Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Stormshield Network Security comparison

Fortinet and Stormshield are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Additionally, 98% of Fortinet users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Stormshield users who would recommend it.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Read 151 Fortinet FortiGate-VM reviews

11,811 Views
10,866 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Stormshield Network Security

Read 18 Stormshield Network Security reviews

3,755 Views
1,727 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Stormshield Network Security

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and Stormshield Network Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Cisco and others in Firewalls.

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Firewalls

August 2026

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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)

Stormshield Network Security

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Unified Threat Management (UTM) (14th)

Featured Reviews

Ehab Ali

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.

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Zsolt Jónás

System Administrator at NaxoNet

Advanced GUI and layered security have supported compliance and simplified intrusion prevention

I haven't had a task that I couldn't solve with Stormshield Network Security. The active-active high availability solution would be beneficial because currently, if you build a high availability solution with Stormshield Network Security, you have a main device and another one is a backup device. The HA can switch between them, but it would be good to have a master-master solution, not just a master-slave one. I could set a URL that I can call to update the DNS record. Currently, Stormshield Network Security devices support DynDNS, which is not a usual feature request from a server environment. I have my own solution instead of DynDNS because I don't prefer it, so I have my own service for that. However, the GUI does not support using a custom service instead of DynDNS. I had to solve it in the console on Stormshield Network Security device, but it would be much better if it was reachable on the GUI. I had to figure out a trick for the IPsec configuration. In the IPsec config, we have to provide the remote side's IP address, but it's always changing. This means that an office, for example a company that has an office but without a fixed IP address, cannot be used with IPsec VPN.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We switched to FortiGate because it's straightforward and easy to manage and also has co-costing for customers."

"It has allowed us to centralize every network service into one appliance, administrating all traffic going in and out of my company, and giving us visibility of all network traffic in an easy way."

"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."

"The deployment is easy, there are no issues with the deployment of this solution."

"Fortinet FortiGate-VM allowed us to inspect, control, and log egress traffic while fitting into a hub-spoke landing zone architecture, providing consistent security policy across environments and granular security controls that significantly enhanced operational efficiency and scalability."

"Fortinet is user-friendly."

"The IPS module is my favorite because of the security advantage reached with a few clicks and its automatic updates."

"The customer care center of Fortinet is good. For all the requests that we have done, they work as fast as possible, so this is a good point for Fortinet."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pros

"Filters and URL filtering helped us to optimize our bandwidth."

"The solution has improved my organization because I can see what traffic is happening and I can use it to block and prevent attacks."

"Ease of use is the best feature of the product."

"The StormShield solution has enabled us to fully implement best practices from Microsoft in the cloud : the hub and spoke architecture."

"The scalability of the solution is good."

"The features I find most valuable is the backup inspection, the filtering, and the load balancing, and I am also impressed by the antivirus feature that gives us two controls over the viruses - one is from the parameter and one on the endpoint."

"Our organization's main concern is stability, and this is a stable solution."

"Easily manageable in a variety of environments."

More Stormshield Network Security pros

Cons

"The key activation is very complicated at times."

"Customization needs improvement. A lot of people have very unique requirements that they ask for at times."

"The graphical user interface should be enhanced."

"It would be better if it could provide you with options before completely blocking anything through the web filter. If you are doing a deep SSL inspection on the site if it says it's expired, it doesn't give you the option to continue at your own risk. I can't say that it's bad, but SSL internally isn't really a requirement. However, its security features can help. Right now, we have people going out and spending on purchasing the SSL certificates for internal sites."

"Fortinet FortiGate-VM still lacks some more features and has room for improvement in user-friendly traffic inspection."

"Technical support could be better."

"The block, the clarity, the quarantine command, is not very user-friendly. You would have to do everything through the command line and I would have preferred if it wasn't a CLI."

"Some of the compatibility and technical support issues are reasons why I rate it eight instead of nine or ten; the rest of everything is good."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM cons

"Stormshield Network Security is quite expensive."

"An application firewall like other next generation firewalls have."

"The stability is not that good based on my experience. We have a lot of disruptions when it comes to Stormshield."

"This is not a next-generation firewall."

"Support is always an issue because they're constantly busy."

"Improvement is also needed in terms of the technical support of the manufacturer, they're not very responsive when it comes to technical support."

"It could be better if it were more user-friendly for us as we dont use it very often even if we never had problems to modify setup when needed."

"The pricing is increasing, and I would say it is a bit expensive."

More Stormshield Network Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There should be a reduction in the setup price and licensing costs."

"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."

"It's a mid-ranged product."

"I find it quite reasonable."

"The price of this product is great compared to others."

"It is on par with what you receive. It can be expensive upfront."

"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"Of all the firewalls that we compared, FortiGate is the cheapest and most affordable, so we are satisfied with the pricing."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pricing and cost advice

"The price of this solution and the price of support are ok."

"The pricing could be better."

"We chose Stormshield for its price, as the Azure firewall was too expensive."

"We bought a three-year license, and we renew it whenever it expires. The price could be better. It's always very expensive."

"I think the price is good."

"For mid-sized companies, they sell their appliances for good prices."

"The SN200 series costs between $500 USD and $600 USD per year, whereas the SN700 series costs approximately $1,000 annually."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	74
Midsize Enterprise	35
Large Enterprise	43

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	2

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...

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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...

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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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What needs improvement with Stormshield Network Security?

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What is your primary use case for Stormshield Network Security?

I already use Stormshield Network Security, and I am now looking for a new solution. I am already working with Stormshield Network Security, and the official reseller of Stormshield.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Stormshield Network Security?

The pricing is increasing, and I would say it is a bit expensive. Palo Alto and others are much more expensive, but Stormshield Network Security is also not inexpensive. My overall review rating fo...

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Comparisons

Azure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 9% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 9% of the time

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 6% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 6% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM Competitors

Fortinet FortiGate vs Stormshield Network Security

Compared 17% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Stormshield Network Security

Compared 11% of the time

Sophos UTM vs Stormshield Network Security

Compared 9% of the time

OPNsense vs Stormshield Network Security

Compared 5% of the time

Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs Stormshield Network Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Stormshield Network Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

August 2026

Download Fortinet FortiGate-VM product report

Buyer's Guide

Stormshield Network Security

July 2026

Download Stormshield Network Security product report

Also Known As

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM

NETASQ Firewalls

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate-VM delivers robust security services and advanced network management suitable for cloud environments, providing solutions like firewall and SD-WAN, with seamless integration across Fortinet devices.

FortiGate-VM is designed for enterprise security, offering comprehensive features like intrusion prevention and application filtering. It's known for its scalability and flexibility, supporting cloud platforms such as Azure and AWS. It enhances threat response and network management efficiency, thanks to real-time threat response, intuitive integration with existing systems, and cost-effectiveness.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

Strong Security: Offers firewall, intrusion prevention, and application filtering.
SD-WAN Capability: Improves network connectivity and performance.
Scalability: Efficient scaling in cloud environments.
Integration: Seamlessly connects with other Fortinet devices.

What benefits can users expect from Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

Enhanced Network Management: Simplifies deployment with real-time threat response.
Cost-Effectiveness: Optimal for managing network protocols at reasonable costs.
Flexibility in Deployment: Suitable for secure virtual machine operations on platforms like Azure or AWS.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is predominantly employed in industries requiring stringent data center security, enabling network segmentation and VPN services. It's particularly favored by organizations using virtual and cloud networks due to its Unified Threat Management capabilities, making it an efficient solution for protecting virtual environments from threats.

Fortinet

Stormshield Network Security offers comprehensive protection with features like backup inspection, scalable interface, and load balancing, suitable for network security management.

Stormshield Network Security is designed for organizations requiring reliable IT infrastructure protection, providing firewall capabilities, intrusion detection, and application control. Users find VPN support, URL filtering, and UTM functions beneficial for network management. Models like SN200 and SN910 are used globally in clustered configurations, addressing different demands. Challenges include pricing, interface friendliness, filtering configurations, and technical support.

What are the key features of Stormshield Network Security?

Backup Inspection: Enhances reliability and recovery options.
Antivirus Controls: Provides robust virus protection.
Intrusion Detection: Alerts on potential threats.
Load Balancing: Distributes network traffic efficiently.
URL Filtering: Blocks malicious websites for safe browsing.

What benefits should users seek in reviews?

Scalability: Adapts to each organization's growing needs.
Reliability: Supports clustered configurations for uptime.
Management Ease: Intuitive dashboard aids network oversight.
Performance: High throughput with efficient clustering.

Stormshield Network Security is widely implemented in industries needing IT infrastructure protection, like finance or healthcare. Organizations deploy it in data centers or branch offices, benefiting from features ensuring safety and performance. The tool supports environments that demand high security levels and robust network monitoring.

Stormshield

Sample Customers

Security7 Networks, COOPENAE

ACESUR group, Ministry of Education Oman, Anios Laboratories, Zain, DLM Location

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Cisco and others in Firewalls. Updated: August 2026.

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