Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

I work with a lot of small business companies in Austria. Small businesses in Austria are from one to 100 employees. The FortiGate 60E is a top product for these Austrian companies for all cases of Internet usage.

There is an interesting possibility of building a tunnel to a firewall from access points. We use this feature for small branch offices with one to two employees with access to central RDP servers.

One top feature is the ability to use the appliance as a WLAN controller for up to 10 access points with the new 5.6 firmware.

Another top feature is the really good web interface and the classic Fortinet features, such as IPS, IDS, AV scanner, and spam filter.

At this time, I can't say anything against the device. It has been doing a great job.

In the first two releases of FortiOS 5.6, we had some trouble with the SSL VPN service. Sometimes it stopped working, and the IPS daemon too. Since 5.6.2, it has been running without any issues.

There are no problems with the scalability.

There are only two times that I had to contact Fortinet support since I have used Fortinet devices (15 years). Here in Austria, the distributor is doing a great job. It is very good to have the ability to contact an NSE 8.

For somebody who does not have experience with Fortinet appliances, the initial setup is very easy, but basic networking knowledge is necessary. The Setup Assistant will guide you through the first steps, and you can config basic settings for basic security.

The basic pricing in Austria is OK, but asking for special offers, e.g., NPOs, NGOs, trade up, and/or trade in, is always useful.

No, I did not evaluate other products.

Look for the latest OS version, read the release notes and the technical documents for comparison.

We use Fortinet FortiGate-VM as a firewall for our internet.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very easy to create the user of VPN, allowing them to use it quickly. Additionally, the integration and interface are good.

I have been Fortinet FortiGate-VM for approximately three years.

The stability is good.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is scalable.

We have 110 systems for users that we can connect and we have 12 users using the VPN.

The technical support in my experience has been good.

We require ten people for the deployment of Fortinet FortiGate-VM.

We have been waiting a long time for the vendor to give us licenses, it has been five months and we are still waiting. However, the price is reasonable.

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

I like how Fortinet products work together to provide a total equipment solution. And, I don't see any issues with that solution. In terms of specific features, I like FortiGate's load balancing, interface, and priority on the network.

Fortinet could improve the availability and delivery of its products. It takes four to six weeks for every purchase to arrive.

I've been using FortiGate-VM for six years.

Fortinet's local support in Mexico could be better.

I rate FortiGate 10 out of 10. 

We installed Fortinet FortiGate-VM for security purposes. Our main motivation is for security reasons and improving networking.

The most valuable features are network security, VLAN, network protection, and encryption are very valuable to us.

Integration could be better. Whatever devices I'm using with FortiGate are all compatible. The access points and switches are also FortiGate, so I can easily integrate them. But it would be better if we could embed other devices as well. There are compatibility issues with other brands, and we need that. We can only integrate universal brands with FortiGate. The initial setup could also be easier.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate-VM for three years.

It's stable, and our customers aren't giving us much of a problem.

Our customers are very happy with its scalability.

Technical support is good. However, we're not satisfied with partner support, and we're looking to diversify. We have signed up, and we're training our engineers.

The initial setup is a little complex. Not too complex, but it's good because we like to work. It takes half an hour at most to install and deploy this solution.

We're a reseller, and we implement this solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Fortinet FortiGate-VM an eight.

We use it to separate our office environment from our training courses and customer environment. 

We have on-premise and cloud deployments. We use the on-premise version for the functionality for our local network, and we use the cloud-based solution to provide the same functionality for our cloud-hosted workspaces. We have its latest version. 

Its performance is adequate. We are quite satisfied with its performance. 

The fact that it is a complete ecosystem with all kinds of integrations is valuable. It did take us a couple of months to get a grip on the new software, but all in all, it replaced our on-premise and single-point solution environment. 

It would be useful to have integration with different reporting tools. This is something we are sorely missing. It would be a plus to have reporting integrations. 

It would be good to have more integration with the identity suites, such as Office 365 and Azure Active Directory, of different providers that we use. Integrations are already available, but it would be nice to have some more advanced options.

I have been using this solution since 2015 or 2016. 

It is stable.

It is very scalable. In terms of the number of users, we have about 300 employees and 300 daily on-premise customers.

We have plans to increase its usage. We are looking at the high-availability options for our branch offices.

Most of the technical support is provided by our support partner, but there have been some instances when I interacted with their technical support. They have been most satisfactory.

Its initial installation wasn't really that hard. It was very much doable. It was a scaled rollout, which makes it a bit hard to measure.

We did get some help from our network support partner. We initially needed extra help for the deployment. We didn't require any help later on. 

To support an environment of this size, two people are good enough. If this is the sole focus of their job, then even a single person would be enough.

There is a support fee that can be bought on a yearly or two-yearly basis. I don't think they do five years. The best benefit is that the same pricing is guaranteed for that duration. If you can afford it, I would recommend using the longest possible time span.

We compared it with Check Point.

I would definitely recommend this solution. I was advised to be very skeptical about the performance statistics as indicated in the documentation, but I didn't find that to be the case. It is very scalable with good performance.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM an eight out of ten.

We primarily use this solution for the firewall and IPS.

The most valuable feature is the UTM, which gives them an advantage over other firewalls.

The reporting is not as good as it is with other firewalls and it should be improved. There should be a customized report, for example.

The dashboard seems to change quickly from version to version, and they should follow the lead of vendors like Palo Alto, Juniper, and Cisco, and always keep it the same.

The bandwidth limitations should be increased.

I have been using FortiGate-VM for approximately one year.

FortiGate-VM is stable and I have not faced any problems with it.

It is working fine and I have had no trouble with scalability.

We have very rarely had to contact Fortinet about anything. When we have a problem then we have local support with our vendor. They will send their technical people if we need help on-site. We are very satisfied with our local experts.

I have worked with McAfee for a long time. The only thing that is better with McAfee is reporting, which is very good. They offer customized reports. We have decided to keep McAfee as our endpoint solution and use FortiGate-VM as our firewall.

The initial setup is very easy. Somebody who has a little bit of experience in VMware or with firewalls will be able to do it in no time.

There is a benefit in terms of the cost of using this solution because the price is very good. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I tried SonicWall, Cisco ASA & Sophos but Fortinet is best among them in term of service and price.

I will say that for low-end firewalls, Fortinet is good compared to the others. The pricing is good, and when you need a new feature, you don't have to buy a new device.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We're using FortiGate-VM on-prem for our firewalls. The Fortinet component in the cloud is FortiGuard. We get our virus definitions regularly updated from the cloud, but the FortiGate firewalls are all on-prem. While the virtual firewalls are created inside the physical firewall, there is an option for a virtual machine firewall where we'll give you the VHD file, and you can install it to a server.

Virtual machines aren't widely used in Brunei because the Brunei government isn't ready for these things yet. They're more confident in hardware, but everything is slowly starting to head in this direction. Others are watching what will happen when people use the apps before they try them.

Some customers prefer VM, especially those customers already leveraging the virtual machine environment. Typically, they don't want to spend on the hardware because they already have all these VMs, so they choose the VM option. But in most deployments, they still prefer the hardware for their firewall because it's already hard-coded.

To improve FortiGate-VM, Fortinet needs to harden it more. For example, if you are using Hyper-V, then you need guidelines for hardening FortiGate-VM that are specific to the Hyper-V environment. If it's VMware, there should be at least a guideline on how to harden the firewall.

We've been working with FortiGate-VM since 2010.

Fortinet-VM is more scalable than the hardware version. If you're using an appliance, there are limitations in terms of hardware specs. So if you want a more scalable firewall, you can get a VM and install it on a high-end server. From there, you have more leverage on how many virtual firewalls you want to create based on that VM. In other words, it's already fixed hardware in the appliance — it's already hard-coded in the appliance. So if you are using a VM and installing it on a high-specs server, then your machine has much higher performance in packaging all these policies and all these hardware security features. 

We proved the frontline support for our client organizations or customers. So far we are satisfied with Fortinet support. We have currently have Fortinet-certified engineers in our company, so we don't have to contact support unless it's a complex issue. We have an NSE7-certified engineer, so we are quite confident with our deployment now.

FortiGate-VM setup is pretty straightforward. It depends on the implementation size, but it takes a week for an organization of around 100 users. Normally Fortinet helps their customers with deployment and post-deployment adjustments, so you don't have any problems. If anything goes wrong, Fortinet is there to support you. 

Like most similar products in the market, Fortinet's enterprise customers need to pay for annual support. They call it FortiCare, and it's direct support from Fortinet. FortiCare is renewed annually and covers support for new releases, purchases, and updates. 

I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM eight out of 10. However, based on experience, we usually don't recommend using VM firewalls. We still prefer using a hardware-based firewall when that's appropriate. It depends on your needs and the size of your user base. With FortiGate-VM, you can control the size of your firewall if you're using VMs. But on the other hand, if you are using Microsoft Hyper-V, you need to address all these vulnerabilities of Microsoft. And if you're using VMware, then you need to deal with VMware's vulnerabilities. The hardware version of FortiGate has already been hardened based on FortiGate standards. That's the main difference between the FortiGate appliance and FortiGate-VM.

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.