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Fortinet FortiOS vs Stormshield Network Security comparison

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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 FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
587
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), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Fortinet FortiOS
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (20th)
Stormshield Network Security
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch
A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service
I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.
MS
Associate Director IT Operations at Procento
Single-pane management has simplified firewall control and has improved risk mitigation
I would not say that Fortinet FortiOS is not very scalable. Generally, what happens is that for enterprises, we hire consultants who do the capacity planning and sizing to determine what kind of firewalls to put in place. At the same time, it is not only the number of users; it also depends on the number of WAN links coming in and everything, because we have been using Fortinet for bandwidth shaping and many other bandwidth-related functions. They should improve their machine learning AI capabilities of Fortinet FortiOS because there is too much competition. Other players are also improving and making a lot of changes in their UI and overall operating system.
Zsolt Jónás - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is value for money product as we’ve purchased it with Fortinet's three-year warranty package."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."
"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate include good functionality, though the licensing cost is a bit higher; their response time and throughput are very good advantages."
"Fortinet FortiGate has reasonable pricing and is easy to operate; it is efficient and represents the future for security, including cloud security and branch-to-cloud security."
"I haven't configured or experienced any stability issues."
"The best feature of Fortinet FortiGate is SD-WAN; it ensures continuous connectivity by taking over during link failures, preventing any downtime for the company."
"I have found the most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiOS is the low maintenance."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiOS are its simplicity, highly user-centric, and performs well. The line speed and for heavy traffic, is helpful for us."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiOS are its constant updates and definitions."
"What I like about this solution, is that it is the only solution that currently offers VPN for clients."
"All of the features in this solution are effective and efficient."
"Fortinet has optimized the WAN environment for connecting users to the application."
"Firewall and overall management are valuable features."
"In terms of benefits, it’s a standard solution used by many, and our customers and partners widely utilize the VPN features. It’s elementary to work with and implement because it is familiar across different infrastructures."
"Easily manageable in a variety of environments."
"This solution is quick and easy to configure."
"Customer service is very good, because of their presales support helping me with initial setup I decided to go with NetASQ in the first place, and support after the sale has been equally good as well."
"Ease of use is the best feature of the product."
"The solution has improved my organization because I can see what traffic is happening and I can use it to block and prevent attacks."
"A very robust product."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its dashboard, which helps you manage different aspects of a single page."
"I like how you can configure the rules. There is the task for the rules and a task for the network configuration. It also provides SMD filtering, and it can be integrated with the active directory for the users, their mission, and the VPN configuration. We are here in Sudan, and Stormshield didn't work in Sudan for more than a decade. Stormshield is a very strong firewall and very easy to configure and maintain. I am just working with the firewall solution, and we don't have any other solutions like endpoint solutions or something like that."
 

Cons

"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"The solution could maybe use more integration with artificial intelligence to be more proactive."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"Even though our currency in this part of the world is becoming increasingly weak, the pricing is now expensive for us. I have tried pushing Fortinet FortiGate to some customers, however, sometimes the transactions don't conclude due to pricing issues."
"I have an issue with NAT only, in that I can't allow traffic from outside to inside using a NAT pool."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"It would be helpful to have a better tool for migrating all policy rules using an automatic script."
"For monitoring purposes, we don't have any option to monitor the ISP link."
"FortiOS's interface and monitoring could be improved."
"The solution could improve the log retention and reports."
"In some specific products, Fortinet FortiOS faces memory issues, which can lead to unexpected downtimes."
"However, since I have spent the major part of my career in enterprises, it would not be a fit for me."
"The pricing model makes this product far more expensive than similar solutions."
"The product needs a feature that allows users to create another site on a VPN."
"The solution needs improvement with DDoS protection."
"It could be better if it were more user-friendly. It's too complicated for us to use it. The price could be better as well."
"The product must improve its pricing."
"The filtering configuration could be better. We have some difficulties with the filtering configuration and the filter extension. It's not that easy. It's not that straightforward. In the next release, I would like to see a reporting system. Stormshield doesn't have any tutorials on how to do the configuration and things like that. They just have documentation on the website. If you want to configure, for example, Cisco or Fortinet, you can find tutorials on YouTube. They show you how to configure the features, and so on. In Stormshield, there is nothing on social media or the internet on how to configure different things. The lack of documentation or the lack of material makes it difficult for others to adopt this solution."
"Stormshield Network Security is quite expensive."
"A more user-friendly interface would be helpful."
"The biggest issue was their support department was not able to help us, then everything stops. This is a no-go area for me."
"This solution has a big problem with web filtering and it needs to be improved."
"With Stormshield, there are difficulties joining things, and it can be complex depending on the architecture."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is relatively expensive compared to other solutions which are providing similar features."
"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is a very cheap solution."
"The pricing is perfect."
"We pay for the license of Fortinet FortiGate IPS annually. There are not any extra costs."
"The licensing costs are very low."
"Fortinet Secure SD-WAN delivered the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) per Mbps among all other vendors."
"I think that the pricing is fair."
"The price is high compared to some of the other solutions."
"The solution could have a better licensing model. It's a bit more expensive than other solutions. The annual subscription is very pricy in Fortinet. The cost could be reduced."
"The solution is quite affordable and I rate the cost a four out of ten."
"Pricing depends on implementation and licensing choices and is usually not a practical budget choice for small businesses."
"The pricing could always be lower."
"The price of Fortinet FortiOS is reasonable and it is paid annually. You are able to select the features that you want."
"It is not cheap; it is also not expensive. It is somewhere in the middle."
"The solution is cost effective. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The support contracts are usually about $100 - $200 a device."
"We bought a three-year license, and we renew it whenever it expires. The price could be better. It's always very expensive."
"The price of this solution and the price of support are ok."
"We chose Stormshield for its price, as the Azure firewall was too expensive."
"I think the price is good."
"The SN200 series costs between $500 USD and $600 USD per year, whereas the SN700 series costs approximately $1,000 annually."
"For mid-sized companies, they sell their appliances for good prices."
"The pricing could be better."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business360
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise190
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise2
 

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 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 ...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiOS?
I rate the pricing for FortiOS as eight or nine out of ten. It is an affordable solution for us.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiOS?
I would not say that Fortinet FortiOS is not very scalable. Generally, what happens is that for enterprises, we hire ...
What advice do you have for others considering Stormshield Network Security?
The tool is like a firewall and works well. I don't have any issue with it. I rate it an eight out of ten.
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
NETASQ Firewalls
 

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
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
ACESUR group, Ministry of Education Oman, Anios Laboratories, Zain, DLM Location
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiOS vs. Stormshield Network Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.