Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

In my company, we use the product for the help it provides us in terms of SD-WAN, site-to-site VPN, RADIUS authentication, web filtering, application control, SSL inspection, and remote access.

The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN and site-to-site VPN.

In version 7.2.0, the product offers built-in automation to its users. Earlier, there was no automation offered for the product. Nowadays, the product sends automatic emails to users as a part of its offering to let the users know whenever there is a need for automatic backup when the ISP goes down and the interface status. The automation can be further improved.

Fortinet's support team consists of a huge networking team, because of which there is a delay in response at times. Fortinet's support team needs to improve their time management skills.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate SWG for five years and six months. My company has a partnership with Fortinet.

It is a scalable solution since the product offers a FortiGuard server that detects vulnerabilities and ensures such detection of vulnerabilities also involves FortiGate.

My company currently works with basic and mid-level sized businesses.

Whenever our company's customers face any issue with the product, we offer our own support team. Fortinet also has its own support team. If required, our company lodges complaints and the issues faced by our customers with Fortinet. Fortinet's support team initiates the replacement if there is a hardware issue with the product. The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

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.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

Just getting the product up and running can take up to forty-five minutes to an hour. The full setup process is carried out based on the requirements of our company's customers, and it can be done in half an hour to forty-five minutes if it is only for basic internet.

In our company, we need around ten engineers for the maintenance and deployment of the solution. The maintenance of the solution is easy since we keep getting constant updates which we can easily use to update the product.

I am unaware of pricing since I am a part of the networking team. My company's sales team manages pricing.

My company basically provides Fortinet FortiGate SWG to our customers. If our company's customers are looking at Palo Alto products, we have another team in our company to provide them with the same. I am an engineer for Fortinet products and can provide support only for Fortinet. There are different sets of engineers managing Palo Alto products.

In Fortinet, you only need one license for all the products. In Palo Alto, for Palo Alto Secure Remote Access, you need to buy a separate license, while there is a need to buy a separate license for Palo Alto SD-WAN. I feel Fortinet products are better since they come in a bundle. With Fortinet, customers don't need to buy different licenses. One can get all the features by installing a single bundled license offered by Fortinet, allowing one to use SD-WAN, site-to-site VPN, remote access web filtering, SSL inspection, and application control.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

FortiGate Next Generation Firewall's design is good. Technically, I haven't used many of its features. The primary purpose we use the solution in our organization is for its SNAT and DNAT functionalities. The solution is also used for its vulnerability patching mechanism.

The solution's GUI is not very appealing. When using a tool from another vendor, we found the GUI of that tool to be quite appealing. FortiGate Next Generation Firewall uses a very old type of GUI, which is not very appealing. The GUI can be improved.

I have been using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) for six months. My company is just a customer of the product.

I am very impressed with the product's stability. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

My company has 2,000 users of the product.

I didn't need any support. The support is good. I wouldn't say the support is bad. I rate the support a seven and a half out of ten.

Neutral

My company seeks the help of vendors to do the initial setup of the product. After that, we just work on policies, SNAT, DNAT, and virtual IPs.

The setup phase was neither difficult nor easy. I rate the setup phase as three or four out of ten on a scale where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

The solution's deployment took two to three weeks.

Two people were required for the deployment of the product.

The solution's vendor executed the setup phase.

The solution's pricing is quite high when compared to other vendors. I rate the pricing an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high.

I highly recommend the solution to those planning to use it.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The most valuable feature of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is its SD-WAN. The way it has been structured makes life easier. We have used it for remote access, especially at the height of COVID. It works very well.

There are times when we would want to set an IP address on a physical interface and then attach secondary IPs or sub-interfaces on that. I'd like to have as many as possible. There's a limitation wherein you can only have about 30 virtual or secondary IPs on a particular interface. I would like that to be expanded to 254 or 256 secondary IPs.

I have been using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) for five years.

I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall ten out of ten for stability.

The good part of the solution is that you can have Virtual Domains (VDOMs) that allow you to use it for multiple use cases. Around 20,000 users are using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall in our organization.

I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall an eight out of ten for scalability.

Whenever I have a problem and have to call their technical support team, I can email them. In the next few minutes, we'll get on a Zoom or Teams call and exchange notes.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup was easy. I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall an eight out of ten for the ease of its initial setup.

The solution's deployment does not take long. If everything goes fine, you will complete the initial configuration in an hour and test afterward. The testing phase is where you face issues. If you are migrating from another device to FortiGate, you would want everything that was running previously to run even on the newer one.

Three people were required for the solution's deployment, including an external person, myself, and a colleague.

I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall a five out of ten for pricing.

I learned from some reviews that FortiGate ranks quite highly compared to Palo Alto and Check Point. Considering our budget, we thought we could manage with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall.

I would strongly recommend FortiGate Next Generation Firewall to others because it's a brilliant next-generation device.

Overall, I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall a nine out of ten.

The use cases of the solution depend on what the customer wants from the tool. If a customer is looking for a core firewall, I provide them with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW). Suppose a customer is looking for a tool from a patch connectivity perspective with multiple branches and wants those branches to be connected to the data center. In that case, we can suggest FortiGate Next Generation Firewall's features to them.

Routing and reporting are two areas where the product has an added advantage compared to any other product.

Vulnerabilities owing to viruses in the OS need to be reduced in FortiGate Next Generation Firewall from an improvement perspective.

Some vulnerabilities get added to the system every two months, which may be code execution or backend and backdoor issues.

In the future, the product should be able to tackle vulnerabilities. Research and development to increase the product's security capabilities is needed.

I have been using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall for a year now. My company has a partnership with Fortinet.

From a stability perspective considering OS and if the vulnerabilities are present, I rate the stability a seven out of ten since it creates a lot of issues in general.

We suggest FortiGate Next Generation Firewall to small and medium businesses.

When it comes to enterprise-level businesses, and considering the need for two-layer security, consider a perimeter firewall, while I can suggest FortiGate only at a level of a core firewall. Suppose an enterprise customer has multiple branches and more branch networks. In that case, they need SD-WAN connectivity with security, for which I suggest they go for FortiGate's SD-WAN feature.

In general, it will not be enough for enterprise companies to have only Next Generation Firewall alone.

I am not familiar with the technical support team because my support team works with them. The solution's technical support is good. We do not face many issues when dealing with the solution's technical support team.

Previously, we were using Check Point in our company.

Compared to Check Point, FortiGate Next Generation Firewall needs to look at how to improve the way it deals with the vulnerabilities which are not there at Check Point and the security effectiveness provided by Check Point.

It is easy to use and implement since anyone can do its configuration part, but there is some requirement for someone with proper technical skills to implement it properly. I can implement anything in any way, but that doesn't mean I can implement any product properly. The implementation requires certain technical expertise.

The implementation of the solution can take two days.

One person is required for the implementation phase.

The solution's pricing is competitive.

The usefulness of the product is an aspect that depends on the customers using the tool. We cannot even compare two products and say one is good for the customer and the other is bad. If a customer asks me to be an architect for their data center, I would say that for a perimeter firewall, they need to go for Check Point. Coming to a core firewall, if a customer says that they need two layers of security and two different vendors, it should be Check Point on the perimeter level. At the core level, a customer can go for Fortinet. Certain customers prefer the SD-WAN feature from Fortinet if they have branch firewalls and want an SD-WAN feature too. FortiGate has an added advantage because they have an SD-WAN feature with security that we can provide to their branch devices.

I don't have any suggestions for those planning to use the solution since we are pretty new to the solution, and we need to devote time to be able to comment on the solution.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

We implemented Fortinet FortiGate SD-WAN for a small company that had two internet service providers. The goal was to configure the two links to operate independently, ensuring that they don't share the load. This way, when one link reaches a certain threshold, we can seamlessly switch to the other without any issues. 

We have FortiManager, which enables us to have a unified view for monitoring and managing our devices centrally, as well as dispatching policies.

The solution enables us to consolidate tools and applications and manage them all through FortiManager. You can configure your SD-WAN from Forti Manager, which gives you management functionality. 

The interoperability of the solutions is good because it allows for compatibility with brands other than Fortinet, and we don't encounter issues with it.

FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime.

The solution has helped us remediate threats more quickly by enabling real-time monitoring of both links, providing complete visibility into our end links. You can monitor both links on one platform. It's just one single pane of glass where you watch in real-time what is happening. It's easy to manage that way. It helps you to easily remediate issues. 

As long as our policies are granular we are able to use the solution to reduce our MTTD. 

The solution has helped to reduce our MTTR from what used to be five minutes down to 45 seconds.

The solution has helped to reduce the number of help desk tickets because it is now extremely rare for both links to be down simultaneously.

SD-WAN, regardless of the OEM being used, is a beneficial technology that is increasingly adopted by businesses due to its positive impact on business security. It allows us to maintain uninterrupted operations without concerns about past issues.

Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly.

The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for two years.

The solution is stable and we have not had any issues.

The solution is highly scalable.

The technical support is good, but they take a long time to respond and resolve the issues.

Neutral

I have also used Cisco, whose systems are robust and rarely experience downtime. However, with Fortinet, their licensing is highly competitive in terms of pricing. Cisco is primarily geared towards enterprise-level companies, but the learning curve for Cisco is higher compared to Fortinet.

Fortinet's price is very competitive compared to when you look at other brands of equal functionality. The hardware and licensing are compared to the others. It's also simple to use. 

The initial setup is straightforward. I did the deployment and didn't have any issues with it. It took one day to complete. 

The solution provides value and, therefore, offers a return on investment.

The price is highly competitive when compared to other brands that offer similar functionality. Fortinet FortiGate is more affordable both in terms of hardware and licensing, in comparison to its competitors.

I give Fortinet FortiGate a seven out of ten.

I recommend FortiGate SD-WAN because it is easy to implement and simple to use.

We use the solution to provide firewall, cybersecurity, VPN access, and SD-WAN connectivity worldwide.

The GUI is reasonably good. The product is easy to configure.

The product runs out of memory. The web process often has a memory leak. The support cost could be improved.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

The solution’s stability is good. I rate stability a nine out of ten.

The scalability is good. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten. Some customers have 20 users, while others have about 5000 users.

Support is good. It's a bit scripted. It takes a while to get to somebody who knows what they're talking about. It'd be nice to talk to someone technical upfront. Sometimes we have to go through a service desk and go through a whole lot of quick repetitive questions before we get to talk to someone knowledgeable.

I've been working with the product for ten years. I find the initial setup quite simple.

I'm currently deploying 50 units around the country. It'll take me about ten minutes each to configure the solution. Once the product is set up, we need about one or two people to maintain it.

The solution’s price has gone up recently, but it's still good value for money compared to the other firewalls we use. Especially for smaller ones, it is good value for money. Our customers pay for licenses annually or once every two to five years. If we have an older version, the support costs get quite high. I rate the support cost a six out of ten.

I work with lots of firewalls. I deploy the product on FortiManager. It'll take me about a day to configure FortiManager. We have lots of customers. I would recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

The solution is primarily used as a border firewall as well as for internal LAN segregation, internal IPv4 policy management, a VPN for end users, and IPSec tunnels.

Before we implemented this solution, we had only one firewall and old Linux IP tables with no graphical user interface. 

There is no one feature that stands out as most valuable compared to another. All features are correct and no extra items are needed.

The price of licensing could be better. The security of the FortiOS needs improvement, and features are available only in CLI. They could be available also in GUI.

Features like forward traffic capture or NAC in the VPN should take into consideration both Linux devices and Apple devices.

I've used the solution for more than ten years. 

The scalability is okay.

Technical support is not helpful. 

Neutral

We previously worked with Check Point, Palo Alto, Cisco, Watchguard, and PFsense. 

The setup is easy. Support is not helpful.

We handled the initial setup in-house.

The solution is very expensive. 

The price of licensing is too high.

We did not previously evaluate other options before choosing this solution. 

Other Fortinet products are not the best, and Fortinet should take care as this will influence brand reputation.

We use Fortinet FortiGate to prevent intruder connections to our internal network.

Fortinet FortiGate's unified view around network operations and security operations is good.

The solution is easy to integrate and configure with our ERP and other applications. I am satisfied with the integrated application protection provided by Fortinet FortiGate.

The Fortinet FortiGate 60E Series resolved the bottleneck problem and CPU usage that was previously experienced with the 60D Series. Now, our employees can check their emails without encountering any bottleneck issues, and the CPU usage remains stable at around 50 percent.

We are satisfied with the ability to remediate threats more quickly.

We are pleased with the amount of time saved in detecting our mean time.

The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features.

The Fortinet FortiGate 60D Series poses a problem by causing a bottleneck when several users access their emails simultaneously, as the device consistently consumes 90 percent of the CPU resources.

The reporting could be improved. Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting. However, reporting is crucial for network security, and it should be included as a standard feature.

The price and technical support have room for improvement.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for three years.

The local vendor support needs improvement.

Neutral

Previously, I have utilized few other brands of NG Firewalls, which offer certain advantages. However, when comparing their price and performance to that of Fortinet FortiGate, Fortinet proves to be a strong competitor.

The time required for a basic deployment is roughly three weeks, whereas a full deployment involving customizations and optimization of rules and policies may take up to two and a half months.

We experienced a return on our investment, however, when it comes to security, it is challenging to determine a precise value.

The price is high compared to some of the other solutions.

I give Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

We saw time to value within the first month of using Fortinet FortiGate.

We deployed Fortinet FortiGate in one location and the maintenance was mostly handled by internally and sometimes a third party.

The use case varies depending on the customer, but we use all of FortiGate's features, including policies, web filtering, routing, etc. 

FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all these features on one device because it can cause performance issues. 

We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs. 

I have been working with Fortinet for nearly ten years.

I rate FortiGate an eight out of ten for stability. It is less stable than Palo Alto Networks and Check Point firewalls because there are lots of bugs in the latest firmware. 

FortiGate is scalable. 

I rate Fortinet's support a seven out of ten. We had to open several tickets due to the firmware bugs. We don't have an issue with the support team. It's more of a problem with the testers and developers. 

Neutral

I have also used Palo Alto and Check Point firewalls. Fortinet firewalls are cheaper and easier to manage. Palo Alto is more complex and harder to use, but it's more stable than FortiGate. Palo Alto doesn't didn't have as many models for small and medium-sized enterprises.

FortiGate is easy to deploy. The deployment time varies depending on the customer's network topology. How many policies does the customer require, and what kind of license do they have? FortiGate is easier than Palo Alto Networks and Check Point and takes less time.

We typically start by analyzing the customer's topology and understanding their requirements, including policies, routines, etc. We implement the device once we know what the customer needs. One engineer is usually enough to deploy FortiGate in a small or medium-sized environment. 

An enterprise project requires a more detailed analysis of the network requirements before implementation. That can take two or three days. Once we understand the network, it may take another two or three days to configure the device and one or two days to implement it. 

Fortinet has more device options that are affordable for small businesses than Palo Alto, and its enterprise-level models are also cheaper. Palo Alto also has a separate license for VPN connections and SD-WAN, but FortiGate offers these standard features. 

I rate Fortinet FortiGate a seven and a half out of ten. I deducted a few points because of the device's capacity, stability, support, and routing table issues. I strongly recommend FortiGate if a customer wants to use SD-WAN. Before implementing, you should understand the network's topology to minimize unwanted issues. 

The primary use case is for security purposes, mainly at the gateway level and for internal security, such as virtual training. We also use it for cybersecurity and internal communication, like having a portal. The main goal of implementing the product is to resolve security problems.

We have seen benefits. Recently, Sophos Firewalls and Palantir have also entered the market. However, FortiGate provides a higher throughput at a lower cost than these features and licensing. Our company acts as an integrator, and we work based on the customer's needs and requirements.

Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain the box in small to large organizations. Even if we configure and hand it over to them, they can easily consider and register policies. And it's easy to monitor the end-to-end network through the firewall.

There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes. FortiGate's renewal cost is quite high, and our customer care team also receives complaints about it. The renewal part of the firewall is expensive. If a customer pays for the license in advance, they may lose their privileges.

For example, if the license of a box expires in one or two months, and the customer wants to upgrade, there are three to four months between the operation and the end of the current license. If I purchase a new license, it will only take effect from that date. So, it fails in the backward fetch, and I am currently busy setting it up. But if the customer is not processing the card for six months, they will not benefit from the system.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for two to three years.

I would rate stability a nine out of ten. It's a stable product. For the most part, it's very reliable.

It is also a scalable solution. However, as integrators, the scalability depends on us. There are many options available, and we can choose the size of the box based on our requirements.

The customer service and support are very good. Once we create a ticket, we can contact them using the ticket number, and they will provide the support we need. As for the contact names, there is no rate, but there are more challenges.

Neutral

We have used Sophos Firewall, Check Point Power EOL, and others. But none of them were like FortiGate. When we upgrade the license, it shows another one, two or three years from that date.

There are no challenges in the initial setup. The people required to deploy the situation are based on the customer's expertise. We handle various types of configurations, and sometimes there are additional requirements with load balancers on top of the firewalls. We need to integrate these firewalls with that ALG.

Generally, we consider security as a separate thing. These firewalls and the LOBs will take care of some further issues based on the customer's requirements. For smaller organizations, one person can provide or ensure a sort of service. We will need three more administrators or developers if there is more traffic or high-cost tech.

Generally, most of the customers maintain their solution on-premises, not on the cloud. I am a technical guy. I am involved in deploying the solution to our customers. I take care of the HCLM upgrade, inflation rate consideration, automation, and other technical aspects of the solution.

We evaluate the area first and then proceed with the implementation by creating a DMZ zone and policies such as CRM and CAP.

FortiGate is a bit pricey, but its unique features and specifications make it an excellent option for certain customers.

As an integrator, we have observed that the licensing cost and the upgrade process are important considerations. When we purchase a new license for one or three years and upgrade it to the existing box, the expiry date does not change from the original. It can create a gap of three, eight, or even twelve months for the customer. Consequently, they buy another box instead of going through the ticket process to get it fixed.

We definitely explore the options. We always understand the customer's requirements first and then offer solutions accordingly. We ask what the customer needs and what their budget is. If their budget is INR 10,00,000, and we find a product that matches their requirements, we will offer it. If FortiGate provides the same features and throughput but costs INR 11,00,000, we might still offer it to the customer. However, if FortiGate doesn't match the customer's requirements, we won't suggest it.

So the main differences between products are the features and specifications. If a product has the same throughput and features as another product but costs more, we may not suggest it to the customer.

The challenge is licensing. Hardware-wise, it's supportive, and the support is good. But the licensing and renewal costs should be lowered, and renewing the license and data for the new license is tough. So, only for licensing, we face challenges. I would rate it a seven.

We have many boxes, and we have changed all the boxes to other products because of this licensing factor only. Even for FortiGate, such a thing happens. If I have a hundred boxes and I want to renew the license, they suggest taking new boxes with three or four at least. So that is why customers are not liking FortiGate. They could provide the same license card along with the box, which is why customers are unhappy.

Overall, the product is a four out of ten because scalability, box performance, and support are all great. However, once it's commercially used, you can only use this box; no other options are available.

We can recommend it, but FortiGate's ability to capture the market, fix the order, and meet the requirements or opportunities is also important. As an integrator, we don't have any issues with it.