No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Fortinet FortiGate vs McAfee Web Gateway Cloud Service comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Fortinet FortiGate
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
591
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
McAfee Web Gateway Cloud Se...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
34th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.3%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 6.8%, up from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of McAfee Web Gateway Cloud Service is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate6.8%
iboss3.3%
McAfee Web Gateway Cloud Service0.7%
Other89.2%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Unified security and sd-wan have improved uptime and cut wan costs for multi-site branches
Users report stability issues in certain versions, which requires regular updates. Real-world attacks have also highlighted the need for urgent patching of vulnerabilities.Fortinet FortiGate, while a powerful and feature-rich web firewall, could improve in areas like firmware stability, documentation, and ease of use. The learning curve can be steep for some users. For beginners, support quality can vary, and frequent updates with occasional vulnerabilities call for careful patch management. However, once Fortinet FortiGate is configured, it remains highly reliable and efficient. Customer support needs improvement, as I find it very slow, with reports from other users reflecting that customer support is inadequate.
MF
Security Engineer at Mavisco Resources Sdn Bhd
A scalable and user-friendly tool that provides an easy-to-configure user interface
The solution is used for granular filtering. For example, an organization can use the solution to allow users to access Facebook but stop them from playing games The user interface is easy to configure. We don't have to configure a database manually. It’s already present in the product. We just…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"iboss is definitely very good in terms of service."
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"I prefer FortiGate because it has a lot of other solutions embedded within it and is the easiest for our technicians to operate."
"The product has an inbuilt IPS software. We can configure it to block specific anonymous attacks that are happening."
"The GUI is very simple, and what is very good is that every product, regardless of size, has the same interface."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known."
"The reliability of Fortinet FortiGate is through the roof, we're experiencing 99.999% availability consistently."
"The security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"The user interface is easy to configure."
 

Cons

"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices; it is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents, and that is where in 2025 we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"iboss can be improved because the integration could be better; you need to import all the sites that you access today, and there are a few problems whenever you import thousands of websites, making the integration process messy for the users."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"In my opinion, Fortinet FortiGate could be improved by making the appliance smaller than what we have here, as it is pretty big."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"FortiGate's logging and reporting could be improved. I would also like to see Fortinet add a guest management portal."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"I would like to see improvements in Fortinet FortiGate regarding the active-active scenario. The active-active scenario is supported but not recommended, whereas other vendors are implementing active-active without issues. Perhaps in the future, we could effectively use both firewalls to increase the throughput. If there are two boxes, they both should be able to work."
"It would be better if they had a dashboard where we could see what attacks were happening. It would be good to see who's trying to get into our network."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"The product should provide more integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"While slightly more affordable than competitors, it remains relatively expensive due to its inclusive subscription."
"It's not the cheapest, but it's value for money. Given everything we've got out of it: the DMZ port, the VPN, and the high availability, it's a pretty reasonable price."
"Here in Brazil, we're going through difficult economic times and the tax on the dollar is high. All the solutions from minor competitors are growing in the market. The prices have come more competitive."
"Its price could be better."
"It's one of the more expensive brands. The 100 series costs around $4,000. They are similar in pricing to what you might get from Cisco solutions and probably other similar ones. They're not more expensive than other similar solutions, but they're certainly not cheaper either."
"It is somewhat expensive compared to other solutions such as Sophos."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is better than Cisco, Check Point, and Palo Alto. In terms of pricing, it's probably a better-priced firewall solution overall."
"It is cheaper and more competitive compared to other options. For example, when comparing Palo Alto products to others, Palo Alto tends to be more expensive. If you compare Cisco's platform, including Cisco Meraki, with Fortinet products, you'll notice that Cisco's offerings are generally higher priced than Fortinet's firewall solutions."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user216600 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Consultant with 51-200 employees
Jan 3, 2016
Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate
I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Insurance Company
10%
Government
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business367
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise193
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...
Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Zscaler and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG). Updated: May 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.