Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

Fortinet FortiGate is used on three separate sites: one in Tehachapi, one in Simi Valley, California, and one in Memphis, Tennessee. I work in distribution with Fortinet FortiGate. 

The primary feature I appreciate about Fortinet FortiGate is the ease of setup. It's more affordable than Cisco and very configurable. When discussing configurability regarding Fortinet FortiGate, I don't have to download modules to have features such as IPSec VPN or SSL VPN - it's already there. Most of the popular features are pre-installed and I only need to configure them, unlike with MikroTik where I have to download components that may not work, and with Netgate, I can't install everything I want without uninstalling other packages.

Fortinet FortiGate is very competitive compared to Palo Alto Networks and Cisco; they are better priced than both competitors. On average, Cisco would be 10% to 20% higher than Fortinet FortiGate, and the same applies to Palo Alto.

The AI with Fortinet FortiGate is not very well integrated on their devices, and their cloud infrastructure is not as good as Cisco's. 

The support is inadequate. The support staff I have dealt with lately are very rude. Some support staff are not up-to-speed with the technology. They basically read a script. If they don't know how to fix an issue, they send me to another engineer. 

I have used Fortinet FortiGate since 2012.

The support is inadequate. The Fortinet FortiGate support staff I have dealt with lately are very rude and some of them are not up-to-speed with the technology; they basically read a script. If they don't know how to fix an issue, they send me to another engineer. The last representative I had to deal with was very rude to me. 

Neutral

I wasn't involved in the decision of picking Fortinet FortiGate, however, before we switched over, we were using SonicWall firewall appliance.

I was part of the initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate. When it was originally set up, on a scale between one to ten, with ten being really easy to set up, I would rate it about an eight or nine.

When we first deployed Fortinet FortiGate, it was just me, and one person could actually deploy it in three sites, so it's relatively easy.

Once we deployed the last time, we actually moved our whole management of it to a third party. They manage our Fortinet for us now. It's supposed to be easy, however, during the last deployment, when they upgraded us, there was some project management snafu. That said, that's not a Fortinet issue. When I was deploying it, it was relatively easy. 

Currently, we are paying about $1,500 a month for three sites. We have a company that leases the equipment from Fortinet FortiGate, configures it, and I tell them what features I want on and off and how to secure it. We paid about $1,500 on the last contract, and it's probably going to go up this year.

I've also evaluated other options. Other than price, Cisco has a better cloud management infrastructure, while Palo Alto has better security features such as deep packet inspection algorithms and AI integration on their devices.

I would recommend Fortinet FortiGate if you have a small to medium business, which we have. For a large business with multiple campuses, Fortinet FortiGate is probably not going to work for you. 

On a scale of one to ten, I give this solution a rating of seven.

We are using it for perimeter security. By implementing Fortinet FortiGate, we wanted to have secure internet access to our network and prevent cyber risks.

The content filtering and URL filtering capabilities, along with packet content filtering, are very good. It helps us restrict internet traffic during working hours to legitimate work-related traffic. Workers are only able to access social media, YouTube, and similar sites after work hours.

It helps in protecting the edge significantly because we are able to determine what must be accepted and what must not be accepted. We also have FortiAnalyzer, which is the log analyzer for Fortinet FortiGate. Being AI-driven, it helps us see what is happening and new emerging threats quickly. We are able to make the necessary interventions to protect the network.

We are using QRadar as a SIEM, and Fortinet FortiGate integrates with it seamlessly. FortiAnalyzer picks all logs from Fortinet FortiGate, integrates with QRadar, and allows us to see everything. It also integrates beautifully with our EDR from WithSecure.

It also helps reduce power consumption. Fortinet FortiGate is a greener listing in terms of power consumption.

Stateful packet inspection is valuable. It also does SSL packet inspection. It is able to provide a VPN for remote users with secure connectivity. Being a next-generation firewall, it helps. 

It has been able to host internet feeds from two different ISPs, with one as a backup. We've two internet services on Fortinet FortiGate. We have been able to deploy it in a high-availability mode. We have redundancy. When there is a problem with one, the other picks up quickly, ensuring business continuity. 

I wish that they could integrate zero-trust technology into Fortinet FortiGate. I am not sure whether it has been done already, but if they could implement that, it would help significantly.

I have been using it for about ten years now.

Their support is good. 

Positive

I didn't use any similar solution previously.

I wasn't involved in the recent deployment. 

It was quite quick. The last deployment was more of a migration, where we migrated from an old platform to a new platform. It was a matter of hours because the configs had been backed up. In eight hours, we were done completely.

We had two people from my side and two from Fortinet's side.

If we look at the average revenue loss due to downtime, even if I conservatively put it at $10,000 an hour, we have paid back the investment within six months.

Compared to a sister company that did not take security seriously and lost significant money through ransomware attacks and outages, we have not experienced a single successful ransomware attack. In one instance, we were able to thwart an attack by detecting the initial steps quickly through EDR and FortiAnalyzer. We saw the footprints and stopped it before it reached the encryption phase of the ransomware attack.

The analysis being AI-based helped us quickly pick up unusual activity. Once alerted, we were able to quickly identify the affected nodes, isolate them, and stop the attack.

It has reduced the total cost of ownership by 10%.

For the performance that we get, the price is reasonable. There are cheaper options, but they may not deliver the same kind of performance that we want. For the performance they provide, the price is acceptable.

Currently, there is a project we are doing to converge OT and IT using Fortinet FortiGate, because of the cluster we have. Fortinet FortiGate is going to broker the convergence between IT and OT. We want to make the convergence one-way, with only read-only data coming from OT into IT.

They keep bringing new versions and firmware updates, making sure that their products are always relevant. They are always providing what the industry needs.

We have implemented FortiAnalyzer. We are also looking seriously at FortiIdentity to help us with enterprise single sign-on and multi-factor authentication. Because we already have Fortinet FortiGate in the system, we are seriously considering other Fortinet solutions.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use Fortinet FortiGate as endpoint firewalls for our campuses. Nothing too extravagant, just providing access out and limiting access to certain applications and restricting unauthorized access from external sources. I have recently been using it also as the controller for the wireless access points.

It is pretty straightforward to manage and has robust capabilities. I appreciate that Fortinet FortiGate can be a central controller for other Fortinet products, such as switches and access points. I have used its VPN abilities a little bit, but not a great deal. I appreciate that it has some SD-WAN capabilities, though I've only used that to a limited degree. It is a solid, usable, reliable solution. 

It's one of the more expensive brands.

FortiManager has not been my favorite. I don't use it and cannot say I really care for FortiManager for managing the firewalls. I primarily just access and manage the firewalls individually. Nothing else particularly comes to mind, as it has been a pretty good experience.

I have about four and a half years of experience with Fortinet FortiGate.

The stability has been very good. I have had very few issues. I had one unit that required some reboots and eventually needed a factory reset. But outside of one issue, I've never had stability issues or problems with them going down or disconnecting or having other issues. They have been very stable and reliable.

I have experienced no scalability problems thus far. We expand out with other campuses as needed. If there are any scalability problems, I think that would probably be with making FortiManager a little bit better. Otherwise, scalability is fine. 

We are a medium-sized business with 17 campuses. We plan to increase its usage. We'll probably continue with FortiGate for any other campuses that we extend out to, as well as keeping them when we do our hardware refresh.

Fortinet FortiGate has very good support. I've been able to contact them on a couple of things for FortiGate and other products, and I've never had an issue. They've always been polite and helpful and worked to get me to solutions. I've had a good experience with Fortinet support.

Positive

We've always had Fortinet FortiGate in place, so I don't have a previous firewall here to compare it to, but it has basically done its job. It's manageable, and it has not created a lot of problems. Only once, I had to call their support to apply a patch update across a couple of them. One of the best features is that it does not require a lot of extra attention for me to fix problems. It's not a problem generator, so that's probably the best quality.

I've set up several Fortinet FortiGate firewalls, and it's a pretty straightforward setup. I haven't ever really had any particular issue with getting them in place.

It's deployed physically at the locations for our campuses. To deploy one, it takes approximately an hour to program and then another hour or so to install. It can get deployed within three hours.

Just one person can manage Fortinet FortiGate; I'm able to manage everything by myself.

The implementation was done by me, one person. Sometimes I need to walk through someone else to physically install it because it might be at a site remote from me. If I'm not physically there, it requires a second person. However, if that was not the case, I could do it as a single person.

It's one of the more expensive brands.

The 100 series costs around $4,000. They are similar in pricing to what you might get from Cisco solutions and probably other similar ones. They're not more expensive than other similar solutions, but they're certainly not cheaper either.

The advice is to go ahead and try it out and see how it works. The product speaks for itself. 

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten, as I always prefer to leave a little bit of room for improvement.

We use FortiGate as the edge firewall. We integrate it with our APIs over Microsoft Azure. We work in the VOIP industry, and our services are prone to latency. Security is a major concern for us as a U.S. research company, where we frequently test attacks. FortiGate handles these attacks well.

FortiGate has led to a reduction in our security budget. Our management decided to switch to FortiGate because it offers all the necessary features and even improved features within our budget.

I'm looking forward to FortiGate's dashboard features, insights, application oversight, and monitoring, which could help us significantly.

As of now, I haven't identified areas for improvement. However, once the firewall is in production and all traffic is shifted, I might be able to provide more feedback. The configuration part was challenging, especially converting configurations from another OEM to FortiGate.

I have been working on FortiGate devices for around four years. In my previous role, we used FortiGate based on the requirements and budget constraints. Currently, my organization is transitioning to FortiGate in the Azure environment as part of the migration phase.

I rate FortiGate's stability as a nine out of ten, reflecting that there have been no major issues with stability so far.

FortiGate's scalability is rated eight out of ten. We expect network expansion both over the cloud and on-premises, and we believe FortiGate will perform well in this scenario.

We had a single instance requiring FortiGate's technical support, which was effective in solving the problem. I rate their support as eight out of ten.

Positive

We used other vendors, like Cisco. FortiGate was chosen due to its cost-effectiveness and its ability to offer improved features within our budget.

The installation process does not take much time, but the migration phase from Cisco to FortiGate is expected to take about ten days.

We have a separate team responsible for deployments over the cloud, while our networks and security team manages migrations and operations of the devices.

There has been a cost reduction in our security budget after implementing FortiGate, attributed to its offering of essential features at a reduced cost compared to previous vendors.

We pay for additional services like perpetual licenses. Despite this, FortiGate is considered a cost-effective solution. I rate the pricing as a five out of ten, reflecting a balance between cost and benefit.

We also use other vendors like Cisco, Netgate, Ubiquiti, and others in our environment.

I recommend this product. In future updates, it would be beneficial to see automation features, such as real-time alerts via phone, which we currently get from other OEMs.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I am focused on data center solutions, specifically implementing the FortiGate, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiProxy systems. 

Fortinet FortiGate offers several valuable features, particularly as an interface-based solution. Its design makes it easy to understand both incoming and outgoing network traffic through its interface. The log detection system is user-friendly and effective, allowing for straightforward monitoring of network activity. Additionally, the support for 802.1X and other solutions enhances its functionality. The Unified Threat Management (UTM) feature is particularly effective and beneficial for organizations. One of the best aspects of FortiGate is its adaptability within various environments.

Fortinet FortiGate is a good solution for SD-WAN in network enterprises, with LAN or two ISP solutions that can be separated, making it good for lab parallel network segregation. My experience integrating the SD-WAN capabilities includes having two ISP solutions. One is Airtel with a speed of 1 Mbps, while the other is Vodafone, which offers speeds of 60 Mbps and 40 Mbps. These traffic levels are manageable when using SD-WAN for effective traffic management. Essentially, the integrated SD-WAN on the FortiGate device is suitable for handling traffic management with these ISP solutions.

The security policies in Fortinet FortiGate are very attractive, including application, web filtering, and anti-virus, with very effective web filtering in this organization for behavioral analysis by users. 

The solution has improved my organization significantly, with impactful capabilities such as sandboxing and cloud solutions, such as XDR, MDR, and EDR.

I believe there is room for improvement in machine learning and AI in Fortinet FortiGate. I would like to see more automation regarding AI and machine learning in Fortinet FortiGate.

I have five-year experience with the Fortinet FortiGate firewall.

It is very stable. I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.

Its scalability is very good. It's easily scalable.

We have about 15,000 users.

Their customer support is very good. I would rate the technical support for Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.

Positive

The deployment of Fortinet FortiGate is easy.

The solution requires maintenance, and upgrades are very easy and impactful, providing seamless upgrade processes without critical issues.

I estimate that Fortinet FortiGate has saved us around 20% in terms of time, money, and resources.

The pricing of Fortinet FortiGate is average, not cheap or overly expensive compared to other firewall solutions in the market. It's effective and affordable for customers.

When comparing Fortinet FortiGate to other solutions like Palo Alto or Check Point, I find that Fortinet is much easier to implement. My colleagues often struggle to understand other solutions, but Fortinet is more adoptable, which is beneficial for training purposes. The training resources available at training.fortinet.com are quite helpful. I believe Fortinet stands out in terms of effective training and the quality of knowledge provided. Their documentation is particularly impactful, making the learning process more efficient. Overall, Fortinet offers a very effective and knowledgeable training experience compared to other vendors.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.

We are a reseller of Fortinet FortiGate, so we have several use cases. We use Fortinet FortiGate to protect banking companies, and we use it to protect edge cloud data centers and so on.

Fortinet FortiGate has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to scale fast.

One of the best features of Fortinet FortiGate is SD-WAN. It works very well with BGP, and AD-VPN is also great. The routing features from Fortinet FortiGate are exceptional. For the security features, their WAFs are extremely limited, however, everything else is great.

They are very affordable compared to Palo Alto and other vendors, offering a great solution for networking and SD-WAN with extremely good protection. 

They have great features, and I can integrate with EMS for ZTNA and numerous other functionalities. 

The networking aspects of Fortinet FortiGate, such as FortiSwitches and FortiAPs, and how they act integrated are impressive. From the firewall, I can manage the whole network, which makes operations much easier.

I have several concerns about Fortinet, however, regarding Fortinet FortiGate itself, they could improve their support system. It's hard to get a good engineer to help you.

Additionally, they lack a post-sale process; once the sale happens, they just vanish, and then you're on your own. That is my main problem.

The WAF is extremely limited. You can't create exceptions, for example. You can only enable or disable. You can create exceptions, however, they must be applied globally. 

I am doing my first implementation with SASE. With Google, it lacks a lot of app integration and a lot of features that the other competitors have.

I started to work with Fortinet FortiGate more than 15 years ago.

Fortinet FortiGate's stability has changed over time. They used to be very stable. In the past couple of years, they started releasing numerous new features, and things have become somewhat unstable. 

From one version of Fortinet FortiGate to another, sites have stopped blocking, and I experience some minor problems that have become usual in the past couple of years. They are working very hard to fix these issues. 

Currently, I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate at about seven or eight out of ten.

Fortinet FortiGate has excellent scalability; I would rate scalability a perfect ten.

It is extremely hard to get a good engineer from Fortinet to help with day-to-day operations and problems.

Positive

The initial setup for Fortinet FortiGate is straightforward. There's extensive documentation available on the internet, and they have great support on that subject. 

Their administration guide is excellent, and their training program is also great and free. You can configure a Fortinet FortiGate in approximately two hours if you understand your network requirements.

In Brazil, the ROI situation is complicated because everything is very expensive. However, we haven't used MPLS for over five years now, and it was extremely beneficial to see the changes from MPLS to SD-WAN using Fortinet FortiGate. Our ROI was extremely high at that time. 

Currently, our ROI is more focused on day-to-day operations, and it's excellent. I don't have the exact number, however, it's highly favorable.

I would advise people considering using Fortinet FortiGate to buy it and trust the company; it's a great product. You need to be a little patient with Fortinet itself. However, the product is great. 

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate overall at about a nine out of ten. That said, they lack good support.

A use case for Fortinet FortiGate includes connecting nine to ten different sites to the main Fortinet FortiGate firewall and diversifying the traffic with two-way traffic. It functions as a load balancer to balance loads between different sites.

The main benefits of Fortinet FortiGate, especially in India, are its economic value, scalability, and different sizing options. When compared to Cisco or Juniper, upgrading to a higher class involves a substantial cost increase, whereas with Fortinet FortiGate, the next class is only marginally higher.

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. One of my clients faced many problems with the primary internet provider and requested multi-path functionality. We implemented the SD-WAN facility and added another three-link WAN link, converting the normal port into SD-WAN and assigning weightage. When there is no response from the primary connection after a certain number of milliseconds, it switches to the secondary and then to the tertiary connection. The impact on network performance with the SD-WAN is very good, provided it is sized properly based on throughput. It is necessary to calculate how much data is transferring daily or per minute, then size the firewall accordingly and select a particular model.

The Fortinet FortiGate solution offers ease of use, not requiring highly skilled workers. General users with two or three experienced team members can read the manual and implement the needed configurations.

Hardware-assisted DDoS protection in Fortinet FortiGate is very easy to implement with single-click options, though care must be taken not to burden bandwidth. Certain ACL units should be used, applying rules only to interesting or exposed traffic.

Some features in Fortinet FortiGate need improvement as we discover when calling support that certain actions must be done from the command line. Not all features are available in the web UI. Features such as enabling multiple MPLS circuits can only be accomplished through the command line, so these need to be made available in the web UI.

Fortinet needs to improve customer support and documentation.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for more than 15 years.

Fortinet FortiGate is very stable, but the person procuring the firewall needs to ensure it is sized properly. If the sizing is not proper, it will create many problems.

The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is very good. It has improved significantly compared to five years ago when it was not as scalable.

When we encounter struggles, they perform actions from the backend, taking control and resolving issues. This becomes a black box for us because we do not know what actions they took.

Neutral

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate is straightforward and easy. HA is the deployment model we always recommend.

While we have not calculated it specifically, we found the ROI to be good, approximately 97% to 98%.

I utilize the Fortinet FortiGate hardware and have never tried the VM version, working only with normal VPN configuration, user configuration, normal routing, and multiple WAN links. While we are using the dynamic segmentation feature, we have not tested it thoroughly enough to analyze its benefits.

People generally go with the recommendations of high-level architects. For core networks, they typically suggest Cisco or Juniper. In India, the market follows whatever the chief architect suggests without quantifying whether it is worth it.

My advice for others considering Fortinet FortiGate implementation is to focus on its ease of use. 

Based on my experience, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have two deployments of Fortinet FortiGate at different sites. One is the SD-WAN, and the other is the next-generation firewall.

We secure our perimeter using Fortinet FortiGate. We are using it as a gateway device, and we have all the filters, such as the web filter, the intrusion detection and the anti-virus. We mainly use it to filter our traffic. Most importantly, it serves as our gateway device. That is how we are using it at the end of the day.

We wanted to see how Fortinet FortiGate SD-WAN can help us reach out to our branch, and that was the only reason for enabling it. It pretty much works for connectivity to the branch.

It is very user-friendly compared to other products. It integrates with many other technologies out there. It does not matter what technology you have deployed within your network, it can work with that.

We have not had an issue with the Fortinet FortiGate firewall. We recently renewed the licenses for the firewall and FortiNAC, and it has been working well. I have not had any incidents or instances since the last renewal.

Application control and the web filter are the best features of Fortinet FortiGate. 

Traffic control is available, and I have been using Fortinet FortiGate to allocate bandwidth also, so it helps me manage and allocate bandwidth to my applications. On that side, that has worked for me. Most importantly, it helps to filter unwanted traffic.

Its pricing can be better. I cannot think of anything else because it pretty much satisfies our requirements. I am comfortable with this product. 

The only issue that I have is with FortiNAC. The firewall is fine, but the FortiNAC interface is a little bit too jumbled or too complicated, not as straightforward as it is on the Fortinet FortiGate firewall and FortiAnalyzer. 

I have not faced any stability issues with Fortinet FortiGate. I would give it an eight out of ten for stability.

Fortinet FortiGate is scalable. I would rate it an eight out of ten for scalability.

I raise my tickets for Fortinet FortiGate, and they are handled well. The support is pretty good. I would rate the support an eight out of ten.

Positive

In this work environment, Fortinet FortiGate was the first one we had as our firewall. We had nothing before it.

I have previously worked with Check Point and Cyberoam. Those are the only two products that I can compare with Fortinet FortiGate.

From my experience, administration is a bit complicated on the Check Point side. Most of the concepts are similar, but configuring Fortinet FortiGate is a little bit easier for me compared to Check Point. Cyberoam was resource intensive, which I have not seen in Fortinet FortiGate.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was handled by a provider to implement it, but the knowledge transfer was pretty much straightforward. It took about two weeks to deploy Fortinet FortiGate.

We are not a business-oriented organization; our primary aim is to make sure that our assets are protected. We had some issues before having this firewall, and we have not had any incidents ever since we implemented Fortinet FortiGate.

When I look around at other products, such as Sophos, Fortinet FortiGate is 20% to 30% more expensive with our current cost.

The license renewal for Fortinet FortiGate has been a little bit costly. When we are paying, we renew both the warranty and licenses for Fortinet FortiGate. That is what makes the whole thing a bit costly.

We normally purchase and renew those licenses for FortiAnalyzer, FortiNAC, and Fortinet FortiGate firewall at the same time. When I look around, I would say Fortinet FortiGate is on the higher side.

The thing that I have not experienced with it is the web application firewall. I was trying to find out from the partner whether it is something that is licensed separately. When you look at the policies, it looks it is not active.

I would recommend using Fortinet FortiGate because of its usability. I would rate it a nine out of ten.