Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

We primarily use the solution for security. I've deployed it for some customers for protection. It is used for firewalls. I have experience with the secure SD-WAN version.

Our customers are happy, and when they are happy, it means they are happy with us. It helps our organization. Many customers are migrating to this solution as it increases efficiency.

The security fabric is excellent. It's great on Fortinet, generally. 

It is easy to deploy.

Our impression of a unified view of NetOps and SecOps is positive. It has a single pane of glass. It's excellent and very effective. We've been quite impressed with the visibility on the devices. We've been happy with it.

The integrated application protection provided by the solution is good. It's worth the investment. However, it does depend on how you apply it. It can help save on costs, depending on the setup. If you have it in a bank environment, each individual bank would have its own devices, and you can optimize everything. You can have some of the connections go direct from one customer to another. You can save a lot of money with a specific setup.

It's helped out operational efficiency. It helps us waste less time. A typical scenario helps us save time. Having a good connection at the head office allows other offices to maintain a good connection as well. It also has normal security features and more to help keep us safe while staying connected. 

We can remediate threats more quickly. We have a single pane of glass that helps simplify the protection and visibility. We can monitor other components, even Macs or data centers. We can address items automatically, no matter where they are located. Visibility really helps. 

It is helped us to reduce the mean time to detect. It can reduce the time to locate and detect effectively. It is remarkably shorter when using Fortinet. It's also reduced the time it takes to resolve problems. 

The solution has helped us reduce Help Desk tickets. 

We have been able to future-proof businesses with branches. We don't have branches in our office. However, we have seen benefits ourselves in terms such as load balancing, et cetera. A fiber connection helps ensure backups are seamless. We can run a backup at less cost, and knowing that we have a backup help with peace of mind. Accessing a secure network ensures this. 

I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet. 

I've been using the solution since 2018.

The solution is very stable. 

It is a scalable product.

Technical support is always top-notch. I always get good support.

The initial setup was pretty easy. It was not difficult. 

Everything I did was in one day. If I have to do some fine-tuning, that takes a little bit longer. Typically, one day is enough to deploy. 

The pricing is moderate. You get good value for money. Of course, any solution could be less expensive. For a company like ours, we'd always like to pay less. 

We are partners with Fortinet. We also use the solution ourselves.

Assessing the secure SD-WAN with its interoperability with other systems is hard to say. I've not deployed it with other OEMS as of yet. We haven't consolidated any tools or applications as of yet.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten overall.

I'd recommend the solution to others.  

We use FortiGate for security. Some clients use the whole Fortinet solution, including FortiSwitch, FortiAP, and FortiExtender, but FortiGate is my bread and butter.

We have a hybrid deployment. A lot of it is onsite, and we have data center collocations. Some customers do collocations with us, but others request connectivity to Azure or another cloud services provider. Fortinet has plugins for Azure, AWS, or Google that make it easy to configure VPNs out of the data center or off-site. 

Typically, we stick with Azure because their support is better, but we do have a handful of customers that choose AWS. We have the solution deployed across Canada. One of our biggest customers is a retail company with many little stores under their umbrella. We cover everything from British Columbia to a couple of sites in Newfoundland. I estimate that we have around 1,200 users.

We need to allow a set of websites or block another set. FortiGate gives us the ability to do it based on URL domain. It's so much easier because you input the domain microsoft.com instead of adding the specific URL. Other firewalls can't do that the way FortiGate does. It helps us with compliance and security.

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.

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.

I've been using Fortinet solutions for about four or five years now.

I think FortiGate is going to be around forever. If I don't see their stock price double in the next two years, I'm going to be surprised. I think it's a very underrated solution. 

Scaling up only requires adding a router. Once you have your network in place and a basic template, you buy another router and add it to the mix. It's incredibly easy to add and configure devices. 

I rate Fortinet support 10 out of 10. The support gets better as you get more certifications. I'm trying to get my certification to see how much better it can be. With an NSE 7 certification, you can contact Tier 3 support directly. I'm already getting my cases resolved in 24 to 48 hours using Tier 1 and 2 support.

We used Juniper firewalls in the past. The two solutions are similar in terms of features, but Fortinet blew it out of the water with regards to pricing and user-friendliness.

The main difference is CLI versus GUI. You have to know what you're doing on a Juniper because it's all command-line based, but Fortinet is 99 percent GUI-based. You log in to Fortinet and check off what you want to allow or block. 

Our biggest Fortinet solution was 500 plus retail sites. This customer chose the whole nine yards, including FortiGate, FortiSwitch, FortiAPs, and the FortiExtender, which is the LTE router. 

I made the templates for the configuration for our bottom tiers because they were the ones rolling them out. I made a standard template config and wrote notes specifying necessary changes for each site. 

The primary difficulty was trying to understand our customer's requirements and concerns because they were with an old provider. The provider had a lot of things on-site that weren't necessary. Deploying the Fortinet solution itself wasn't hard. 

Getting there was hard because we had to sit down with the customer and their tech team to determine what was needed because they had old Cisco routers. That took about three weeks and required a lot of on-site visits, but it wasn't hard to deploy the solution once we got an understanding of the requirements was not hard.

We trained the customers to manage and maintain the solution themselves. The only maintenance we do is emailing them monthly when we get notifications from Fortinet about router upgrades. You can configure it and then forget it. 

We are the integrator/consultant for the solution. We are the one in between the client and the internet service provider.

FortiGate firewalls pay for themselves. We bought our first FortiGate when they came out with the 50Fs and thought we would never see the return on investment. However, they paid for themselves because we rent them out, and customers loved them so much that we just retired our Juniper and Cisco solutions.

Fortinet's pricing is more straightforward than other solutions. If Fortinet doesn't stick out when you're searching for a solution, you are a glutton for punishment. You only need to know two things when purchasing a Fortinet solution: your total bandwidth and bandwidth at the site. You need to estimate the future bandwidth with other solutions if your customer plans to upgrade.

You have to consider whether you'll need to resell your licenses or wait until they expire and get new ones. You need to worry about out-of-pocket costs with other solutions, but you could pay for a higher-tier Fortinet license. You don't need to worry about it for 10 years and still be under budget.

Fortinet encourages people to buy their base product and then add what they need. That mentality goes a lot farther in the game because it affords people security. That's how they got into the market and became so competitive.

We evaluated Meraki, Dell's old SD-WAN, and Cisco's Viptela. Price and flexibility were the main factors. Viptela, Juniper, and others make it so hard to pick a solution. You have to be highly specific about what you want, including the amount of bandwidth and encryption level at every site. You have to pick a different router per site, depending on your functionality and requirements.

I rate FortiGate 10 out of 10. It's a tremendous little firewall. It takes care of all your security concerns.  When people say, "I need to make my organization more secure," the first thing that comes to mind is Fortinet. Everyone is talking about Cisco, Juniper, Palo Alto, and Check Point but overlooking Fortinet, which is a relatively new player in the game. 

Fortinet's next-generation firewall is more affordable and user-friendly. They also have an extensive knowledge base online. Good luck finding that community support on a Palo Alto, Cisco, or Juniper website without paying.

It is our primary router here in the office with all the firewall policies.

The solution has many valuable features. I like all of them.

Its stability is great. On a previous job, we set probably up to 100 FortiGates, and during the three years they were set up none of them failed.

It's a very scalable solution.

The pricing is great and very reasonable. 

The initial setup is simple. 

We use a yearly subscription for a unified protection model. I like the features that it gives me. It is actually a built-in proxy server and it allows me to use great protection and so on. In terms of application control, the built-in anti-virus is okay. One of the things that I like the most is it has a built-in SD-WAN solution - its price is included in the hardware. I don't need to buy anything else to use SD-WAN. This is the feature that I like, in Fortinet, probably the most. All other vendors sell SD-WAN as a separate solution and you must buy a separate controller which has to be installed somewhere, on-premise or on the cloud, and it costs money. Fortigate does not.

I can't think of an area of the product that needs improvement. Even the cost is okay. I have no real complaints. 

It would be good if they had fewer updates. Almost every update has bots that are either critical or something small yet valuable. Whenever I try to do an update, I always fear that something will break.

I've used the solution for a few years. I used it on a previous project and I use it now as well.

The stability has been excellent. It's very reliable and the performance is great. They have not failed in three years. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability of the product is great. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

Up to 100 people use it right now, and likely we will increase usage so that it covers 150 to 200 users. 

If our other branch offices open in other cities or other countries, I will buy another firewall for them as well.

I've contacted technical support in the past.

For example, I tried to update my firewall to 7.0.4 and there was a block with the DHCP server. Some devices did not acquire an IP address. Really, it was something about FortiGate. I asked Fortinet for technical support and I created a ticket, and the next day they replied to me they agree that this was a bug that they would work on. As far as I can see now, there is already an option of 7.0.5. While I didn't test it myself, in the changelog I can see that this bug is fixed.

So far, we have been satisfied as they have answered us by the next day typically.

I did not previously use a different solution.

It's an easy setup. Everything is very straightforward and simple to understand. It's not complex, not difficult. A company won't have any issues with the process.

The deployment might take up to one week. I don't remember exactly. I continued to add some features, however, in the instant deployment, when it came here I had another router here, it wasn't too long of a process. Later, I asked my bosses to buy a firewall and when it arrived, on a Friday in the evening, I installed it and everything was fine. It was very fast.

I handle the deployment and maintenance myself. We do not need a big team to manage everything. It's pretty low-maintenance. 

I handled the implementation myself. I did not need a consultant or an integrator.

The pricing is very fair for a firewall. There's nothing to complain about in terms of licensing.

The price model is fair. I have to pay only for the features that only Fortinet gives me. Things like routing are free. Other vendors like Cisco, make me pay for things that should be free.

I would recommend the solution to others.

Fortinet has an education platform that is named trainingfortinet.com and many courses are on there. All the video lessons are free. Users can view them to learn about the features that Fortinet has. It's an excellent resource.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

We use the solution on the perimeter. We are a government entity. We have other organizations monitoring our network. We also have our own firewall to separate the DMZ and different things on our external servers.

The solution provides good threat intelligence feeds.

The advanced models are expensive.

I have been using the solution for five to six years.

The tool’s stability is good. I rate the stability a seven or eight out of ten. The stability could be improved.

The tool is very scalable. It connects to its own wireless access points. The firewall is supported by other technologies. We can add more products and extend the features and the network.

Fortinet has a tool that migrates all the policies from the previous firewall to the new one.

The vendor helped us with the setup. It was quick. We connected the new firewall first. Then, we exported the policies from the live firewall to the new one. On a weekend, we deployed the new firewall.

If we buy licenses for a longer duration, we get discounts.

Fortinet has better models, but we are using the one within our budget. It's a good product. Besides Fortinet, we're using Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Defender, as well as the safety features that come with these products. There are many products in the market. The monitoring team is using Palo Alto. Palo Alto is better than Fortinet, but it's more expensive.

We use Fortinet for VPN, too. We have not faced any major issues with the tool. It has a lot of capabilities that enable us to customize tunnels and allow traffic from certain countries or regions. The vendor provides cloud-based models, but we do not use them because they are subscription-based models that are not within our budget.

The vendor has a lot of free and paid training courses. It is the best way to learn about the product. It is similar to Palo Alto. All the good companies have a lot of training materials and training courses to understand the product. The initial versions are free of cost. The certifications will help people understand the process and make administration easier. The cloud version has AI features.

Overall, I rate the product a seven or eight out of ten.

We use it for managing access to our data center, regulating the communication tools employed among servers, and ensuring overall security.

Its performance in fulfilling our requirements has been satisfactory. The graphical user interface is straightforward to navigate.

There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect. It was somewhat challenging as I delved into the logs during an incident. Navigating through the logs to trace the specific information we needed, as well as generating the corresponding report, proved to be less intuitive. In comparison, when considering Sophos XG, which we also use, the logging and reporting functionality is notably more efficient.

I have been working with it for two years.

It offers good stability capabilities.

We have approximately two hundred users within our company.

I would rate its customer service and support ten out of ten.

Positive

Its performance justifies the cost, there is a prominent ROI.

The pricing is very reasonable.

I would highly recommend it. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten due to the reporting and logging issues.

We utilize the Fortinet FortiGate firewall to safeguard our network and provide secure VPN access from external locations.

We implemented FortiGate because we needed a firewall to protect our data.

FortiGate helped us meet our ISO requirements.

In the time we have been using FortiGate, we have not had any security breaches. 

FortiGate has reduced the risk of cyberattacks that can disrupt our production. Since implementing FortiGate we have not dealt with any such attacks.

I'm unsure whether centralized FortiGate management enhances efficiency, but our experience with it has been exceptional. We haven't encountered any issues, and the operational aspects have been seamless. Additionally, there was no downtime, which is crucial for our operations.

Our Fortinet security fabric has enhanced security across our industrial control system. By safeguarding our production environment and ensuring the security of VPN access granted to individuals, we have achieved comprehensive data protection. We have not experienced any incidents that would have occurred if our firewall was inadequate.

FortiGate does a lot of research, and the product is regularly updated, especially in the ransomware area. I know of a couple of other companies around us that had some ransomware incidents, but we never have. From that perspective, FortiGate has helped mature our approach to cybersecurity a lot.

The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable.

The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex. While FortiGate offers greater functionality than other firewall solutions, its user interface could benefit from simplification.

I would like the log viewing process to be improved to provide a clearer understanding of the logs.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for five years.

I would rate the stability of FortiGate ten out of ten. We have never had any issues.

We used the limit of our FotiGate firewall which was around 150 users and we never noticed any performance issues. 

I would rate the scalability of FortiGate eight out of ten.

The technical support is good.

Positive

Our decision to switch from FortiGate to Sophos was solely driven by the seamless integration with our existing Sophos antivirus system. Had this integration not been an advantage, we would have maintained our FortiGate system.

The initial deployment was straightforward due to our understanding of the product and its operation. It was completed in one day by a team of two.

The price of FortiGate is comparable to that of most other firewall solutions and is more affordable than Cisco.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate eight out of ten.

Except for the firmware updates we have to do now and then, there is no other maintenance required for FortiGate.

We had FortiGate deployed in one location in a big server room. We have 150 users.

I would recommend FortiGate to anyone. FortiGate is an out-of-the-box firewall with good pricing and excellent features.      

It's mainly used to secure our clients' network access because they do not have any servers. The only things we have connected to the FortiGate firewall are access points, CCTVs, and a printer. It's just used for web browsing and internet access.

It definitely helps with intrusion prevention. When managing a firewall, you need to create policies to dictate the traffic flow within your environment. And once you enforce a policy, it has an intrusion prevention assistant that you can activate, so it's not just acting as a firewall.

Like most next-generation firewalls today, it helps control network traffic. I don't have any problem managing the network traffic within our network. It's very easy to access and manage.

FortiGate has also helped reduce the risk of cyberattacks. If such an attack happened, the main consequences for us would be data breaches, where some of our company's most important information might be leaked and used by other people. That would endanger our production and security.

And with the System Events page, I can easily access and see the events that are happening within the device and the network. It's easy to track if something has happened and, based on that, make a decision about the next step that I should take. I can see if it is severe or if it is just something that is not critical but more than a nuisance. Even in that case, I have to think about the steps that I will take to prevent it from happening again.

Mostly, it's about protecting the internet access of our end users in the production area of our company. It protects us during our web browsing and from internet-related activities.

The feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup.

It also provides us with visibility because we are able to track the IP addresses, as well as the type of device, OS, vendor name, and the name of the devices.

In addition, Fortinet Security Fabric helps us meet regulations and compliance requirements.

The built-in APIs enable us to integrate with different vendors, such as TP-Link and Luigi. We did not have any problems with the integration. It's very easy to configure and connect. This helps reduce deployment time, but that has more to do with network knowledge than with the product. If you're familiar with basic networking, it would be easy for you to understand the application of a certain device and integrate it with the API of your choice.

I've been working with Fortinet FortiGate for about 10 months.

I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet.

Neutral

I don't know why our company acquired FortiGate because I'm not the account manager. I'm just the technical person who installed the product. But I can assume they just looked at other companies that are securing their networks and decided to secure their internet access like those companies do.

Including the reconfiguration of the network setup, the deployment took at least five days. But the actual deployment of the device only took one day. There were four people involved.

I have no idea what the difference in pricing is if you buy it from a reseller or distributor compared to Fortinet, or even if Fortinet gives that option. The pricing is justified. It's a little pricey, but what you pay for is what you get.

I can't say how much it has reduced MTTR because I have not experienced any issues with FortiGate.

When I first built the FortiGate firewall, it enabled me to learn more about the network security field.

I use Fortinet FortiGate SWG in my company for security purposes and the SD-WAN in our networks.

The network load balancing is one of the best features of Fortinet FortiGate SWG. Fortinet FortiGate SWG's SD-WAN compatibility with any of the providers is also one of its good features. The security devices work well with the solution, and it works well for anything pertaining to security, including the HTML files and VPN, which is beneficial for our company.

The graphical user interface of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an area of concern where improvements are required.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate SWG for three years. I use the solution's latest version, which is Fortinet FortiGate 100F Series. I am an end user of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

My company uses Fortinet FortiGate SWG in around 350 locations spread across India, and we have a user base of over 5,000 users.

The response from the technical support team has always been excellent. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

There were no issues with the product's installation phase. In our company, there were some initial things like checking the networks and managing the area of whitelisting in the firewall.

The solution's installation process doesn't take longer than an hour.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model since my company has security gateway appliances across the company for 350 locations.

There was a team of six engineers in my company to take care of the implementation part of the product.

I was a part of the design and implementation team of the solution in my company.

Earlier, in my company, we had constraints in regard to the link load balancer and the site getting isolated because of the internet. Now, the good part is that the failovers and integration have become entirely seamless, and the site remains connected, meaning, in our company, we don't see the site getting isolated.

I rate the price of Fortinet FortiGate SWG a seven and a half out of ten since it is not a cheap solution, though I feel it is a good product for the money one pays.

There were no additional costs apart from the licensing charges of the product, and the extra payments were related to the shipping charges so that it could be shipped to multiple cities.

My company plans to use FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.