Fortinet FortiClient Reviews

Our main use case is when I need to work from home. For instance, if I'm not going to the office today and I need to access files hosted on our local servers, I use FortiClient to connect to the network. This also helps me avoid using virtual machines that are located on-premises. So, my primary use case is accessing the network remotely via VPN to work with VMs. However, I'm not responsible for the overall management; that's handled by our IT team.

Almost every VPN solution offers similar features. You input your credentials, log in, and gain access to a virtual IT environment assigned to you. This is the core functionality of a VPN, and we have that with FortiClient. Personally, it's fine for me.

While it's been excellent, I suppose even faster connectivity would be great.

More integration would be beneficial. Faster connectivity is always welcome.

I have been using this solution for three years. We use the latest version. 

From my perspective as an end user, it's consistently stable, and I would rate the stability as a nine out of ten.

It's not designed for scalability; it's a VPN solution meant for individual users.

FortiClient was pre-installed on my machine.  It is deployed both on-premises and cloud environments. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten because it has been very stable for me.

I use the tool to connect server to an ISP Data Center. 

The product's performance and pricing could be better. 

I am using the product for three to four months. 

The product's connections drop all the time. 

The tool is scalable. We have four users in the company for the product. 

The solution's initial setup is straightforward. The product's deployment tool 20-30 minutes to complete. 

The solution is not worth the investment. 

The product's licensing is yearly and expensive. 

I would rate the product a five out of ten. We plan to discard the product and use OpenVPN. I wouldn't recommend this product to other users. 

The primary use of Fortinet FortiClient is to protect endpoint devices against various types of cyber threats, such as viruses, trojans, spyware, and phishing attacks. It also helps to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data and networks and can be used to control access to specific applications and websites.

In addition to endpoint protection, FortiClient can also be used to create secure VPN connections to enable remote access to company resources like Jira, code repositories, corporate Wiki, etc. 

It has a horrible performance. It is one of the most unstable VPNs I have ever used. 

Since the project was pushed to use, many employees complained about its instability. 

Sure, it has some advanced features, and it is not fair to evaluate it as a VPN only. Unfortunately, the company policies bring most of the resources through protection, and without the VPN, you will be simply blocked. 

Therefore, we are paying so much attention to it. With a slow or unstable internet connection, Fortinet becomes a nightmare. I personally numerous times printed tasks from Jira to PDF for other employees due to VPN issues.

The solution is easy to configure and manage.

It is designed to bring additional safety to the machine (it is hard to uninstall by an ordinal user, and it has an in-built web filter). However, implementation is far behind industry standards. 

For instance, the Web filter is a component that provides protection against web-based threats by blocking access to malicious or inappropriate websites. It might bring additional safety. However, in the real world, it constantly produces:

1. False Positives, which can result in legitimate websites being blocked. This can be frustrating for end-users and potentially impact their productivity.
2. FortiClient's Web filter may also over-block certain websites, even if they are not malicious or inappropriate. This could result in users being unable to access legitimate websites that are important for their work, causing delays or disruptions.

The solution needs network stability, especially when the internet connection is not stable. 

Forticlient should provide proper polling functionality to try to keep the session alive by all possible means. We have seen certain improvements over the past year. However, it is simply not enough to be treated as a good yet even acceptable tool to use. It is currently producing more issues than adds value.

The web filter quite often blocks random sites, including online dictionaries, governmental sites, etc. Review of the wrong block reports simply doesn't work. 

I've used the solution for around a year.

The solution is not stable enough.

The solution offers a weak performance.

After the merger, our project was forced to use Forticlient.

I know nothing about pricing.

We had no options to choose from.

If your employees might have a weak internet connection (for instance, mobile) think twice before choosing this configuration. If you decide to have FortiClient, never use the WebFilter component. Even Microsoft analog works better (if you really need it).

I mainly use FortiClient to connect my laptop to my data centers.

FortiClient's most valuable features are that it's easy to install and connect and has OTP on email IDs and two-factor authentication. 

FortiClient's encryption key could be stronger so that it's not broken too easily.

I've been using FortiClient for about three years.

FortiClient is stable.

The initial setup was easy.

I would rate FortiClient nine out of ten.

The integration of VPN services with endpoint security is valuable. Web filtering and application control are also valuable.

The features for application control and device control must be improved.

We are a reseller, and we have been working with this solution for three years.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We are using an on-site EMS server for this product and our clients install it on their workstations. I'm a security officer and we are customers of Fortinet. 

The valuable features for us are the integration of the vulnerability scan, mobile detection, and VPN client. The advantage of FortiClient for us is the integration with FortiGate and that they support Linux, which most other solutions do not. One-third of our users have Linux workstations.

FortiClient has compatibility issues between different versions, for example, the VPN doesn't work well between FortiClient 6.4 and FortiGate. There are usability issues with vulnerability scanning and with reporting. It's often difficult to interpret and there are inadequate features in management identity. I would appreciate a better explanation of the findings of the malware scanning and of things like real-time protection. The solution is geared toward centralized single sign-on for the workstations, which is something we do not have. From that point of view, it's not a good match. I've also found the SSL VPN very sensitive to network disruptions. The anti-ransomware feature is hard to use because when it finds something, it doesn't provide adequate information and there are false positives that are hard to identify. Generally, it's difficult to access the documentation of the APIs as it requires an invitation via sponsorship from a Fortinet employee. We had some long-running issues, but that's perhaps because our configuration is not mainstream.

I've been using this solution for over a year. 

We haven't had any crashes, so the product is stable. We have problems with the stability of the VPN connection which tends to disconnect, but my impression is that it's just sensitive to network disruptions and is not related to the solution.

It's hard for me to comment on scalability because we are a company of 50 employees. We have one person who deals with maintenance for a minimal amount of time.

The technical support could be improved because it takes time to get through the first level of support, where you have to prove your case. When you get to where you need, it gets better, but just to get to someone who understands the problem can be tedious. We had some technical problems that they were never able to resolve.

The solution can be set up manually which can be quite complex on some operating systems because it requires a lot of manual settings. It can also be set up on Linux but they only support some distributions. 

I believe that licensing costs $500 per year for a 25-seat pack. It's a reasonable price although for small businesses, the disadvantage is that you have to buy a minimum 25 licenses.

I rate this solution six out of 10. 

We primarily use it for the SSL VPN. That's what we use it for pretty much exclusively.

It works well with the Fortigate Firewall. It works like a VPN for our customers.

We haven't really integrated it with much else other than Fortigate. However, it does integrate well with other Fortinet solutions.

There is a lot of documentation available online.

It's reliable and stable. 

The solution can scale. 

I don't use it enough to be able to say what could be improved.

We've got one client where it was blocking the smartphones, and there's a way to set it up on Fortigate that's supposed to do that. However, it didn't work with them since they had a 2FA multi-factor. It was integrated with a Microsoft NPS server, and it does not work with that. It just blocks everything. Therefore, it doesn't integrate well. If they like to update the Fortigate so that you can VPN in, it’s fine. However, not from smartphones. That doesn't work at all. For somebody with the NPS server, it just screwed everything up. We're still trying to fix that.

I’ve used the solution for a couple of years.

The solution is stable. It’s reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn’t crash or freeze.

The product is scalable.

From the customer side, I don't know how many users there are per client. I don't know how many clients they all have. We've got a bunch of clients that use it. I don't know how many actual people are using it. They create groups, and people get added to groups, and the groups have access. We're not involved in all that. It's probably more like hundreds, or less than 100. Probably most of our clients would've less than 100 people.

I’ve dealt with support. It's okay. It depends on who you get on the other side. Some of them are very knowledgeable, and others seem to miss the mark. It can be hit and miss.

The solution does not require a lot of maintenance. You might just need an administrator to handle it. Occasionally when things stop working, we have them check what version they have as sometimes they need to upgrade it to the latest. However, in most cases, It's pretty maintenance-free.

We’re integrators. We can handle the setup.

They've got a free version that most of our clients have. I'm not sure of the costs beyond that. When you get into the licenses with the EMS and all that, I don't know how much it costs. I'm not on the sales side.

Without really having much in the way of experience with others, it's hard for me to compare it to others.

We’re integrators and resellers.

I don't have the full version, though, as we don't run EMS. However, one of our clients does.

There's a lot of good documentation. Just Google it. You can find what you need about the solution.

I’d rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use this to connect the data VPN from the remote office to the headquarters.

This solution is deployed on-prem.

We have 20-30 users, and we plan on increasing usage.

It works well and the performance is good.

The solution could be more secure. I would like to see more safety features. They could integrate access scanning from the VPN account. We have servers integrated with our firewall. When we changed the firewall, we needed to change the VPN.

I have been using this solution for a year.

It's stable.

It's scalable.

Installation is standard. You can do the installation in-house. Deployment takes about five minutes.

You need a technical team of two or three engineers for installation.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

I would recommend this solution for people who want to start using it.