Fortinet FortiOS Reviews

The solution is basically an OS for Fortinet.

Security and authentication are the most valuable aspects of the product. The classification of the websites is helpful.

The solution is stable and reliable.

We have several access points on FortiGate, which were procured long ago. Those are not supporting the present firmware update we make on the UTM. Therefore, we cannot get the latest firmware updated on the UTMs. I was thinking that if we need to get rid of these physical devices, we should move to some cloud-based system.

The only problem that we are facing at the moment is that all the devices of FortiGate, whether it is for FortiGate's access points or authenticator or controllers or UTM, is in the FortiOS. They are interrelated and interdependent. It means if I buy a FortiGate car, I have to run FortiGate OS, I have to fill in FortiGate fuel, and I have to run it on a Fortinet road. I can’t mix and match it with different solutions. There is no flexibility.

The initial setup is a bit complex.

We would like to have NMS built into the solution.

We’ve been using the solution for the last ten years.

The solution is stable. We’ve never had any issues with the product. It’s reliable. There are no bugs or glitches.

If I need to scale it up, then again, I have to change the entire family of it.

The amount of users connected at any given point is something around 6,000, including the students and the people on move.

We never use tech support from Fortinet. We get support from a local supplier.

We are tied to Fortinet and therefore did not use any other product.

Initially, the solution can be a bit complex to set up. It’s not simple. There’s a learning curve. You need to train on it a bit first.

We have ten to 12 people on hand who are specialized in FortiOS and can handle deployment and maintenance tasks. We have a total of 20 people working on maintenance.

The pricing is pretty high. I’d rate it at a two or three out of five in terms of affordability.

Since the pandemic, a lot of things have gotten exponentially higher. Also, for us, the final price is dependent on the dollar conversion rate. You can get a license for one or up to five years.

Since we are tied to Fortinet and could not use anything else, we did not compare it to other solutions.

We are customers and end-users.

I’d rate the solution seven out of ten.

I’d recommend the solution for an enterprise user. However, it may be a bit much for a small or medium-sized organization.

We are using it for security purposes. 

The security on offer is good.

It's quite stable.

The scalability has been great.

We found the initial setup to be straightforward. 

Technical support has been good overall. 

The UI could be a bit better. The coming generation will not be from the Sierra, and therefore they have a chance to make it much better and more user-friendly. Right now, we have to contend with CLI. We'd like it to be easier. We need the features to be in a UI.

I've been using the solution for more than five years. 

The solution has proven to be stable and reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We find the solution to be quite scalable. If you need to expand it, you can do so.

We have more than 5,000 people on the solution right now. 

Technical support has been good in general. They are helpful and responsive. I have no complaints in regard to their level of service. 

Positive

It offers a pretty simple and straightforward setup. I'd rate it four out of five in terms of ease of implementation. It's not something that's too complex or difficult. 

I don't have many details surrounding the licensing. It's not an aspect I directly deal with. My understanding is the solution is moderately priced.

We are Fortinet partners. 

If a company is looking for a local security enhancement, we tend to recommend or select this kind of solution.

I'd rate the product nine out of ten overall. 

The best aspects of the solution are the wire signature and VPN, secure VPN encryption, and bulk packet monitoring.

It is a stable product. 

The product is scalable and easily expands. 

Setting up the solution is easy.

We like the technical support on offer. 

It should be controlled in the local environment as well. Its gateway security is more powerful. However, it should also manage the local DSCP network, so the policies, local LAN policies, and other stuff should be there.

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

The stability is good. 

It's running in many places and in different organizations. There's a huge market.

 I found the solution to be scalable. 

We use it in more than one location. We have more than four or five people using it at each location. 

Technical support's good. When we register a ticket, they are always prompt in their response. There are two types of support. It's paid or unpaid support, depending on the service we are using.

Positive

We've also used SonicWall. 

The initial setup is straightforward. It's not complex, You should know where it exists in the OS. Then you can work with it easily. Otherwise, the complexity is something you have to contend with for a new user.

We have witnessed an ROI. 

You need to repurchase a license every year or two. Costs are negotiable and sometimes they offer promotional prices. A yearly subscription might be around $20,000 to $30,000.

We're a customer and end-user.

We would recommend the solution.

Fortinet is a good product. However, other products are good as well. It really depends on the customer experience.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten due to the cost of quality of services, and due to the fact that we know other firewalls are more powerful than Fortinet. That said, Fortinet is very economical and gives us an appropriate solution based on what we require.

The solution is great for data protection in our company, including site too site and SSH.

The stability of Fortinet FortiOS is great.

The product needs a feature that allows users to create another site on a VPN.

We have used this solution with our clients for two years and are currently using version 11. Additionally, we deploy this solution on-premises.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We have a large number of clients using this solution with their users.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. They are very fast.

The initial setup was very easy to configure.

We implemented it through our in-house technical team.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. The solution is very good but needs a feature that allows users to create another site on a VPN.

Fortinet is used for security. FortiOS is the operating system. FortiAnalyzer, for example, can be used on it and it is used for log management, et cetera.

The solution is very easy to use. It's a solution that has a powerful CLI and a very powerful graphical user interface.

The solution scales well.

In terms of stability, the solution is reliable.

It's not too hard to implement the solution.

Technical support is helpful and responsive. 

The pricing of the product is too high. They should work to lower it.

I've been using this solution for three years. It's been a while. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is reliable 

We have found the product to be scalable. It's not a problem if you want to expand it.

There are 1,000 users on the solution at this time. 

While there may be plans to increase usage in the future, I'm not sure if that's the case just yet. 

The technical support on offer has always been quite good. We are satisfied with the level of service they provide.

Previously, we were mainly using Cisco firewalls and products.

We enlisted some assistance with the implementation process. The setup was pretty easy. It wasn't overly difficult.

We have three people who are able to maintain the solution. They include me and two team members who are both engineers.

We used an integrator to help us deploy the solution.

The solution is fairly expensive. The cost is around $40,000.

It would be ideal if they offered more licensing options.

We were presented with some other solutions such as Palo Alto and Check Point. We prefer Fortinet due to the features on offer.

I'm an end-user and customer. 

We are using a few versions of the solution, some with 6.2, which is not the most updated version, and some others with almost legacy versions such as 5.6.

I would advise users to not stick with the last version if a new release comes out.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We have been largely pleased with its capabilities. 

Our company is a partner and we install the solution for our customers as a firewall for remote VPN use. 

We also use the solution to protect our own company that includes more than 1,000 users. 

The solution constantly adds features that are useful and user-friendly such as the ability to tweak firewalls through the CLI. 

The solution's graphic interface could be a bit more responsive and include notations when changes are made

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

The solution is stable. In seven years of use, I've only encountered two or three occasions where a bug affected the firewall's behavior. 

I rate stability an eight out of ten. 

The solution is very scalable and it is quite easy to add users. 

I rate scalability a ten out of ten. 

Technical support has issues with knowledge base at the first tier. It sometimes takes hours of explanation before support fully understands and can troubleshoot or escalate problems. 

Response time could also be improved. 

I rate support a six out of ten. 

Neutral

Our company has always used the solution and is not interested in other products. 

The initial setup is easy, it only requires one engineer, and the main interface is self-explanatory. 

Users who are familiar with the solution can always dig further in the CLI to change the properties. 

We deploy the solution for our company and our customers. 

One engineer spends about two days configuring, testing, and deploying. 

The solution is easy to configure and has good performance. 

Anytime I have thought of a possible feature I'd like added to the solution, it seems the developers are on the same page and it is available within a few months. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

FortiOS is just an operating system. That's it. It's a firmware FortiGate is running. 

FortiOS is the foundation of the Fortinet secured fabric.

You can have virtual domains. On top of each virtual domain, you can see the independent system. When comparing Fortinet with other vendors, the good part is you can set different priorities. It depends on different VDOMs. In my case, I have two VDOMs. One is called a VPN VDOM; the other is called a web filter VDOM. Usually, for other vendors, no matter how many domains, just one primary device is always a primary one. However, for FortiGate, you can separate them. In my case, I have machine one, and machine two. FortiGate one, Fortigate two. And for each FortiGate, we can have multiple VDOMs. In my case, I have two VDOMs. If you want to save money, you can split the workload, and this capability helps us save on costs.

It's very flexible firmware. 

I really like it overall. It really meets lots of my requirements.

The initial setup is easy.

It's easy to use. 

The solution is quite stable.

Right now, all the features meet my requirements. It's not lacking in any way.

I have more than ten years of experience with the solution. 

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. In terms of hardware. We are in a cycle right now to handle hardware replacement. We've been using the hardware for seven years now. 

I have more than 400 stores nationally in Canada. I have it in every  different location. For each store, for business continuity purposes, we have two internet connections. One is the primary internet connection; the secondary is the LTE. 

LTE is expensive, so we always use the primary, like cable or PPPoE. Unless the cable or PPPoE fails, then we switch traffic to LTE. Even for LTE, we control the traffic. For example, we have backup traffic. For LTE, we don't allow the backup traffic to go through LTE since LTE is for business continuity purposes only.

For redundancy, you build up the HA environment, meaning, at a minimum, you have two devices to work together. The secondary is always just sleeping there, dormant. When the primary fails, then you switch over to secondary.

However, for Fortinet, on top of this, you can have multiple VDOMs.

I'm a very senior tech guy, and therefore I would rarely need their services. However, I will say they have been much better, and we find them helpful. 

I've had previous experience with Cisco products.

The initial setup is very good. I'm a Cisco guy; I'm used to the command line interface. Therefore, right now, from my command line point of view, I like it. The hierarchy of the command line is very clear and it's very easy to change as needed.

The license is based on the machine itself, not on how many users. That's why we backhaul all the internet traffic to my head office, so in my head office, I only need to buy one license. To access the internet, we have a VPN tunnel. 

I'm not sure of the exact costs. I didn't purchase it, I just use it. 

I've compared the solution to Palo Alto and Cisco. 

Right now, more and more services are moving to the cloud. In terms of the cloud, the IP address changes so frequently. Today you see this IP for this service, the next day, without notifications, they may change IP to other IP addresses. So, originally, all firewall rules were based on the IP address. Now, it's not based on the IP address; it's based on the service. I can see Fortinet has already worked on this. For example, they provide internet service, which I remember, even though I haven't tried it yet. There's an internet service called Office 365. You just use this; you don't need to know the exact IP address or something; you just use this name. In the background, Fortinet updates this, updates all the information about this group, so you don't need to. The firewall keeps retrieving all that information from Fortinet, so you don't have to worry about the frequent change on the cloud side.

So far, I'm very satisfied with this device. Compared with other vendors, like Palo Alto and Cisco, I'm delighted with FortiGate, to be honest.

I'd rate it ten out of ten.

The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiOS are its simplicity, highly user-centric, and performs well. The line speed and for heavy traffic, is helpful for us.

Fortinet FortiOS can improve by limiting the need for the CLI and GUI combination. The more functions they can have on the GUI and less on CLI would be helpful.

I have used Fortinet FortiOS within the last 12 months.

The stability of Fortinet FortiOS has been good, I have not had any issues at this point.

Fortinet FortiOS scalability has been good. However, we only have a small setup. 

The support offered by Fortinet FortiOS is good.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiOS is straightforward.

The price of Fortinet FortiOS is less than $10,000 annually. The price of the support is reasonable compared to competitors.

I rate Fortinet FortiOS a seven out of ten.