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Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Sangfor NGAF comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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
Ranking in Firewalls
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
151
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sangfor NGAF
Ranking in Firewalls
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate-VM is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor NGAF is 1.1%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate-VM2.2%
Sangfor NGAF1.1%
Other96.7%
Firewalls
 

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.
Zaid Farooqui - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at Indus Motor Company
Enhanced threat detection with integrated security features and good support
We are using application firewalling, WAF, and SD-WAN. The capabilities are mostly within the box. For example, you will get web application firewall WAF as part and parcel of this. SD-WAN is also bundled. It integrates with their SIEM and SOAR solutions very nicely. Lastly, the pricing point is very cost-efficient as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortinet is user-friendly."
"Fortinet is competitively priced, it's cheaper than Palo Alto and Check Point."
"Use of this product does not require daily interactions."
"I did like the ability to back up the configuration into the cloud, as opposed to having to store the configurations or just downloading them, the backups, to local devices."
"As a piece of tech, as a firewall, it's really good."
"The reporting is good."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the integration within the environment, with centralized reporting."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM is user-friendly and can be handled by anyone."
"We've found the technical support to be helpful."
"In our hospital, Sangfor NGAF works well for us in terms of ensuring confidentiality and availability, which are crucial in the healthcare industry."
"Sangfor has the best capabilities for securing connections, securing web browsers, securing servers, and general threat protection."
"This product is very user-friendly, and its Layer 7 security is very much improved."
"Sangfor serves most of the basic purposes of a firewall, is particularly good in the DPI where we can inspect the inbound and outbound traffic on a very granular level, gives a very good predictive measure as well as the current measure of things going on in our network, and gives us value for money overall."
"The product is very fast and reliable."
"You might try Sangfor if you are on a tight budget. The price is affordable, and Sangfor offers a lot of features. We don't have any complaints about Sangfor."
"The VPN connectivity feature is really nice."
 

Cons

"Once the sale happens, they just vanish, and then you're on your own."
"In my experience, Fortinet FortiGate is not stable at all."
"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."
"There should be a bit more automation."
"The performance could be better. Some features need to have quality control when the switch is working. The dedicated bandwidth for some users is not reliable."
"The security offered by the tool has certain shortcomings, making it in area where improvements are required."
"The costs could be lowered."
"The interface of the solution could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in dependency on certain infrastructure, like the DNS dependency on the current DNS server that the company has. It should be standalone. It should not depend on any other DNS server."
"The user interface isn't user-friendly though."
"The product must provide more IPS features."
"Sangfor NGAF could improve the policies and default criteria. They could be much better."
"Sangfor could improve by providing better real-time reporting, as the current reports don't offer the level of detail we need, especially for runtime insights."
"The firewall system needs gradual improvements because there are more threats and challenges in the world every day."
"The support offered by the product has certain shortcomings where improvements are required. The knowledge levels and response time of the support team need improvement."
"An area for improvement would be the number of ports defined on the box. In the next release, I would like them to develop their provisioning stage of enrolling end devices."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is expensive compared with other vendors, like Cisco and Huawei."
"The pricing and licensing are not as expensive as its competitors."
"I find it quite reasonable."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The price is fair for what we get with FortiGate."
"We pay for a yearly license."
"The solution could be better priced."
"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."
"For over 2000 users, the cost is around 5000 to 6000 USD. If you want a web application firewall, you have to purchase an additional license for it."
"If one is very cheap and ten is very expensive, I rate the tool's price as three out of ten."
"Sangfor NGAF is a cheaply priced product, especially if I consider the previous product that was used in my company."
"When it comes to the price of firewall solutions, Sangfor NGAF takes the cake."
"We purchased one year technical support and return to factory support, and we also purchased one-year technical support services. So those were additional."
"The solution has a TCO that is 32% to 50% less than Sophos, Fortinet, and SonicWall."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"It costs about 8 to 10 thousand dollars per year for 500 users, standard licensing fees included."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business74
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise43
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise10
 

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?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, the main client I deal with is a reputed company in the market, making it easy for them to afford Fortinet FortiGate-VM compared to Palo Alto, which is...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sangfor NGAF?
The licensing cost is quite high compared to other available firewalls in the market.
What needs improvement with Sangfor NGAF?
The cost of licensing is very high compared to other firewalls available here. There should be improvements in hardware scalability, allowing for more storage and memory capacity. Making the soluti...
What is your primary use case for Sangfor NGAF?
We are hosting applications over the platform, including websites and NAT traffic from our side. Because it's deployed in our data center, which is fully operational, we have various applications h...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM
Sangfor NGAF Firewall Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Security7 Networks, COOPENAE
The Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (Indonesia), Lawson, Inc. (Philippines), Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (Indonesia), TEK Automotive (Italy), etc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Sangfor NGAF and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.