Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

My primary use case of this solution is for advanced security in the cloud, as well as SD-WAN and branch connectivity. We use version 6.4 and are just now moving to 7.0. 

FortiGate-VM has many valuable features: it's easy to use, it's intuitive, it's got very good traffic inspection features, it's got comprehensive filtering categories, and it has an extensive threat database, using FortiGuard. 

FortiGate-VM could be improved by making it cloud-based. I'd like it to be a cloud-based management solution instead of just a dedicated management orchestration tool. 

I have been using FortiGate-VM for five years. 

Personally, I like Fortinet support. I know other colleagues and people think it's slow, but I don't.

I used FortiGate for 10 years. I also have experience with Azure Firewall Premium, Cisco ASA, and Cisco Firepower. 

The installation is really easy. There's HA deployment in the marketplace involving Azure and AWS. I handle the installation myself. 

I implement this solution myself for customers. 

There are yearly or monthly licenses which you can choose from. 

I rate FortiGate-VM an eight out of ten. I recommend this solution to others. There's a use case, like any cloud-based firewall. 

We're an MSP, so we sell, configure, and manage these solutions for customers. 

My primary use case is for controlling the internet in our organization, as well as for our VPN for those working from home. I also use it for routing the connection to stores so we can access them.

This solution allows us to easily access the stores from where we are. It also blocks a lot of websites that we don't want to allow access to during working hours. It has also made our network more secure, and it's now much harder for people to intrude into our network.

The most valuable feature is that its IPsec works perfectly. The work filter also works perfectly - it's able to detect anything coming in that is not supposed to be on the network.

We have had some issues with connecting to the VPN from home after firmware updates, which could be an area for improvement.

I have been using this solution for about five years.

I think the product's stability is very good.

The scalability depends on what you want to use it for - previously, we were using 60D, and it wasn't accommodating some features we wanted, so we had to go to 100D.

The technical support is very helpful.

I previously used pfSense but found it was a bit complicated in terms of configuration and didn't give periodic updates. I switched to FortiGate because they were very consistent in giving updates on outbreaks and what they were doing to resolve them.

The setup was straightforward because of the integrator's help. Deployment took about two days, and only my assistant and I were required for deployment and maintenance.

I implemented through an integrator.

Our main ROI has been the extra stability on our network - since we implemented this solution, we haven't had any major attacks.

The cost of this product is too high on a yearly license. The license can be renewed on a monthly or yearly basis. There are additional costs for extra features.

To me, this is one of the best firewalls I've ever used. I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for our internal worldwide corporate network.

It's allowed us to have fewer personnel requirements in relation to maintenance. 

The maintenance part is definitely quite easy. We do not require any additional manpower to maintain this. It's quite simple and it has the least required manpower over it based on an individual unit.

The initial setup is pretty simple. 

The solution can scale well.

The stability is quite good.

Right now, we are totally satisfied with this solution. There are several units worldwide. We have only one unit at our Kolkata location, and we are satisfied as of now in terms of its capabilities.

Price-wise, it could be slightly better, however, if you compared it to other makes and models of equal category, it is generally cheaper.

I've used the solution over the last seven months. 

The stability has been good. Its performance is reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is there. When taking into consideration our business environment right now, I find that this is capable of handling all the requirements until the end of 2022.

Right now in the Kolkata office, we are around a hundred people - and that is in the Kolkata office only. If you talk about India, then we have around 250.

We do not plan to increase usage at this time. However, in the future, scaling may be required. 

I've never directly dealt with technical support and therefore cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are.

We did previously use a different solution, however, the main office makes the decisions around product changes. They may have chosen this product as it is less expensive. 

We had been using a British Telecom hybrid VPN solution. In April, we stopped that and migrated to this new SD-WAN connectivity solution based on the Fortinet firewall. 

The implementation process was not complex or difficult. It was straightforward. 

The deployment takes around two to three hours.

Maintenance aspects are handled by the vendor. 

The implementation was done by our vendor as well as our internal team.

We won't have a sense of an ROI until we've used the solution for another year and a half. 

The pricing is pretty reasonable when compared to other solutions of the same caliber.

We pay a yearly licensing fee. I do not know the exact costs, however, as that is handled by the team in Luxembourg.

We don't make product decisions. Decisions of that scale come from Luxembourg. 

We are a customer and an end-user.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

The use case for VMs is if you're going to deploy them like a SaaS edge, to protect your applications or provide deeper visibility into the traffic. Or you could use it in your data centers as well. However, that's not our preference.

We primarily use the solution for network segmentation at our data centers and remote connectivity to our distributed sites.

We were able to take advantage of their management tool, FortiManager, to get a single pane of glass. FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer do not have a single panel glass. Rather, they are two panes of glasses to manage and monitor the firewalls where previously we were using Cisco. I don't want to call them legacy firewalls, however, with Cisco firewalls, we didn't have that management or logging visibility.

The product has pretty good logging and reporting capabilities native to the firewall. Then they also use FortiAnalyzer to aggregate that traffic and provide more detailed and aggregated reporting. That's going to help when you're analyzing network traffic for network segmentation initiatives.

The stability is excellent.

It's very easy to set up, even for more junior developers.

The scalability has improved. 

It's got a clean interface and it's very intuitive. Everything is easy to navigate.

Their offering for MFA isn't the cleanest. They have a product called FortiAuthenticator. It's not a FortiGate but that is one of their MFA offerings. However, other products that I've used, like Duo, are better from a user experience standpoint. They are easier to configure. 

I've been using the solution for ten years. It's been a while. 

Six or seven years ago, they had issues with code versions where they would make changes within the code version and they would have some bugs. That said, over the last six or so years, their releases have been very stable. We've had very few issues with any type of bugs or issues.

Scalability has gotten better with their SD-WAN offering. They're able to utilize inexpensive lines such as 4G, 5G, or DSL. It has allowed us to move away from expensive MPLS lines.

Historically, conventional or Next-Gen firewalls have been utilized at data centers and remote sites. Now, however, a lot of customers are moving towards Zero-Trust access and SASE. I'm currently looking to get a little bit more information on Zero-Trust architecture, as it reduces the overall management and need for physical firewalls in all your locations, which can get expensive.

We also use the Cisco ASA firewalls. I do find that Fortinet is easier to handle than Cisco as you don't need to handle tasks via the command line, which makes it easier especially for junior-level developers.

The initial setup is very straightforward. I started out in the Cisco world with Cisco firewalls and switches. Then we started deploying FortiGate and I found that FortiGate was easier to learn, especially for junior-level engineers. We were able to get junior-level engineers up to speed quicker than if it was a Cisco platform, especially if they haven't used the command line before.

Deployment usually takes a day, depending on the complexity of the firewall. It might be a day to two, depends on if we are using multiple IPSec tunnels if it's at a data center or a remote site. 

In terms of deployment and maintenance, in my experience, by a rough order of magnitude, a company would need one technician per 30 firewalls. For our company, we had a team of three network engineers and we had a fleet of about 120 firewalls.

I handed the implementation myself with my team. We didn't need any integrators or consultants.

For our entire fleet of 120 firewalls, we're paying about $100,000 per year. The licensing fees give you support and the capability to download updated definitions of threat intelligence from Fortinet.

I was previously a customer. now I am a reseller and Fortinet partner.

We primarily use hardware-based appliances, including the 100 D/E series, 100F, 190 D/E's, ADCs, 600 E's. They are similar to VMs.

We're using the most recent code level at this time. We're one version behind the latest version. We tend to use one version behind the most recent for safety reasons so that we can avoid troublesome bugs or glitches.

Anyone looking to deploy Next-Gen firewalls, in general, should really define their use cases to be able to decide on the proper technology to deploy within the environment. If you're looking to deploy Next-Gen firewalls at all your locations and create point-to-point VPN tunnels, they can get cumbersome and difficult to manage policies. It is also difficult to do network segmentation. With some of the Zero-Trust offerings, you're able to actually move your clients outside of your corporate perimeter, and then isolate those applications based on the user per application, instead of requiring them to dial back via traditional VPN to your data centers, which sometimes isn't the best user experience for your end-users.

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

We use FortiGate as an edge security device. We are system integrators and we use this product ourselves, as well as implement it for our clients.

The geofencing and blocking capabilities for all non-domestic countries lower the attack surface by approximately 85%.

The most valuable feature is geofencing, where we can block all access from all non-domestic locations.

In the next releases, it would be nice to see central cloud management.

They have an on-premises solution that you can deploy for fleet management or for multiple site management, but it seems like a cloud solution would be a little bit easier.

We have been using FortiGate for the past two years.

We are using the latest version.

This is a very stable solution.

So far, this product has scaled very well. We have approximately 100 deployed, as edge devices. Currently, it is our only edge device and we plan to continue rolling it out in the future.

Their technical support is great.

We used Cisco ASAs exclusively before changing exclusively to FortiGate.

We decided to change to FortiGate because the entitlement was too difficult on Cisco.

The initial setup is straightforward and it takes approximately two hours to deploy.

Licensing is pretty standard. It's approximately 15% of the total cost per year as a subscription cost.

The subscription cost also includes support for entitlement, which was not the case with Cisco. That was the deciding factor. We changed our whole install base because of that.

There are no additional costs other than the standard licensing fees.

I would recommend stopping waiting to use Fortinet Fortigate. It's really a great solution and their support is very good. SonicWall has awful support. I can't say more strongly how bad SonicWall has ever been.

With the engineers, everything is difficult to phrase. They don't understand what you're trying to do. They should understand. Their first-level support is terrible. They really don't understand. You can't get to the next level without going through level one. 

Level one is terrible. It's frustrating enough that we just do it ourselves with Google articles because of this.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The primary use case of this product is as a firewall. We are partners of Fortinet and I'm a security engineer. 

In our organization, Fortinet is one of the trusted partners. We have offered the solution for a medium-size entrepreneur 

The dashboards are a good feature and the deployment is simple. 

The technical support could be improved. I'd like to see the security platform upgraded.

I have Started learning and deploying FortiGate for 12 months.

The solution is looking stable as per knowledge

This solution is flexible and scalable. 

They need to improve the technical support. 

I have worked with checkpoint. And that solution is also good. 

It is straightforward for deployment

Fortinet is competitively priced, it's cheaper than Palo Alto and Check Point. 

We are the technologies partner so we have recommended the solution by customer dependence upon their use cases

I recommend this solution and would rate it a seven out of 10. 

We use the solution for securing our network.

The solution's intrusion detection feature is excellent.

The solution's web-filtering configuration could be more straightforward. It takes a long time to configure.

I have been using the solution for eight years.

The solution is primarily stable. Although, some time ago, there were performance drops where it was freezing as the logs were full. We managed to resolve the issue. I rate its stability eight out of ten.

It is a very scalable product. The solution users in our organization include IT managers, finance officers, accountants, and chief financial officers. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.

The solution's support team is excellent and efficient.

Positive

The solution's initial setup and configuration are straightforward. But if someone is trying to put policies and restrictions in place, then one has to understand many things. It takes one and half hours to configure and requires two executives for maintenance.

Initially, the solution's price was high for us. But it decreased on the purchase of more than one license.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it a nine.

We primarily use the solution as a virtual machine for firewalling.

The solution is very user-friendly. 

We have a next-generation firewall and can lock things in on a parameter level very effectively.

It is easy to set up the solution. 

The solution is stable.

I've found the technical support to be helpful and responsive. 

I can't recall any aspects that need improvement.

The pricing could be a bit better.

We'd like to have more customization and easier customization of policies. 

The scaling can be a bit better. 

I've been using the solution for the last two years. 

The solution is okay in terms of stability. We have not had issues. It's not too difficult to work with it. 

I'm the only person working directly with the product.

The scalability is limited. If we have to scale, we need to upgrade licenses after the license is up for renewal. Otherwise, we need to buy replacement licenses on top of the licenses we've already purchased instead of just expanding and adding onto what we have.

I've worked with technical support in the past. They are very good. When we open tickets, they respond quickly. I'm happy with the level of support overall. 

I have worked with other firewalls. Which is best depends on the requirements. It is also dependent on the budget. We need to consider performance and scalability and take onto consideration how much support will be available as well. 

The solution is easy to set up. There is a lot of documentation provided. For 70% to 80% we can do just fine, and for the rest, we just request documentation and can finish the job. 

We do not need much maintenance. We handle that ourselves, and it's not too difficult. 

The solution is set up and configured in-house. 

The pricing is okay. However, it could always be better. When you need to scale, you need to buy bigger, different licenses. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd recommend the solution to others, depending on the business requirements. It's a pretty good solution in general. 

I'd rate the product eight out of ten.