A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi) vs Fortinet FortiADC comparison

The compared A10 Networks and Fortinet solutions aren't in the same category. A10 Networks is ranked #2 in STD , and holds a 28.9% mindshare in the category. Fortinet is ranked #5 in ADC , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 9.7% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of A10 Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

A10 Networks Thunder SSL In...

Read 3 A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi) reviews

490 Views
260 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Fortinet FortiADC

Read 25 Fortinet FortiADC reviews

4,175 Views
3,173 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

A10 Networks Thunder SSL In...

Fortinet FortiADC

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi) and Fortinet FortiADC based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, A10 Networks, Gigamon and others in SSL/TLS Decryption.

To learn more, read our detailed SSL/TLS Decryption Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

SSL/TLS Decryption

March 2026

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Helped 884,976 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

A10 Networks Thunder SSL In...

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

SSL/TLS Decryption (2nd)

Fortinet FortiADC

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi) and Fortinet FortiADC aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi) is designed for SSL/TLS Decryption and holds a mindshare of 28.9%, up 24.7% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiADC, on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 9.7% mindshare, down 9.8% since last year.

SSL/TLS Decryption Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi)	28.9%
GigaSMART	23.3%
Symantec SSL Visibility Appliance	22.3%
Other	25.5%

SSL/TLS Decryption

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiADC	9.7%
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)	14.3%
NetScaler	12.7%
Other	63.3%

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Kenneth Murray

Data Center Network Engineer at BRIDGETON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Enables our content filter to do its job without any noticeable delay

Its most valuable feature is its ability to do its job accurately, effectively, and very quickly. The amount of traffic that we have going through our system is astounding. We have 6,900 students and about 1,100 staff members. Most of our teachers and staff are connecting through our system. You add to that all the cell phones, the iPads, and all the computers, and then each individual website's connection, that's a lot of traffic in a period of one second. The delay with the SSL decryption turned on is almost unnoticeable. That is great because most SSL decryption solutions — a couple of competitors we did try — their devices crashed as soon as we turned decryption on.

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GANESAN K

Senior Technical Engineer at Safezone Secure Solutions Private Limited

Has supported load balancing for medical applications and could benefit from more custom configuration options

Some customers need custom management for handling their applications across the servers. Instead of having a predefined solution, if we had space for custom-based algorithms to load balance the traffic, it would be better. We have faced such cases with A10, where we can leverage many custom scripts and do much more. Even though A10 primarily focuses on SMBs, they have also ventured into the enterprise market. Fortinet has been a pioneer for enterprise solutions, such as firewalls, SASE, ZTNA, and SD-WAN solutions, and they are in a leader quadrant. Therefore, they should have more options. From a pricing perspective, it is expensive.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Its most valuable feature is its ability to do its job accurately, effectively, and very quickly. The amount of traffic that we have going through our system is astounding... The delay with the SSL decryption turned on is almost unnoticeable."

"With the Thunder SSLi, we're better protected; we can stop use of VPN and proxies, are better protected against dirty traffic coming back to our schools, and having a secure decrypt zone with the equipment lowers the chances that our security infrastructure could possibly miss an attack."

"With the Thunder SSLi, we're better protected. We can stop use of VPN and proxies. We are better protected against dirty traffic coming back to our schools. Having a secure decrypt zone with the equipment lowers the chances that our security infrastructure could possibly miss an attack."

"This is one of those devices that, once you turn it on and it's functioning properly, you'll forget that you have it."

"We have several proxies in our environment, so we localized internet traffic between these proxies. Instead of getting a really huge proxy box, according to our size, we can use three boxes and share the traffic with A10's load-balancer feature."

"By not renewing six proxy boxes, rather just three of them, it saved over $100,000."

"Content caching and content compression are good features."

"Ultimately, Fortinet constructs every solution needed for each defense layer, making it comparatively better than Trellix, Trend Micro, or SentinelOne."

"We can do patches offline without causing customers outages. The web application firewall features, especially those related to the OWASP Top Ten, provide automated protections. This allows more flexibility in patching the backend applications. Additionally, it offers visibility into the requests being made to the applications, and you can't protect what you can't see."

"Key features include SSL Offloading, VM availability, and L7 load balancing."

"The most valuable feature is its simplicity."

"The solution provides high-level services such as availability, redundancy, and load balancing between servers."

"It helps with defining server load balancing tasks and managing SSL certificates, ensuring the communication flow through the Fortinet gateway."

"Overall, this is a good product, it does what it's supposed to, and I would recommend it to anybody."

More Fortinet FortiADC pros

Cons

"There is one thing I would like to see changed. In their features for setting things up, there is a templating system that would normally assist clients. However, we had a better time setting up the device either through the command line or through the interface and not using the templates that were pre-installed. So there is room for improvement to the templates for initial installation."

"SSLi is a very powerful device. It has many features and to get them configured is kind of tough."

"I would like them to have a better UI (better universal design)."

"There is one thing I would like to see changed. In their features for setting things up, there is a templating system that would normally assist clients."

"I would like them to have a better UI (better universal design)."

"It would be great if it supported SSL operations according to Active Directory users. For example, if we want to bypass one of the servers or a client's internet access for SSL interception, we have to do it according to the IP address. It would be better if we could do it according to the Active Directory username. A10 says they kind of support that but we haven't tested it."

"Fortinet has some drawbacks, and it can be a bit challenging to scale."

"Technical support and documentation could both be improved."

"The WAF function implementation would be better if we could do it very easily and in a user-friendly way."

"The user interface could be more friendly and CLI could be more like that of Fortigate."

"I think it would be helpful if Fortinet put more video examples on their cookbook site."

"There is a mismatch between the number of features they are offering and the device capacity on how much it can handle."

"The initial setup was not complex, but it was not simple either."

"The product needs more development because it has issues with SSL traffic and encrypted traffic."

More Fortinet FortiADC cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We always pay for support. Any organization of our size who doesn't is asking for problems."

"Our licensing costs, yearly, are just under $15,000. Your initial cost of acquisition is obviously going to be more than $15,000..."

"When you purchase the equipment, you purchase the licensing and warranty. It's all fairly standard. We haven't been caught with anything surprising."

"The solution's pricing is an issue and should be improved."

"The product has average pricing. I rate its pricing a five out of ten."

"The price is competitive"

"The solution is less expensive than F5 or Imperva and is the most reasonably priced option available."

"I rate Fortinet FortiADC's pricing one out of ten. It is fixed."

"Our basic license excludes features such as antivirus and IDS. Due to license limitations, some functionalities are not configured."

"The solution could be more cost-effective."

"They offer a perpetual license."

More Fortinet FortiADC pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Energy/Utilities Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

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Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?

For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.

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Do you recommend Fortinet FortiADC?

I recommend Fortinet FortiADC. My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. Our company has been using it for around five years. We mainly use FortiADC for the load balancing of application ...

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What do you like most about Fortinet FortiADC?

The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily.

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Comparisons

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi)

Compared 32% of the time

GigaSMART vs A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi)

Compared 26% of the time

Symantec SSL Visibility Appliance vs A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi)

Compared 17% of the time

Comodo Essential SSL Wildcard Certificate vs A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi)

Compared 16% of the time

More A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi) Competitors

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 32% of the time

NetScaler vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 15% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 11% of the time

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 6% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiADC Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi)

March 2026

A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi) report

Download A10 Networks Thunder SSL Insight (SSLi) product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiADC

March 2026

Download Fortinet FortiADC product report

Also Known As

Thunder SSLi

FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC

Overview

SSL encrypted traffic is growing, rendering most security devices ineffective.
Gain visibility into encrypted traffic with SSL Insight and stop potential threats.

A10 Networks

Fortinet FortiADC is a robust application delivery controller (ADC) that delivers application optimization, application security, and application availability. FortiADC is a valued offering from Fortinet, which is widely recognized as a trusted supplier of dynamic security solutions worldwide. FortiADC offers dynamic security functions (AV, DDoS, and WAF) in addition to advanced application connectors for a simplified deployment and complete transparency to an organization's networks and applications. FortiADC offers three primary deployment options: physical machine, virtual machine, (VM) and cloud solution options.

Fortinet FortiADC Benefits

FortiADC security protocol: FortiADC integrates with FortiSandbox to improve the overall antivirus security protections where every file is scanned for known and unknown malicious risks. If a file is identified as malicious or problematic, it will be blocked in the future.
SSL protocol: FortiADC securely uses the most up-to-date cryptography to provide exceptional encryption and decryption using a hardware-based SSL ASIC. FortiADC offers complete transparency to inspect all traffic for threats, improves server response time, and reduces backend server load, SSL inspection and SSL offloading. FortiADC integrates seamlessly with Gemalto’s SafeNet Hardware Security Module (HSM).
FortiADC connectors: FortiADC Fabric Connectors offer open API-based integration and coordination with numerous software-defined networks (SDNs), third-party partners, and cloud management providers. Fortinet Fabric Connectors provide deep open and turnkey integration with recognized third-party vendors such as AWS, K8s, OCI, and SAP, in multi-vendor solutions, improving scalability, simplified management, and automation.
Business stability: FortiADC load balancing for on-premise global server load balancing (GSBL) and in the cloud (FortiGSBL Cloud) will ensure users can maintain a reliable and available network by improving the ability of scaling applications throughout numerous data centers to reduce application response times and enhance disaster recovery. Users are able to define protocols based on network latency concerns, overall data performance, and site availability.

Fortinet FortiADC Features

Application availability
- 4-7 application load balancing: DNS, HTTPS, RTMP, RADIUS, MySQL and more
- External fabric connectors: Splunk Integration, AWS/OCI Connector, Kubernetes Service.
- Security fabric connectors: FortiSIEM, Fortigate BanIP Integration, FortiAnalyzer, and more.
- Deployment modes: High availability (AA/AP Failover), Router mode, transparent mode (switch), one-arm mode (proxy with X-forwarded for support.
Web application firewall (WAF)
- Security services: Captcha support, cookie support, HTTP header security, XML/SOAP/JSON validation, CSRF protection, API gateway, and more.
- Application security: Web attack signature, bot detection, web vulnerability scanner, OWASP Top-10 Wizard, API protection and more.

Application enhancement
- HTTP and TCP improvement: TCP buffering, HTTP compressions/decompression, HTTP caching (dynamic and static objects), Bandwidth monitoring using quality of service (QoS), TCP buffering, and more.
- Authentication offloading: Two-factor authentication (Fortitoken/Fortitoken Cloud and Google Authentication), NTLM, AUTH2.0, SAML 2.0 (SP and Idp) RADIUS, LDAP, Kerbos, and local.
- Networking: Integration with Ansible, Cisco ACI, OpenStack and Nutanix, NVGRE and VXLAN support, VLAN and port trunking support, IPv6 Support (SLB, firewall, routing and interfaces), Dynamic NAT, Hide NAT, Static NAT for added scalability and flexibility.
- Management: Syslog support, SNMP using private MIBs with threshold-based traps. REST APIs, VDOMS, data analytics, real-time monitoring graphs, role-based monitoring, intuitive reporting, FortiView integration, and more.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Klein Independent School District

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data

Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, A10 Networks, Gigamon and others in SSL/TLS Decryption. Updated: March 2026.

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