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Fortinet FortiGate pros and cons

Vendor: Fortinet

4.2 out of 5

575 reviews
92% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Fortinet FortiGate offers versatile protection with profiling types like WAF and antivirus. Key features include a UTM package for internet blocking, APIs, and IPS reporting for enhanced security. Known for scalability, FortiGate provides web filtering and intrusion prevention. However, improvements are needed in load balancing, third-party integration, management, and technical support. Addressing stability issues with firmware upgrades and expanding licensing options will enhance user experience.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Fortinet FortiGate offers robust firewall capabilities with multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), Unified Threat Management (UTM) features, and enhanced security through intrusion prevention systems.

Its comprehensive threat protection, including anti-virus, spam, and intrusion prevention, ensures network safety against internet-based threats.

The ability to integrate and manage all Fortinet products from a single interface allows for seamless deployment and operation, enhancing network performance and management efficiency.

Fortinet FortiGate delivers excellent value with powerful SD-WAN capabilities, facilitating flexible network management and ensuring continuous connectivity during network issues.

Fortinet FortiGate offers cost-effective security management, providing significant ROI by consolidating security tools in a single package without needing additional solutions for network protection.

CONS

Fortinet FortiGate often experiences stability issues, requiring improvements to ensure consistent performance.

Support from Fortinet FortiGate is frequently cited as inadequate, with users reporting unhelpful customer service and slow response times.

The pricing structure for Fortinet FortiGate is considered high, prompting calls for more competitive pricing models and better licensing terms.

Integration with other systems is often challenging for Fortinet FortiGate, especially in terms of scalability and compatibility with third-party solutions.

Users demand more accessible and effective features for logging, reporting, and monitoring within Fortinet FortiGate to avoid reliance on additional products like FortiAnalyzer.

Fortinet FortiGate Pros review quotes

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Apr 20, 2023

Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable.

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Presales Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Jun 5, 2023

The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall.

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JH

Chief Technology Officer at Future Point Technologies

May 24, 2023

Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility.

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Fortinet FortiGate

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Learn what your peers think about Fortinet FortiGate. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2025.

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reviewer1294776

Owner at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Dec 2, 2020

The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us.

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AR

Reviewer:734513

Network Security & DataCenter Architect at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 20, 2023

The technical support in our region is excellent.

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ES

Solutions Engineer/Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Dec 23, 2020

One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them.

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JC

Network Security Engineer at Social Security Commission

Nov 10, 2020

There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth.

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DO

Network Solutions Architect at Yazata Solutions

May 2, 2022

FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features.

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DK

IT/DevOps at a legal firm with 11-50 employees

Jun 5, 2025

I would rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) as a solution a 10 out of 10.

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Manager Network (IT/OT) at a consumer goods company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 17, 2023

The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 517)

Fortinet FortiGate Cons review quotes

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Apr 20, 2023

For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial.

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Presales Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Jun 5, 2023

Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem.

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JH

Chief Technology Officer at Future Point Technologies

May 24, 2023

From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement.

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Fortinet FortiGate

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Learn what your peers think about Fortinet FortiGate. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2025.

869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer1294776

Owner at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Dec 2, 2020

The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall.

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AR

Reviewer:734513

Network Security & DataCenter Architect at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 20, 2023

I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution.

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ES

Solutions Engineer/Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Dec 23, 2020

FortiLink is the interface on the firewall that allows you to extend switch management across all of your switches in the network. The problem with it is that you can't use multiple interfaces unless you set them up in a lag. Only then you can run them. So, it forces you to use a core type of switch to propagate that management out to the rest of the switches, and then it is running the case at 200. It leaves you with 18 ports on the firewall because it is also a layer-three router that could also be used as a switch, but as soon as you do that, you can't really use them. They could do a little bit more clean up in the way the stacking interface works. Some use cases and the documentation on the FortiLink checking interface are a little outdated. I can find stuff on version 5 or more, but it is hard to find information on some of the newer firmware. The biggest thing I would like to see is some improvement in the switch management feature. I would like to be able to relegate some of the ports, which are on the firewall itself, to act as a switch to take advantage of those ports. Some of these firewalls have clarity ports on them. If I can use those, it would mean that I need to buy two less switches, which saves time. I get why they don't, but I would still like to see it because it would save a little bit of space in the server rack.

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JC

Network Security Engineer at Social Security Commission

Nov 10, 2020

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.

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DO

Network Solutions Architect at Yazata Solutions

May 2, 2022

My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint.

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DK

IT/DevOps at a legal firm with 11-50 employees

Jun 5, 2025

In our case, the deployment options of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) are not scalable, but in terms of connectivity to other companies, that's exactly what we needed, and that's exactly what it does perfectly, what is needed.

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Manager Network (IT/OT) at a consumer goods company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 17, 2023

The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 506)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

Firewall Solutions for Enterprises

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

Firewall Solutions for Enterprises

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

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