Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

Our clients' main use case for Fortinet FortiGate is for the firewall on the outside perimeter to the internet. Some of them have started using it for SD-WAN.

We are software integrators. 

Our clients like the packaging because it's an appliance. It has specific chip sets to accelerate different features in the product.

Additionally, it's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there.

In terms of what can be improved, they do have certain features that you can only configure through a CLI and there's no GUI interface for it. That's a pain. But it's nice that the user can do everything one way or the other.

They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for at least the last 12 months.

Fortinet FortiGate is pretty stable.

It is hard to judge this year because of everybody working from home. Everybody is using up a lot of bandwidth so I'm not sure if that is a cause for some of the instability with the Forti client. The only place we've seen instability would be updating Forti client with their software called EMS.

So pushing out the client with EMS, like a client update to remote users, has proven a pain in the butt. But that could be because the end users' VPNs are maybe a little bit unstable just because of the high bandwidth demands. It is hard to determine. Maybe it is because some of these users are in remote areas, or non-urban or smaller towns, as opposed to being in an urban area where bandwidth is a little better.

We never jump ahead and say, "Oh, yes. 6.5 just came up. Let's jump on that." We'll probably just wait six months and see what goes on first. And I guess that's probably what a lot of people do because it's protecting your intellectual property and everything which that company owns.

I'm not saying that there's no instability. People will generally just wait and not jump out unless they're testing in the lab. They're not going to jump out and put the first revision that comes out on their firewalls.

In terms of scalability, it scales very well.

They have different models for different sizes. Obviously, if you buy too small and you have to upgrade, then it's a box swap. Some other vendors can just add another unit and you cluster them together. In their case it's more of just switching the box out for more performance boxes if you go too low.

Their technical support is very good.

Every time we've had to open up a case or get their help, if we surpass that person's ability, it gets escalated right away. So it's very good. It usually gets resolved within a day or two.

The initial setup is fairly straightforward.

In terms of ROI, they're inexpensive. Because they're inexpensive, they're just everywhere, in the Federal Government, schools, everywhere where budgets are fairly tight. And it is a very good product. It's a product that's built that if you need to you can add a different box and remove that feature from your main FortiGate and just run it on a different box.

So if you need to expand, you can always do it that way too.

They have good integration if you have multiple firewalls and it allows you to be able to push out policies to all of them at the same time.

Fortinet FortiGate's pricing is pretty hard to beat.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Fortinet FortiGate a 10 out of 10.

The purpose of this solution is to provide intrusion protection and more robust endpoint security for small offices. We are providing an enterprise solution for a small business by adding endpoint protection coupled with Intrusion Detection and Protection.  For small offices needing HIPAA compliance, we need to make sure we are providing robust protection instead of the default modem gateway provided by the ISP.

The Fortinet product provides enterprise capabilities in a small footprint at a price point that is more attainable for a small business. The product meets the IPS/IDS/Endpoint protection that small organizations need for their HIPAA and PCI compliance.  While the end user may not understand the true capabilities, the managed service provider can more easily deploy and maintain this small footprint product.

The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was based on other reviews and leadership in this space. Being able to have a VPN solution as well as integrated access points is a plus. For me, it's all about simplicity. When you look at my particular model for a managed service provider, it's basically to help simplify, protect, and remain compliant. When you're trying to implement something, it's about making sure it is simplified. This seems to fit the bill.

The product has enterprise capabilities, which means there are a ton of configurations possible.  What I'd like to see in the product is more of a branch in the box wizard deployment for those that are not as well versed in firewall and routing.  For a small business, the firewall should be able to self-configure for a Unified Threat Management configuration with 2 SSIDs for protected wireless network for internal gear and a guest wireless network for employee cell phones and guests.  I'd like to open the box, plug in the router behind the cable modem, and check a few boxes, and the rest is done automatically.  I don't want to have to build a configure VLANs, SSIDs, security protocols for each port, and try to figure out and understand all the layers in an effort to deploy a solution.  It's great to have those capabilities in case you need them, but for most of the offices I am trying to deploy these into--it should be a branch in a box.

I've only been using the solution for a few weeks. It's very new for us.

Stability has been fine. I've had no questions about the stability of it. It seems so far it is staying up. I haven't had any issues to speak of.

I haven't really pushed this product from a scalability perspective. Certainly, if you look at the performance metrics, the F series appears to have really expanded the capacity and capabilities beyond past models. If you look at 40E versus 40F, there's a fairly substantial difference. For a small office, it's going to be just fine.

I haven't reached out to technical support and therefore can't speak to their level of responsiveness.

N/A

The initial setup is complex for me due to my lack of experience with the Fortinet FortiGate product. The complexity can be a good thing, however, as there's a lot of really good features associated with it. Where it could be simplified is in having that easy deployment option, and then you can start going down and trying to get into the nitty-gritty and figure out when do you need the extra features.

Right now, I'm just in a test environment getting all the firmware up and tested. Then, once I have it tested, I'll take it to the client location and yank out their WiFi mechanism, their WiFi router, and put this in.

I'm currently handling the implementation for a client.

ROI is somewhat difficult to measure when you are mostly talking about deploying a product for endpoint security.  If your environment stays protected, then it was a good return on investment.

When you look at these endpoint security systems and firewalls, these products a few years were way too expensive for a small business. Now we have enterprise level security in a footprint that is less than $1,000.  For offices that have 10-25 computers needing protection, this is a better solution.

The good news is that Fortinet does have a good support network as well as their education academy to help someone get up to speed on their product.

We primarily use the solution just for internal segmentation and connection of some ranges using IPSec.

Currently, the solution is saving costs for us and blocks applications effectively using layer seven.

The solution's most valuable aspect is the IPS for potential mitigation from the cloud inside our network. 

The VPN SSL is important for us. 

The web filter is very good. 

The GUI is okay.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The documentation provided is okay, I find that sometimes, with other startups, it's hard to find a good amount of documentation in order to assist you with the product. In this case, the solution offers a good amount of detail.

The solution offers good analyzing capabilities.

I'm not sure if the solution is really lacking anything major. For us, it works okay.

They seem to have made a lot of improvements since the last release.

Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away.

We've been using the solution for about ten years at this point. As it's been about a decade, I'd say we have quite a bit of experience with it.

For the most part, the memory and the CPU are good. It's generally stable. We don't face any issues with this aspect of the solution.

The scalability is fine. If a company needs to expand it, they should be able to do so without any issues.

We only have about 40 users on the product currently. It's not a big company.

For now, the product is good as it is and we don't have plans to increase usage in the future.

By and large, technical support is good. It's okay. It's not bad. It could be better, however, they do answer our questions when we have them. We're mostly satisfied with the level of service they provide. Of course, it could always be a bit better.

Sometimes the first contact is useful, and sometimes you don't get the kind of help you need right away. It would be nice if it was more consistent.

We also use Sophos. We use both solutions at the same time.

We didn't face any complexity when handling the initial implementation. The process is quite straightforward.

The implementation itself can sometimes take less than a week. On average, you should expect it to be about a week in total.

I didn't need the assistance of a reseller or integrator. I handled the implementation myself.

We're charged a licensing fee on a yearly basis. I'm unsure of the exact cost to the company, however. I'm not sure if there are other costs over and above the standard licensing fee.

We also looked at Juniper when we evaluated FortiGate. FortiGate is much easier to use in comparison which is why we chose it. The documentation was also better. That, and there was no integration for SSL in Juniper.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

Overall, I would recommend the product. It comes with a very good set of features.

I would rate the solution ten out of ten. We've been quite happy with it.

This Fortinet product is a firewall system, acting as our perimeter firewall. Generally speaking we use this system as a security product to defend from any attacks and to protect our internal network. We are very happy with the security features afforded by this product.

The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, IPS, and even SD-WAN.

In terms of what could be improved, the FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment

In terms of the FortiGate IPS, we haven't gotten additional tools because they are not free, and we have to purchase them to maximize this IPS feature. As long as they can perform some basic functions to meet our business needs, that is okay. I'm okay with this feature right now, so far.

In the next release of FortiGate the price could be better.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate since May of 2018.

This product is very stable.

Fortinet FortiGate is a very scalable product.

It is managed by the IT department, so only they use it.

Their support is quite good.

The initial setup is quite simple.

Not including the preparation, setup took about three days to just unpack them, connect it to the power, power it on, and do some initial configuration. That's just the three days, but we took about two weeks for the preparation and planning.

We had an external partner to help us and to work together with us to do the initial setup.

On a scale of one to ten I would give Fortinet FortiGate an eight.

We use this product as a perimeter firewall and also in the role of a firewall as a service for our cloud.

FortiGate is flexible and easy to use.

Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services. When it comes to large deployments, I don't think it's a good plan to have all of these services in a single box.

I think that they should introduce in-line security at the packet level, where they can do filtering and other firewall functions. It should not comes down to the infrastructure level but rather, offer services at the ISP level.

We have been using FortiGate for the past four to five years.

This is a stable product.

This product is scalable and as a service provider, we extend our usage to external customers. There are many users on the platform.

We have premium support from Fortinet and it is quite good.

We used their Professional Services for the initial installation.

We have a large in-house team for maintenance, although I am not sure how many are dedicated to this particular product.

The price of FortiGate is average and I would say that based on the top five products available on the market, it is in the affordable range.

This is a product that I can recommend to others.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We have some that are doing IPS, and we have some that are for AV. That's basically their main role. We are using one version below the current release.

I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job. 

If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox.

I have been using this solution for probably 20 years.

They are pretty stable. We never had any real issues with them.

Their scalability is pretty good. We have upgraded and changed them, and we have been running them for 20 years. They run for a long time. We are not replacing them every couple of years, and we have scaled up a lot. We have over 10,000 users behind it. We have three people for maintenance and deployment. 

I never had to deal with technical support directly, but I've never heard the guys complain about it.

I never set them up.

We are using FortiGate, but we are switching to Palo Alto. We are just moving over to the new next-gen and do an extra layer or higher layer filtering. Being a government organization, it was RFP, and basically, Palo Alto won the RFP. I wasn't part of the RFP review, so I can't tell which features pushed Palo Alto over the edge or not. For all I know, it could just be price.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten. I would also rate Palo Alto the same.

We are an IT service provider. We provide solutions to our customers based on what their needs are.

I don't know that it changes the way the organization functions. I think it gives customers more peace of mind knowing that they have this in place, that they have it set up properly, that they can run reports to get the information they need of who is using it, and who the top five users are.

Different areas in reporting that they can get information that they need to know. That it's blocking what needs to be blocked, it's allowing what needs to be allowed, it's doing what it needs to do based on the specific requirements and I don't have to worry about it.

There is an enormous amount but it also depends on the customer. Some have to do with the tracking of bandwidth to ensure that the students are not using too much or too little bandwidth. 

There is also reporting. The reporting is valuable.

The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point.

I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included. You have to buy their cloud module that's an add-on for getting more customized reporting.

It has just about everything that we are looking for and the customer is needing. It's just the reporting part that is lacking in the base application.

Technical support could be improved.

I have been using this solution for approximately four years.

I am sure there are bugs or glitches from time to time, but it's not anything that's been problematic or had multiples where it's been an issue.

Our clients are small to medium-sized businesses. 

Technical support is okay. They are not exceptional or awful, they're in the middle.

It's hit or miss on their technical capabilities and who you get and who you talk to.

I would rate them a six or a seven out of ten.

We didn't deploy a variety of solutions. Cisco is one we have deployed as well. It's just not as easy to setup. It's all command line, there is not a user interface, it's more expensive, and It doesn't have as much capability.

The initial setup is straightforward.

There's a lot to it, but it's very easy. It's a web interface and very easy to walk through it.

We deploy both on cloud and on-premises, depending on what the customer's requirements are.

Fortinet solution has received great feedback. It compares well to Palo Alto. It's a lot more expensive.

It's very full-featured solution and it's priced well.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for its security features and performance. We enable features that assist with web filtering, application consoles, and IPS.

The performance of the solution is very good.

The product offers very good security.

It's pretty easy to install the solution.

The cloud management should improve. There are other manufacturers that have better management cloud solutions. Aruba, for example, is very good at this aspect. Fortinet could look to them as a model of how to do something interesting with management solutions.

Fortinet across the board needs to improve the LAN aspect of their products.

The solution lacks multi-language support.

They could offer access points to small companies and firewalls at those access points. Aruba, in that sense, is much better for smaller organizations as they provide this possibility.

We've been using the solution for a few years at this point.

The solution is quite stable. You don't have to deal with bugs or glitches. You don't have it freezing on you. It's reliable.

The solution is pretty scalable. It's flexible. It works with the organization and allows you to expand it as necessary.

In my company, we use FortiGate across several locations. The location with the most number of users has maybe 400 to 500 employees. That said, there is another FortiGate that manages the traffic that goes to the internet for all of the users across locations. We must have around 900 users.

We do plan to continue to use it going forward.

The solution does have different levels of support. If the problem is critical, you can escalate it quite well and even get telephone support.

That said, in terms of telephone support, they need to have support provided in the Spanish language. Right now, this is not the case.

While we concurrently use both Sophos and Fortinet, we're working towards just using Fortinet. I find that the performance of Fortinet is much better than Sophos.

The solution's initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward. In my case, I have many years of expertise working with FortiGate and therefore it was not difficult. It's quite good and easy to manage.

How long it takes to deploy the solution, depends on what the customers ask you to do. More or less, however, it might take maybe one day to make the initial setup of the unit and the configuration that the customer requests. It may take another day or two to put it on service and check that everything is working properly, once again, based on the requirements of the customer.

I work mostly with firewalls and network equipment including firewalls, switches, and routers. I don't just work with Fortinet. I also work with Sophos, Cisco, and Aruba.

We're using the latest version of the product currently.

Overall, I would rate the solution ten out of ten.