Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

We have many Fortinet use cases in Brazil. One particular use case could happen at a high school; they want a new firewall and high availability to their students to access the internet. They want a secure way to connect to the internet. We are proposing FortiGate 200TF. 

One of the most important features is web filtering. They can block certain types of websites. This is good for in-school security. I believe this is the most important but all of the other filters are also very important, including the antivirus and antispam inspection. 

The user interface could be improved, but as a firewall, it's the best product we have.

It's almost perfect. It's very stable. We don't have many hardware issues.

It is a scalable solution. For example, in one use case, we have 500 students using the solution. Two technicians are managing the solution, which one software person designed. On the customer end, they need a person overseeing the security. 

Their tech support is very good. We always get good answers from Fortinet tech support.

We recommend that the FortiGate logs be analyzed using FortiAnalyzer, which is a Fortinet tool for generating reports. We also advise customers to implement user passwords for all students so they can track which student accessed which website, or which student has been on their email. It's a form of protection for the school. If the school has any issues, they can prove the origin of it.

We primarily set up this solution with our large clients.

The solution offers good documentation.

I'm mostly happy with how the solution performs.

The solution works well for large companies. We use it for our bigger clients.

The interface of the solution could be improved. Right now, it's not the best.

In some areas of the solution, it works slowly.

I am currently using the solution. I've been using it for a while now.

We use a variety of different Fortinet solutions.

We deployed the solution locally, to our server.

The solution is FortiGate 60D and FortiGate-VM is FortiOS 5.2.2. I'm not sure which version of the solution we are currently on.

Our company exports this solution to large customers. We're partners with Fortinet.

We have the solution on a local server.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Most of the use cases that we have are SD-WAN and perimeter firewall related.

Our clients are mostly small to medium-sized businesses. We also have large enterprise clients that range from 1,000 to 8,000 users. We haven't planned to increase the usage, but we are currently using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for perimeter firewalls and SD-WAN for our branch offices.

FortiGate-VM is easier to deploy than physical solutions that require you to have an RNE as then you need to wait a couple of days or months for another physical appliance to be delivered. With VM, if we already have available servers in the network, we can just deploy FortiGate.

With FortiGate, we sometimes encounter bugs in various operating systems. Also, sometimes the security policies are hard to apply specifically when it comes to web filtering.

We've been using FortiGate-VM from the moment I began in my company. So that was two years ago.

This solution is very stable.

The technical support for FortiGate-VM is the same for the physical VM — they're very responsive. 

The initial setup is very user-friendly.

For FortiGate-VM, we mostly have UTP Bundle. MA is for three to five years, but we just discovered that VM is cheaper; we found that it actually costs more than a physical appliance excluding the servers for the platform.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

We primarily use the solution for the firewall capabilities and security.

The solution is easy to use. It's not overly difficult.

The product is quite stable. We didn't have any issues related to stability at all.

The performance overall is very good.

The installation process is straightforward.

The pricing is okay.

We've found the scalability to be good.

There should be a bit more automation.

There could be more integration capabilities.

Technical support could be better.

The solution needs more features surrounding event log management.

We used the solution for three or four years.

The solution is very stable. It's reliable and the performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution is quite scalable. If a company needs to expand the solution, it has the capabilities to do so.

We have about 500 people on the solution currently.

We've since moved away from the solution to a cloud-based product. We don't intent to increase usage for that reason.

We would like the technical support to be slightly improved. We aren't completely satisfied with it at this time.

The initial setup is not complex at all. It's very straightforward. It's simple.

I can't recall exactly how long the deployment process took.

We had two technicians that handled the implementation. It doesn't take a lot of people.

We found the pricing to be okay. It's reasonable and not too expensive.

We were customers and end-users of the product. That is no longer the case.

We've moved off of the product recently. We wanted a cloud-based option and therefore we switched. 

Overall, I would recommend the solution. I would rate it at a ten out of ten.

It is a complete package, and it has complete offerings. It fit the needs, and our customer is happy with it.

It should have the SD-WAN feature. This would increase the number of features that are available in the box.

We have been selling this solution for one year.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM a nine out of ten.

The product is quite flexible.

There seems to be a lot of very useful feature sets.

Technical support is very helpful.

We found the initial setup to be pretty straightforward for the most part.

We've had issues with integration. It hasn't gone well.

We have had some stability issues.

There are some instances where configurations can get complex.

I've only really been dealing with the solution for the last six months. It hasn't been too long.

We've had some stability issues. The product could be more stable.

We are not in production just yet, and therefore it would be hard to comment on scalability.

Technical support has two tiers. Typically, if we need help, we have to reach out to Fortigate, who will direct us to help in Bangladesh. If we still need assistance, then it goes directly to Fortigate and they have engineers who can assist us.

We're largely pleased with the amount of assistance we receive. 

I've only really used Cisco solutions in the past. I've only recently been introduced to Fortinet.

The installation process is very easy with FortiGate VM. We can easily deploy it. That said, we did run into issues with some customer requirements and our engineers were forced to get involved. Occasionally, it takes too much time to configure certain aspects. However, a basic configuration is pretty easy.

I didn't require any outside help in order to deploy and configure the solution. I didn't need the help of outside consultants, integrators, or Fortinet techs.

Our clients tend to deal with the licensing aspects of the solution.

We're partners of Fortinet.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

We have been using the solution while we have been waiting for the hard drive version of the solution, which has been delayed.

I would recommend the solution to other organizations. I'd rate the product eight out of ten.

This firewall appliance is part of our overall security solution.

Using this product protects our company from attacks that come from outside of our network. At the same time, we get better speed and performance when connecting to the internet.

This product is affordable and it's a good, high-performance appliance.

The updates are regular, so we're sure that the attacks are somehow mitigated at the front-end of our gateway.

The technical support is not very responsive and is an area that needs to be improved.

We have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for almost two years.

Since we first implemented it about two years ago, we haven't experienced any major problems aside from the firmware that we needed to have upgraded.

I am okay with the scalability, although we had to upgrade the appliance as our requirements increased. We currently have more than 170 users, and we may increase our usage next year.

The technical support is not very responsive. The last time we contacted them was when we encountered slow performance because of the firmware. We needed to upgrade it.

The initial setup is very easy.

We deployed this product with the help of the vendor.

Of all the firewalls that we compared, FortiGate is the cheapest and most affordable, so we are satisfied with the pricing.

Prior to selecting FortiGate-VM, we evaluated Meraki and one other solution.

At this point, aside from technical support, we have no issues with this product. It has everything that we need at the moment, and I cannot think of any other features that should be there.

My advice for anybody who is implementing FortiGate-VM is that they need to understand how their business operates and what their requirements are. They need to understand the technology in terms of security and performance before they purchase any devices.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

In the years that we've been using this product, we've deployed it five or six times. Most of our customers have dedicated firewalls, either physical or virtual format and a few are on a shared platform. We're authorized sellers of the product and I'm the founder and managing director of our company. 

The best feature of the solution is the EPM bundle, a lot of our clients are interested in that. Truth be told, it's quite difficult to roll that out because we have very little trust in the FortiManager and the FortiAnalyzer integration and technology.

The solution could be improved by making deployment easier and dispensing with the reliance on FortiManager, as well as FortiAnalyzer to get any meaningful reporting out of it. If they could exclude both of those from the whole equation so that it bundles direct to the firewall, that would be a big improvement. It should be decoupled from the whole ecosystem, the security fabric side of it, and that would improve things. I get the feeling we have limited functionality if we just look at the data itself, and that's not cool when you're spending thousands of dollars on a product.

The technology is just not there yet in terms of UX and true integration. We have had endless woes with our Analyzer services and the Manager seems rather rudimentary on its own. We believe that the actual Fortigate should have all this disparate functionality baked-in.

I've been using this solution for close to six years. 

The stability is absolutely awful. Every time Fortinet releases a new version, there's always some bugs that you absolutely can't avoid, so stability from our perspective, in between maintaining the service on the FortiGate, is really tricky. It's difficult to trust the quality. 

The solution is scalable if you have the budget. If you don't have the budget, it's not tied into customer budgets very nicely. There are too many moving parts and it is too expensive.

Technical support is horrific, absolutely terrible. I'd give them a negative rating. 

To install a FortiGate is a complex task. The installation engineer need to be strong technically and familiar with FortiGate. The end user also needs to be well versed in their network and have a firm technical grasp on their business requirements and how those translate to what the firewall is capable of doing/ enhancing. This can drive a prolonged pre-install and installation process.

I would recommend this solution. As a piece of tech, as a firewall, it's really good. Local channel support in South Africa is very strong. The functionality of the gate is good. I think it probably surpasses many of its competitors. So I would recommend it. I'm very familiar with the realities of looking at it so I'll be very open with my customers in recommending FortiGate and at the same time explaining the pitfalls to them. 

I would rate this product a seven out of 10.