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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
6.8
Number of Reviews
591
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 (37th), Access Management (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the ZTNA category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 8.7%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Safe-T Secure Application Access is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate8.7%
Safe-T Secure Application Access1.5%
Other89.8%
ZTNA
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"The initial setup is very straightforward and easy, with wizards helping to configure the device efficiently."
"From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"Buy FortiGate for a hassle free network management and excellent ROI."
"For application filtration, I really appreciate many features of Fortinet FortiGate because it is more reliable, easy to use, and the reports are easy to read and understand."
"The technical support is good."
"Whenever we raise a complaint with FortiGate, their response and resolution times are minimal."
"It has improved our productivity because we can control the people who go on the internet, and we control their access to social networks."
"The product is easy to install since we only need to follow the user manual, documents, and articles provided by Fortinet to install the product."
"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"
"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."
"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."
"Safe-T is very good for users because it has a plug-in for Outlook."
"It's easy to use over the web. A user who is not in the office can use it and securely insert files."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
"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."
"If you need a solution for sending big files to customers or for receiving large files from them, this is a very good solution."
 

Cons

"The scalability could be better."
"We'd like to have multi-factor authentication via fiber."
"The major problem with Fortinet is the support. We have often hardware malfunctions and software bugs and the support is slow."
"There was a hardware limitation, affecting scalability."
"In an incident, after a restart, Fortinet FortiGate did not connect to FortiGuard servers. Due to that reason, on the customer end, all websites got blocked. I don't know why this happened. The firewall of a bank in Sri Lanka rebooted yesterday, and after that, FortiGuard servers did not connect properly, blocking all customer environment websites."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"You do need some IT knowledge in order to effectively work with the solution."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
"Setting up Safe-T SDE is very complex. It is not straightforward, and it requires much understanding on the concepts of the product."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is quite good. I don't have a public site, such as in Azure, where I can see the pricing. I always have to go through the distributor, and that could take some time to get the real price for each appliance."
"I'll rate FortiGate's pricing a five out of ten since it is moderately priced."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"It is quite affordable for our customers. There is a separate cost for IPS, antivirus, web filtering, and other features. They have a great choice of licenses. You can go for the license that you want, which is quite useful."
"There is only a standard license cost to use the solution."
"It is a good product from a price perspective versus functionality."
"The pricing is based on a licensing model for each IPS in your environment."
"We are currently evaluating a Palo Alto solution, and the pricing could be a reason for going for Palo Alto."
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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
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Performing Arts
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Media Company
9%
Religious Institution
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business367
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise193
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: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.