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Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] comparison

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Executive Summary

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

Fortinet FortiGate-VM
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
151
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (11th)
McAfee Firewall Enterprise ...
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Ehab Ali - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Presales Consultant at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Unified security fabric has simplified multi-country deployments and strengthened threat response
FortiGate VM delivers exceptional performance and security with no degradation of service or protection (same features as the HW option). As part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, it extends across clouds and distributed locations, mitigating blind spots in virtual infrastructures. FortiGate VM can be rapidly deployed, managed through a centralized platform, and offers a range of purchasing options to suit every need. Also, FortiGate VM offers versatile deployment options across both public and private clouds, supporting all major public clouds including AWS, Azure, and Google as well as most hypervisors such as VMware, Hyper-V, and KVM. These deployments enable organizations to create scalable, high-performance firewalls that can be tailored to different virtualized environments and hyper-scale public cloud infrastructures. FortiGate VM integrates seamlessly with various infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Jenkins and GitLab, supporting security as code practices.
reviewer999975 - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Technician at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We cannot find resources to help us configure it, so most of the time the virus still goes on our computer and McAfee doesn't detect it
It's pretty easy to use on a daily basis, but there are no other features because it's hard to configure on the server. On the endpoint it's really easy to push. It's hard to configure on the server, though. It's hard to find resources to help us configure it, and there is not much online help that you can find. Most of the time, we were looking at the forums, and we needed to go very deep to find what we were looking for. It was hard, and McAfee was not really helpful when we were trying to get the product to work perfectly. This is why are changing it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The reporting is good."
"The support is good. We don't have any issues with the technical support."
"In terms of administration, it's perfect."
"It is very versatile."
"The thing that I like the most is that they're very willing to work with us to resolve issues that they haven't taken care of before in their product."
"It is scalable because it is a virtual appliance. You can probably scale it up more."
"The solution is quite good; it is simple and fast."
"The setup is simple."
"ROI: It's good."
"It does give certain protection for everything that is well configured on our McAfee server. We have good protection with it. If we could find a feature and make it work, it would work perfectly, there would be no bugs, and it would be really good."
"For managing multiple MFE firewalls it is incredibly handy, convenient, and it is easy to use the product with McAfee Control Centre."
"We have 10 offices throughout Brazil, and now they are all connected by using the VPN feature of the firewall."
"It's a very functional and stable product if you're looking for a Layer 7 firewall with reputation filtering and encrypted traffic inspection."
 

Cons

"Improvements are needed for the responsive UI and JIT traffic reporting."
"There were challenges during setup, and many of them were self-inflicted."
"The price of FortiGate-VM is high and should be more competitive."
"The security offered by the tool has certain shortcomings, making it in area where improvements are required."
"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Interoperability could be improved."
"We are experiencing a failed login issue. There should also be improvements in functionalities we store to enhance our services."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Migrating from v7 to v8 of McAfee Firewall Enterprise, in many cases, involves you having to completely re-write all of your previous McAfee Firewall Enterprise v7 policies due to the difference in the way the interfaces are named in the product going from v7 to v8."
"Administration of the firewall is a little confusing for end users."
"Customer support and AV are both lacking and are really hard to come to you when the product is installed. Those are the two major points that they need to work on."
"The hardware is not stable and we have faced many stability issues."
"HA configuration is a bit difficult for the first time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM's pricing a six out of ten."
"I find it quite reasonable."
"We can tailor the suitable license for the customer, whether they require UTB or enterprise features. The options are flexible based on their needs."
"I rate the product price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"The price falls somewhere in the middle; it's neither cheap nor expensive."
"There is an annual license required to use the solution."
"The customer must buy his own license."
"It is a medium-priced product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business74
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise43
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...
Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?
Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigate VM integrates well and has excellent centralized reporting. It is very easy to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiGate-VM?
I am not involved in the pricing and costs associated with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, as those are handled by the CFO. We are in operations, and we just access the product as it is and take care of the...
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Also Known As

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM
Firewall Enterprise MFE, Intel Security Firewall Enterprise MFE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Security7 Networks, COOPENAE
French Ministry of Education, RWTH Aachen, Avency, Cegedim, Cobweb, Intel Security, Cemex Mauser, R_sler Oberfl_chentechnik
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Cisco and others in Firewalls. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.