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Fortinet FortiManager vs Skybox Security Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 FortiManager
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (4th)
Skybox Security Suite
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (41st), Firewall Security Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Fortinet FortiManager and Skybox Security Suite aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Fortinet FortiManager is designed for Network Management Applications and holds a mindshare of 5.3%, up 5.1% compared to last year.
Skybox Security Suite, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 0.5% mindshare, down 0.6% since last year.
Network Management Applications
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

HamedWasel - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up with good integration capabilities but we've had troubles when moving devices
We've faced an issue when we need to move devices. Templates need to be recreated instead of having the policies, et cetera, cut and pasted over. Everything should just move over when we need to move devices instead of recreating everything from scratch. For the IPSEC tunnels, Fortimanager doesn't have all of the features that are available on Fortigate.
NenadMijatovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient in vulnerability management, stable and easy to use
Vulnerability management is the most valuable feature because it lets you focus on the most critical vulnerabilities. That's the important thing. Here in Serbia, there are not so many companies that have too many firewalls inside one company. So, they usually don't buy this model for Firewall Assurance unless there is some compliance. So you can prove that your firewalls are compliant. So, that model is not so important here in Serbia. It's for bigger companies. So, they usually buy network assurance to build the model of the network and vulnerability management to focus on the most important vulnerabilities. Moreover, Skybox can collect data for many vendors. From the endpoint protection vendors to the network equipment vendors to other security vendors. So, it supports more than one hundred vendors to collect data from them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The capability of centralized management is valuable. We can configure all firewall boxes with the same configuration."
"Centralized configuration is the most helpful feature. I like the ability to create templates and push them to all the devices at the same time. I also like that I can see the the logs with one device to provide zero touch on all other products."
"The most valuable feature is the central configuration for firewall policies."
"The user interface is very easy to navigate."
"The SD-WAN deployment environment, and the SD-WAN templates are particularly useful. Managing the solution is very intuitive. The initial setup of the solution was very straightforward."
"FortiManager's most valuable features are web-based or web-rule-based policies, SD-WAN, and the ease of upgrading to new firmware."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiManager are the overall management it provides and its ease of use."
"FortiManager's most valuable feature is central management."
"The product's most valuable feature is vulnerability management."
"Change Manager is most important because of the impact on each other of a network change or a firewall change. We want to understand this and to know, beforehand, what the impact of a change will be. We are a large network so that is a very important tool."
"The features that I have found most valuable with Skybox Security Suite, and this is because I work on the security side, are the firewall assurance, the change manager and the vulnerability control. These three features are the most impressive from Skybox Security."
"It's very supportive and very user-friendly."
"The revalidation and policy recertifications are most valuable."
"I am impressed with the tool's change management, firewall and network assurance."
"The initial setup process was easy."
"Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identify it. The tool provides accurate recommendations based on the data. Its integration is easy, and I have integrated it with Fortinet firewalls."
 

Cons

"The price is a bit too high."
"Fortinet FortiManager could improve them by adding more portfolio components."
"Issues arise when customers experience unstable electricity or poor grounding conditions."
"The solution has to be enhanced to manage new switches."
"FortiManager could improve by making it easier to port larger policy packages to the FortiGate firewalls. Sometimes, there's an issue when we install a big package of policies. If you have a couple thousand policies for FortiGate firewalls, it can take a few minutes to receive a response from the remote devices. It's only an issue when you're dealing with thousands of policies and installing them on a large number of devices."
"The product is not very stable."
"We have some visibility issues with the reporting."
"The scalability has room for improvement."
"Reporting. A lot of the reports, out of the box, are limited to a certain number of either configuration violations or access rule violations. So when you first set up a new firewall to be monitored by Skybox, you don't get a real full report. You have to really tweak it to get everything."
"There is room for improvement in the technical support."
"Skybox should improve their UX features by making them easier to use."
"The setup documentation needs a lot of improvement."
"The cloud site could be better. They should provide some use cases to help users."
"I've had issues with licensing where, when they were expiring and I asked for the updated licenses, I would the wrong ones. I think their process needs to be straightened out a little bit - I don't know if they fixed it already, it has been awhile. It wasn't as straightforward as it could have been."
"They are not satisfied with the complexity of the solution and the price."
"The solution does not support certain devices or vendors in some regions or countries due to regulations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Fortinet FortiManager is inexpensive."
"In comparison with other products, the price of FortiManager is reasonable."
"The pricing model is affordable."
"Our organization pays a monthly license fee for the solution."
"The price point is very good."
"If you compare Fortinet and Palo Alto, Fortinet is cheaper, but if you compare Cisco and Fortinet, sometimes Cisco is cheaper because Cisco gives us more discounts because of the size. Cisco isn't cheap, but sometimes, we get a big discount from them."
"On a scale from one to ten with one being the highest price and ten being the lowest price, I would rate FortiManager's price at three."
"FortiManager is reasonably priced - I pay around US$40,0000 per year, which covers fifty locations."
"I rate the pricing two on a scale of one to ten, where one is very expensive, and ten is cost-effective."
"The product's pricing is excellent value. In terms of licensing, make sure you understand your network components, all your hops through your network, thoroughly, before you decide on the total cost. If you want to do point-to-point flow analysis and such, you need to have the configuration of all the devices in between point A and point B. A lot of people don't realize all their network components until they start using this product."
"The pricing has increased exorbitantly in the last few years, so now it is questionable. Now, it makes me want to review other products."
"I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The software is expensive. I rate its pricing an eight out of ten."
"Skybox comes with extra licenses and has a change management license. The licenses are expensive, but they come with extra value."
"Currently, the licensing costs me about $300 USD for the year. This is a huge amount for my environment."
"I've seen the pricing of every solution on the market. When you compare apples to apples, where Skybox becomes exceedingly expensive is if you look at it compared to something like FireMon that only does a fraction of what Skybox does. But if you include everything that Skybox does, it becomes way more expensive than the competition, but you're also not comparing apples to apples. If you look at FireMon, and you look at like just the firewall assurance piece, they are fairly comparable and, actually, Skybox comes in a little bit cheaper in some cases, depending on which product you're looking at."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiManager?
The most valuable feature is the centralized management console.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiManager?
The graphical user interface could use improvement as it appears complex and not user-friendly. Better integration of Fortinet ADC into FortiManager would be beneficial.
What do you like most about Skybox Security Suite?
Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identify it. The tool provides accurate recommendations based on the data. Its integrat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Skybox Security Suite?
Skybox Security Suite has indeed helped us reduce costs. The prices of AlgoSec and Skybox Security Suite are approximately 50 percent different. The tool may require special vendor support from abr...
What needs improvement with Skybox Security Suite?
There is room for improvement in the product's user interface. It could be more user-friendly.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
ADP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BT, USAID, Delta Dental, EDF Energy, EMC, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetScaler and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.