Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

We are using Fortinet FortiGate for branch-to-branch connectivity. It handles internet outages, internet breaks to the cloud, and internet connectivity to the internal systems in the branches.

The SD-WAN and VPN tunnels are the best features of Fortinet FortiGate in my opinion. My major workload runs on Fortinet FortiGate, as it serves as the main backbone of the network.

The firmware in Fortinet FortiGate needs improvement. Some firmwares have many bugs, such as filter issues and VPN connectivity problems. Last month, with version 7.4.6, we experienced web filter issues. They need to fix the bugs before releasing firmware.

We have been using Fortinet FortiGate for up to 15 years, and it performs well.

In my opinion, Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution.

Fortinet FortiGate's scalability is flexible and scalable.

The customer service and technical support of Fortinet FortiGate rates seven out of ten. The technical support and RMA process are acceptable. We don't raise many tickets, but when we do, we receive late responses for technical tickets, which is why I rate it seven out of ten.

We used Palo Alto and Cisco Meraki before choosing Fortinet FortiGate.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate is very easy.

We used in-house resources for our setup instead of an integrator, reseller, or consultant.

We currently have approximately 110 Fortinet FortiGates and 40 managers. Each year we increase by almost 10 to 20 FortiGates. We are also considering FortiSASE and have discussed this with Fortinet FortiGate. We are planning changes in return on investment from this solution this quarter.

The pricing depends on market competition, which is high because Cisco Meraki and Palo Alto offer similar costs for pricing, setup, and licensing of Fortinet FortiGate. They need to compete with lower margins as prices are getting high for Fortinet FortiGate.

We are currently using Palo Alto and Cisco due to some issues with the Fortinet FortiGate sales people. We have installed equipment in almost four locations, and we are using these three solutions simultaneously.

We are planning to implement SASE and have already discussed this with Fortinet FortiGate. We are currently only discussing the possibility of using SASE.

The integration of SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate has positively impacted application performance. The implementation is straightforward for new users. My experience in integrating SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate has been excellent, rating it 10 out of 10.

Overall, I rate Fortinet FortiGate 9 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.

I currently work in the automotive industry, providing software for automotive dealers, and we only use Fortinet FortiGate for corporate purposes.

One of the best features of Fortinet FortiGate is how effectively the software is written; the virtual network interfaces significantly outperform Cisco in my project. I didn't need separate switches or load balancers because I was able to resolve internal FQDNs of the load balancers, which was impressive. The centralized management allowed us to manage 50 devices effectively, which I found better than Cisco.

During a recent upgrade from old devices to the latest ones, corporate IT faced challenges as there was no straightforward migration process, requiring many manual steps. I've completed upgrades with Cisco before where the process was simple, but this time it wasn't the case for corporate IT. I also heard that SSL-based VPN will be discontinued, which could be concerning.

I have used Fortinet FortiGate for several years; initially, I brought FortiGate to my previous company during a project.

Integrating SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate is straightforward, with minimal complexity involved.

My experience with Fortinet FortiGate support has been excellent, as I was fortunate to have an office in Vancouver where Fortinet had staff. We worked closely with tech personnel through the project. While I usually don't give perfect scores, the support was great. However, one area for improvement is that many functions can only be accessed via CLI, which has discrepancies between the web interface and direct connection.

I pushed corporate IT to replace SonicWall with Fortinet FortiGate, and now in my current company, we have FortiGate that we recently upgraded to the latest models.

Managing Fortinet FortiGate involves three corporate IT personnel, and although it initially took them quite a while to handle some tasks, I provided scripts that allowed them to work much quicker. What took them a day or two is now a job of just 10 to 15 minutes. Scripting and utilizing Git repositories would make things smoother, and I intended to publish modules for Terraform but haven't had the time yet.

Overall, I would rate Fortinet FortiGate around an eight, as there is always room for improvement.

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.

Majorly, I use Fortinet FortiGate for establishing SD-WAN in different remote locations. I also use it for segmenting wireless from LAN and implementing basic policy routing for departments. The next-gen features on Fortinet FortiGate permit proxy access, where URLs can be specified for specific users or departments to access.

Fortinet FortiGate has several valuable features. The configuration and policy setup are easy to implement. There are embedded features in Fortinet FortiGate, including DLP features, WAF presence in the firewall, and proxy capabilities. It has security profiles that can be set for various functions. In terms of security, it is particularly strong.

SD-WAN offers better reach, good reachability, and enhanced performance for network optimization. People implement SD-WAN today because of reachability and network optimization capabilities.

Fortinet FortiGate is effective in protecting against malicious access. It has a robust security architecture, which is something I truly like about FortiGate.

The SD-WAN integration is very simple. I appreciate the simplicity of the FortiGate system. It's one of the things I like most about it. With FortiAI, it's very easy to input your queries, and the system helps you set it up. If you prefer to do it manually, there is excellent documentation and step-by-step guides available to assist you. For me, the experience has been seamless and straightforward.

I cannot think of many improvements needed for Fortinet FortiGate. However, the pricing compared to competitors is quite high, though you get value for what you pay with Fortinet FortiGate.

With FortiSIEM, I have experienced some challenges. It has been suspended and is not available for utilization now. They should work on improving FortiSIEM.

I have worked with both virtual appliances and physical devices, primarily with hardware devices, for over five years. The models I have used include 60, 100, and 201 series.

Fortinet FortiGate is one of the best firewalls available. There are no crashes or performance issues. It is very stable and reliable.

The solution is scalable.

I have worked with Sophos and Check Point firewalls. Fortinet FortiGate leads compared to other solutions. Based on customer requests, we provide different options. I recommend people should consider Fortinet or Sophos, depending on their needs. Fortinet FortiGate performs well against other firewalls in the market.

The hardware is easy to set up. I have only had issues with the activation of the evaluation license. 

There has definitely been a return on investment with Fortinet FortiGate.

The pricing depends on the capacity required. There are 100 series, 200 series, and 500 series options. The prices are moderate and reasonable for each series.

For organizations using Fortinet FortiGate, it is important to utilize the security profiles properly. Make sure anti-spoofing is set up and networks are well-segmented on the Fortinet. Ensure proxy configuration is based on URL access stability.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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.

Our main use case for Fortinet FortiGate is as a firewall. We are using it for cybersecurity purposes.

Our main purpose when we started working with Fortinet FortiGate was to secure our network in all aspects. Fortinet FortiGate performs a very important role in blocking malicious activity in our network. I'm not sure how much it has improved, but it has made our network stable and secure.

The hardware is very stable. Once you install the system, it works in any condition.

The dynamic segmentation feature in Fortinet FortiGate is pretty good.

The main thing they have to improve in Fortinet FortiGate is the technical support; the rest of the features are good enough. We can handle them, but sometimes you really need support, and in that case, we are not getting it at the proper time. I have been mentioning this for the last two years.

There is a migration issue from 600D to 600E, as we are not able to export the configuration file to 600E. It should be like export and import in all variants.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate since 2016, which is approximately nine years.

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

It's scalable. 

Their support is very poor.

Neutral

I have not worked with other vendors for the last ten years, but if I get any chance, I will explore Palo Alto.

We want to purchase more Fortinet FortiGate devices, but people are not giving us a proper quotation. There needs to be more transparency in giving quotations. Sometimes prices are very high, and even after the conclusion, the buyer thinks there may be some more reduction in the price.

Currently, we don't have any Fortinet FortiGate data center solutions, but in the future, we are going to plan this one. 

I will recommend Fortinet FortiGate to other users only because the hardware is very stable. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

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

It is very stable and scalable.

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

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

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

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for three years.

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I was involved in deciding on Fortinet FortiGate, but I am not the one who's using it on a day-to-day basis.

We want to make sure that our on-prem servers are protected. We basically use VPN to configure that on Fortinet FortiGate, so that is the major purpose, and that part is working well.

We have not had any incidents where our servers got compromised. It's all good.

For security, it has all the required features, such as the web filter and DNS filter. Also, for accessing the network, we have various rules.

Our IT staff says that some of the security features are better than Sophos's.

Its usability is good. We can easily navigate the system, and we have a very good user experience. It's easier to understand the software compared to Sophos, which I feel is a little more technical and could be difficult for a first-time user.

I want some additional features. For example, I want something to ensure that when we are using Google email or Microsoft email, or Google Workspace, emails can only be accessed on designated machines given to our employees. I would like them to access data from designated machines, not from any machine. It should work for designated mobiles and laptops. I don't know if Fortinet provides something like that out of the box.

We have just installed Fortinet FortiGate, and it has been two months since our installation.

Fortinet FortiGate is stable.

Fortinet FortiGate is scalable.

We are going through the vendor for technical support. If we have any issues, we raise a ticket, and they respond immediately.

Positive

Previously, we were using another firewall device, Sophos. Compared to that, Fortinet FortiGate provides more features and better security. Fortinet FortiGate supports WAN migration. Fortinet FortiGate is also better in terms of speed. In the dashboard, we can get all the stats reports and logs.

Deployment is not very difficult because they have their migration tool.

We are facing some challenges. We are working with a third-party vendor, not FortiGate directly, for the installation and other things. The problem is that their knowledge is very limited. We are facing some challenges. With Sophos, we could enable multi-factor authentication for VPN users. FortiGate also allows that, as per our initial analysis. The people we are working with are not able to configure MFA. They are having some technical issues. Fortinet needs to ensure that its partners are well-trained.

Only two people were involved in the deployment process. The vendor side had their own technician, and we had one person here.

Cost-wise, there is not much difference from Sophos, but feature-wise, we get more features.

We did some comparisons between Fortinet FortiGate and Sophos. We went with Fortinet FortiGate because of the security features and easy-to-understand console.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.