policy. It detects anomalous traffic and packets undergo deep inspection. If there are any anonymous or malicious activities, it immediately blocks them based on defined policy actions and alerts the end user and network administrator via FortiManager or via the cloud.

I don't have any areas for improvement in terms of features. With the introduction of AI/ML, they are performing behavioral pattern checks in terms of security. They have removed the SSL web-based and tunnel-based features, and they are improving in many aspects including the UI. However, throughout this year, their support has been very poor.

We have been using Fortinet FortiGate for more than 10 years.

It's stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

It's scalable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability. 

We have clients with more than 2,000 users.

Their support needs improvement. When raising a service request on the portal, it normally takes two to three days for a response. Even for production issues, they do not initiate contact. The customer has to call the TAC before they schedule calls, which is problematic.

Neutral

The deployment is very easy. People who are familiar with Fortinet FortiGate can implement it through CLI and GUI. It is very user-friendly for deploying complex configurations. There is also a tool called FortiExporter, which can convert all configurations from any OEM to Fortinet FortiGate.

It doesn’t require much maintenance. The only maintenance activity required is firmware updates.

We have approximately 84 devices in production, demonstrating our investment in Fortinet FortiGate and its usefulness in many ways.

We have invested almost 60% to 70% in Fortinet FortiGate as we don't have any other firewall apart from it. In some cases where we had Palo Alto, we removed it and purchased Fortinet FortiGate. We are using Fortinet FortiGate as our production firewalls in our organizations, corporate offices, and all locations.

It's economical.

In terms of cost, features, and security, everything is top-notch. I would recommend everyone to use Fortinet FortiGate instead of purchasing expensive firewalls such as Palo Alto and other OEMs. It is more economical and provides more flexibility and granularity in terms of access.

Fortinet is a market leader. It is phenomenal in terms of price and kind of services.

I would recommend Fortinet FortiGate to others. I would rate it a ten out of ten.

A typical use case for this solution is that we have small to medium-based customers, and we need a central firewall, which should provide firewall and next-generation features, VPN for home office, and for mobility users, mobile users, and this is what we all use with the Fortinet FortiGate firewall.

Fortinet FortiGate has positively impacted my client's organization because we have know-how of FortiGate; we could debug problems, we could set up our settings as planned, and I appreciate the easy way of configuration, that we can use parallel GUI and CLI, or CLI and web interface, which we can use in parallel. It is a product that we can use very easily.

Fortinet FortiGate can be improved because we have some smaller customers, and with the SMB or small customer solutions with the two letters, 50, 70, 90, they sometimes cause problems. They could improve the smaller devices. One issue is that they have retired SSL VPN for existing devices. This causes significant effort for us to change customer setups. Additionally, they changed features when we only make a patch update and not only a major update. This is really a problem.

I have experience working with Fortinet FortiGate for 20 years, and I wanted to see if we have the right product because we have some problems currently with Fortinet.

I find Fortinet FortiGate to be a stable solution.

It is definitely a scalable solution.

I rate technical support seven out of ten because we made a migration from a FortiGate 200 on another customer side, and we wanted to switch a FortiToken from one model to another one, which was only possible with support. It worked, but we needed about 10 different calls; it was really complicated. Support helped, but people changed every time. Every call, we had a call number, and in each call, people changed, so we had to explain again what we wanted to do. For a similar process, we had to make two different calls, one for mobile token, one for hardware token. This was really challenging. Support is working and good, but it's not perfect.

Positive

We've used Sophos firewalls, but we don't use them anymore because they cause too many problems for us.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate is straightforward.

I haven't seen an ROI with Fortinet FortiGate.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Fortinet FortiGate is okay. We won a deal in comparison to Check Point where FortiGate was much cheaper. Compared to Sophos, the base models seem to be cheaper with Sophos, but the services seem to be cheaper with FortiGate.

I remember doing research on peerspot.com about IT solutions. I wanted to investigate differences between firewall competitors or firewall vendors and Google led me to their site. I have checked a few reports, and they have not been very useful for us. For comparing different vendors, I was also led to their site. They have different types of reports, including user voices and Palo Alto Networks review tips and advice from real users in an 80-page long report. They have market shares and rankings and customer voices, but the customer voices point to a single feature, so I don't get an overall picture of the comparison.

My relationship with Fortinet is that we are a reseller. We have made some tests with SD-WAN but have not introduced this product into production. We use Fortinet FortiGate firewalls and some next-generation fire features proxy, but we don't use SASE. We utilize NPS services, FortiGuard services, antivirus, and malware protection. My clients are typically small to medium businesses, with customers from about 20 to 500 people. I would rate Fortinet FortiGate overall as a seven based on my experience in the last year. Before it would be an eight, but now it's seven because of the problems with the SSL VPN. Additionally, we bought some 50G models that still have a 7.0 firmware, which is really old, and this is not good.

We are using Cisco for the core switch, and for the firewall and WAN security, we are using Fortinet FortiGate. For distribution switches, we are using Ubiquiti. 

We are using the 200F series of Fortinet FortiGate for our main branch and model 60 for our branch offices at five locations. We have connected a site-to-site VPN with Fortinet FortiGate. 

We have used multiple WAN ASPs and set up SD-WAN. It's quite interesting and user-friendly; essentially, anyone can configure it. All you need to do is go through the documentation, and you'll be able to set it up directly. We experimented with Cisco and other devices, but found them to be somewhat challenging. Additionally, there are commercial aspects to consider. However, with FortiGate, everything is bundled together, eliminating the need to pay extra for SD-WAN management.

Performance-wise, we have great output with SD-WAN in our network. Earlier, when we were using it without SD-WAN, it was very difficult, and our IT team's effort was greater. After this SD-WAN configuration, we have no need to worry about whether the link is going down or not. We just get the notification, and at that time, we work on it. There is no need to run behind that.

The only issue is their renewal pricing. For more than 10 years, we have been customers of multiple Fortinet FortiGate security devices, and every time, it's at a high price. It is very difficult for small companies, especially in India. If Fortinet can reduce the renewal price a little bit, it can expand and target small businesses as well. Currently, only medium and large-scale organizations can afford it. Startups and small companies cannot afford it. The renewal cost is very high. When we get the equipment along with the license, it's acceptable, but the next renewal after one or three years is very expensive compared to other firewalls.

We have been using Fortinet FortiGate for more than 10 years. It's the fifth device we are using. Earlier devices reached the end of life. After that, we moved to the next product.

Fortinet FortiGate is absolutely scalable enough for our needs.

We have more than 400 employees, and there are six branch offices connected. The branch offices are connected with site-to-site VPN, and multiple roaming employees or working from home employees are connected with SSL VPN. More than 100 people are connecting at a time. We only need two IT people to maintain the security devices.

We very rarely raised tickets with Fortinet. Only on one occasion, when the FortiCloud account was locked, we raised a ticket. Apart from the configuration part, we never contacted them. They were very supportive. With that particular ticket, we got help immediately.

Positive

We are also customers of Cisco and Ubiquiti. We have a core switch, 9000 series switches, and Ubiquiti equipment.

I have earlier worked with Cyberoam and Sophos as a partner. They have a range of devices, and the renewal price is also lower in Sophos compared to Fortinet FortiGate.

I was involved in the deployment of Fortinet FortiGate. The deployment process of Fortinet FortiGate is very straightforward, and since we have experience, it's very easy for us. Even for freshers, if they have basic theoretical knowledge of the setup, they can easily implement it. 

It's deployed on-premises. We are not planning for the cloud. Our clients are not comfortable with the cloud solutions.

We deployed it ourselves with one or two people for the deployment.

The renewal cost is much higher than other firewalls. It is not reasonable.

I would definitely recommend Fortinet FortiGate to others. 

My experience with Fortinet FortiGate has been good overall. I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

The use case for Fortinet FortiGate primarily refers to firewall functionality. 

The best features of Fortinet FortiGate include the simple user interface. The GUI is in English with intuitive navigation. It is very easy to find solutions, meaning it is simple to locate what we need and which settings we need to modify through the GUI.

We have integrated FortiGate SD-WAN. It's working pretty well.

Areas that have room for improvement in Fortinet FortiGate include support and GUI enhancement. While the GUI is already simple, further improvements would greatly benefit them.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for one year in this organization.

I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate as eight out of ten, as it has proven to be reliable.

Fortinet FortiGate is scalable. We primarily deal with small and medium businesses, and for our clients in this segment, it works effectively.

The technical support that Fortinet provides is not satisfactory. When we call Fortinet technical support, it takes too much time to connect with them. The process is complicated, requiring us to hold for many minutes, and when we visit clients, we are not satisfied with their technical support.

Neutral

We work with five firewall vendors, including Fortinet, Cisco, Palo Alto, SonicWall, and Sophos. We have specialists for their products.

We first recommend Fortinet FortiGate or Palo Alto. If a customer cannot afford Palo Alto, we recommend Fortinet FortiGate. If they cannot afford Fortinet FortiGate, we recommend Sophos or SonicWall.

When comparing security policies, Palo Alto is superior to Fortinet FortiGate, but Fortinet FortiGate is adequate. For businesses with higher requirements, we recommend Palo Alto due to its advanced security features, while for small and medium businesses, we suggest firewalls based on their specific requirements.

Deployment of Fortinet FortiGate is straightforward. If the customer requires, we can configure it from our end and deploy it directly.

Our clients are small and medium-sized businesses. They can't afford the cloud. They take the device and install it on-premises.

Fortinet FortiGate is cost-efficient. Palo Alto is expensive, but Fortinet FortiGate is not.

I would recommend Fortinet FortiGate because the GUI is understandable for English speakers, and the configuration is straightforward. 

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

We are using it for perimeter security. By implementing Fortinet FortiGate, we wanted to have secure internet access to our network and prevent cyber risks.

The content filtering and URL filtering capabilities, along with packet content filtering, are very good. It helps us restrict internet traffic during working hours to legitimate work-related traffic. Workers are only able to access social media, YouTube, and similar sites after work hours.

It helps in protecting the edge significantly because we are able to determine what must be accepted and what must not be accepted. We also have FortiAnalyzer, which is the log analyzer for Fortinet FortiGate. Being AI-driven, it helps us see what is happening and new emerging threats quickly. We are able to make the necessary interventions to protect the network.

We are using QRadar as a SIEM, and Fortinet FortiGate integrates with it seamlessly. FortiAnalyzer picks all logs from Fortinet FortiGate, integrates with QRadar, and allows us to see everything. It also integrates beautifully with our EDR from WithSecure.

It also helps reduce power consumption. Fortinet FortiGate is a greener listing in terms of power consumption.

Stateful packet inspection is valuable. It also does SSL packet inspection. It is able to provide a VPN for remote users with secure connectivity. Being a next-generation firewall, it helps. 

It has been able to host internet feeds from two different ISPs, with one as a backup. We've two internet services on Fortinet FortiGate. We have been able to deploy it in a high-availability mode. We have redundancy. When there is a problem with one, the other picks up quickly, ensuring business continuity. 

I wish that they could integrate zero-trust technology into Fortinet FortiGate. I am not sure whether it has been done already, but if they could implement that, it would help significantly.

I have been using it for about ten years now.

Their support is good. 

Positive

I didn't use any similar solution previously.

I wasn't involved in the recent deployment. 

It was quite quick. The last deployment was more of a migration, where we migrated from an old platform to a new platform. It was a matter of hours because the configs had been backed up. In eight hours, we were done completely.

We had two people from my side and two from Fortinet's side.

If we look at the average revenue loss due to downtime, even if I conservatively put it at $10,000 an hour, we have paid back the investment within six months.

Compared to a sister company that did not take security seriously and lost significant money through ransomware attacks and outages, we have not experienced a single successful ransomware attack. In one instance, we were able to thwart an attack by detecting the initial steps quickly through EDR and FortiAnalyzer. We saw the footprints and stopped it before it reached the encryption phase of the ransomware attack.

The analysis being AI-based helped us quickly pick up unusual activity. Once alerted, we were able to quickly identify the affected nodes, isolate them, and stop the attack.

It has reduced the total cost of ownership by 10%.

For the performance that we get, the price is reasonable. There are cheaper options, but they may not deliver the same kind of performance that we want. For the performance they provide, the price is acceptable.

Currently, there is a project we are doing to converge OT and IT using Fortinet FortiGate, because of the cluster we have. Fortinet FortiGate is going to broker the convergence between IT and OT. We want to make the convergence one-way, with only read-only data coming from OT into IT.

They keep bringing new versions and firmware updates, making sure that their products are always relevant. They are always providing what the industry needs.

We have implemented FortiAnalyzer. We are also looking seriously at FortiIdentity to help us with enterprise single sign-on and multi-factor authentication. Because we already have Fortinet FortiGate in the system, we are seriously considering other Fortinet solutions.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.