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Fortinet FortiGate vs Safe-T Secure Application Access comparison

 

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

Fortinet FortiGate
Ranking in ZTNA
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
592
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Safe-T Secure Application A...
Ranking in ZTNA
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (34th), Access Management (31st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the ZTNA category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 8.2%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Safe-T Secure Application Access is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate8.2%
Safe-T Secure Application Access1.6%
Other90.2%
ZTNA
 

Featured Reviews

Mageshwaran S - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at airtel
Enables customers to manage security effortlessly with intuitive features and easy integration
In terms of improvements for Fortinet FortiGate, they could offer evaluation licenses, as compared to Meraki, which provides a 90-day evaluation. In Fortinet FortiGate, they do not provide standard evaluation licenses; instead, we need to request them from the OEM through the account manager for POCs. If we want to conduct a demo, we need to work with real hardware. In comparison to Cisco, we have DCloud, which helps with providing demos to customers, but in Meraki, I need to reach out to them, book a lab, and they need to provide all the hardware. I need remote access and L3 engineers to program it; only then can I offer a real-time demo to the customer.
it_user787671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer
Needs to be easier to configure and to display logs more simply
We use only it for scanning files for viruses. That's the only feature we use in this product It needs to be easier to configure, it should be something that's working well with other sources. It should be something that allows me to see the logs simply. One to three years. Sometimes it doesn't…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortinet FortiGate has positively impacted our organization by improving our security workflow and network security, as it is quite reliable compared to traditional routers or traditional switch cores from MikroTik or Cisco."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"ROI is very high, it has hands-down the best price/performance/features ratio in the market."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate are UTM, web filtering, and IPS."
"We have used multiple WAN ASPs and set up SD-WAN; it's quite interesting and user-friendly; essentially, anyone can configure it—just go through the documentation and you'll be able to set it up directly."
"I rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate IPS is its efficiency."
"From a technical point of view, products are stable and scalable, and we do appreciate the personal touch the sales engineers (SE) support and development bring, as well as the personal touch of the sales support, the free online, and web-based training."
"You can easily integrate it and fit the system to your organization's needs, and that's a very huge advantage."
"Safe-T SDA has allowed my organization to secure my office applications and makes it harder for hackers to be able to hack into my internal office web applications."
"If you want a very flexible system that you can easily integrate, and develop interfaces for it or plug-ins to other application environments, it's probably the most flexible"
"the security level is very high. After we tested it and checked all the security aspects of the product, we found that it's highly secure."
"We use only it for scanning files for viruses."
"If you need a solution for sending big files to customers or for receiving large files from them, this is a very good solution."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
 

Cons

"I would rate the technical support of Fortinet FortiGate as a five because it is not as strong as Cisco. Additionally, the turnaround time is very high compared to Cisco."
"Someone without certification and experience with other firewalls might find it a bit more challenging to grasp the FortiGate format and its platform layout."
"While the security is good, we'd always prefer if it was even better to ensure protection."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve their documentation on forward error correction and failover technologies."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"I feel they need to work on the alert and event logs."
"However, throughout this year, their support has been very poor."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
"Better UI. A better UI for the people that manage all the processes of Safe-T. Some of the UI is not as intuitive as you would like it to be."
"When we have something that we want improved, it takes a little bit of time until it can be fixed."
"One important thing that we haven't found in this product is the ability to provide a read-only view for documents. Also, the ability for the customer to add annotations to these documents."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
"Setting up Safe-T SDE is very complex. It is not straightforward, and it requires much understanding on the concepts of the product."
"In terms of improvement, they need to be much more strict regarding the roadmap, about timelines and when new features will be up in production."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is good. They offer a lot of things, the most important is the support. Every time you upgrade your license, you also get insurance for the equipment. If you have any problem with equipment, they send in new equipment."
"These boxes are not that expensive compared to what they can do, their functionality, and the reporting you receive. Fortinet licensing is straightforward and less confusing compared to Cisco."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"The price of FortiGate is reasonable as I plan to buy new switches. The initial gadgets are already booted, and the pricing seems normal on the market. As for additional costs, I haven't subscribed to many extra features, so I'm only using what I need. Last year, I renewed the support for three years, which can sometimes be expensive but depends on the security benefits and how it helps us."
"While Fortinet FortiGate has a higher price point compared to Sophos XG, its user-friendly interface justifies the cost."
"Fortinet prices are around $600 for the small 40F model, and for licenses, the simplest option is about $300 for a year. They sell licenses that can last for 1, 2, 3, or 5 years."
"On a scale of one being cheap and ten being expensive, I rate the tool's price as an eight."
"It's an expensive solution."
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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
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Media Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business370
Midsize Enterprise138
Large Enterprise195
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 at large. In my opinion, Fortinet would be the best option and l use Fortinet too...
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 the firewalls change every 5 to 7 years as stated but you really do need to upg...
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 good. The most valuable features for me are their web and email filtering. I wou...
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Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
Safe-T SDA, Safe-T, Safe-T Software-Defined Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Government of Israel, eviCore Healthcore, Glen Imaging, Sarin, LBG, Rollomatic, Boegli-Gravures SA, Banque Heritage, Groupe Minoteries, Temenos, ZEK, RLM Finsbury, Harel Insurance, Meitav Dash
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiGate vs. Safe-T Secure Application Access and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.