Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

I primarily use the solution for network security - especially for the VPN connection, the remote site connection. 

The solution is very easy to install.

The services from Fortinet products are very, very good. The WIFI that Fortinet provides for us, for example, is fantastic. 

The VPN tunnel is very stable and there is more than one option for the tunnel, which is helpful. 

We can customize the product well.

There's a very intelligent solution that they gave us in order to make the VPN connection easy. It is a very, very, very useful tool. 

The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products.

Fortinet is a very big product. It has FortiGate, FortiWiFi, FortiSwitch, email security, etc. Due to this, they have some weaknesses in the ISPs, the services. They could improve these aspects. Hotspot services especially could be a lot better. 

There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs.

I've been using the solution for about three years at this point.

The solution is very stable. That's not a problem at all. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's quite reliable.

The solution can scale well. If a company needs to expand it, they can.

I have various clients that use the solution and they have a user base that can range anywhere from five users to over 10,000.

I do plan to continue to use the solution in the future, however, I can't speak as to if my clients will expand their services or not.

Technical support, by and large, is very good. Fortinet has a very fast response time for their support tickets. It doesn't matter if the help is coming from the local distributor, or from web support. I don't face any problems with their level of attentiveness. I'm quite satisfied.

I use a wide variety of products in my shop. For example, I also work with Sophos UTM, Cisco, HPE, and Aruba products. 

There's a lot of problems in, maybe, let's say, Sophos products. Especially in their support. They have very weak support. Cisco has good support, on the other hand, and a very good product, however, it is too expensive. HPE is a very nice product and has good support, however, it's not a UTM. Therefore, often we end up recommending Fortinet options.

The initial setup was not complex. It was pretty straightforward.

How long it takes to deploy the solution depends on the company and the configurations required. Sometimes I am able to do it in one day, whereas other times it takes more than one month to complete.

I'm just a customer. I'm using the latest version of the solution. I'm using the F-series. Previously, I used the E-series.

We use the on-premises version of the solution as Fortinet does not yet support the cloud.

I am not an organization, I am in IT support. I have my own agency for installing such devices. I use it for some universities which is more than 10,000 students in some cases. I also use it in some factories which have four to five users. It works just as well for small and medium-sized companies as it does for enterprise-level organizations.  

I would recommend the solution to others for sure.

Overall, I would rate Fortinet's solution at a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for the VPN.

The initial setup is pretty easy, at least if you are looking to take advantage of basic functionality.

The usage in general is pretty good.

The GUI is pretty good.

The support could be improved upon somewhat.

The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work.

The command line operation is a bit out of our depth.

We've been dealing with the solution for about two years.

The solution is quite stable. We don't have issues with bugs or glitches. For us, we haven't had problems with crashing or freezing. It's been working well for the most part.

I can't speak to the scalability. I've never attempted to scale and therefore don't have a sense of how well the solution would take to it.

We have about 30 engineers that work with the solution currently. I'm not sure, however, if there are any plans to increase usage in the future.

The support wasn't the best. We weren't too satisfied with the level of service we were given.

The initial setup was very easy and straightforward. It was not complex. We do, however, use the basic functionality and therefore we don't really get into much complexity during the implementation.

The deployment itself is rather quick and we were able to get everything sorted in about one day.

The pricing isn't too bad. Right now, we find the cost to be manageable.

We're just a customer. We don't have a special business relationship with Fortinet.

We're a development company. We sometimes use the cloud, however, we're open to other deployment models as well.

I've found the solution to be very good. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features.

It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. 

It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server.

I have been using this solution for six years.

It is stable.

I don't have any experience with their technical support. My partner contacts them for me.

Its installation is not easy for me because I handle some other work, but I have two partners. One of them is very skilled at using FortiGate, and it took him a day to deploy it. After that, it took us a week to set all parameters and check all parameters and firewall functions.

It is too expensive for us. My organization is very small, and we have a total of ten users. We have three internal users and seven external users. The FortiGate 100D series is too expensive for renewing the licenses.

I would recommend this solution if you can afford it. I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for the firewall. We use it for a perimeter firewall or access firewall inside the network to allow some zones to be disabled from one zone to another zone. 

The stability of the solution is excellent.

The user interface (UI) is very, very good.

The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now.

When we need to engage with the endpoint or our customer during an investigation, there should be a way to investigate the issues without the need for the customer to be present. It would make it much easier.

We've been using the product for the last few years.

We find the solution to be quite stable. It's very reliable. We don't have to worry about bugs or glitches on the system. It doesn't crash or freeze.

We have more than 7.000 users on the solution right now.

We do plan to continue to use the solution going forward.

The technical support is very good. We're quite satisfied with the level of support we receive. We find them to be knowledgeable and responsive when we have issues. 

Before using FortiGate, we used Cisco. However, we found the Cisco solutions to be unstable and we needed to move away from them. We do still have some legacy Cisco solutions, however. We find they work better now, with FortiGate.

We didn't have a problem with the installation. It wasn't complex in any way. We found it to be quite straightforward.

The deployment process was very fast. It took less than a day for us to do everything we needed to do.

In terms of maintenance, we have eight people taking care of the troubleshooting of tickets.

An integrator helped us with the implementation process they were very helpful and extremely knowledgable. We had them in case something we wrong, however, nothing has gone wrong so far.

We're a service provider. We work with clients that use the solution.

We utilize both the 1500 and 3000 series of the product.

I would definitely recommend this solution to other companies to use. We've had a good experience overall.

In general, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We're using it as an edge or a perimeter firewall. We have also used it to segment our LAN in terms of the endpoints and the servers, and we're also using it for remote access using SSL VPN. We have two other sites that we connect through FortiGate by using an IPSec, and we have integrated it with FortiAuthenticator for two-factor authentication and FortiAnalyzer to analyze logs and things like that. We are currently using the FortiGate 1200D series and running the latest software.

The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. 

Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network.

It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for four years.

In terms of stability, I would rate it a seven out of ten. It should be more stable. Sometimes when you do firmware upgrades, a feature that was previously working is broken. There are things like that, but I guess that can be taken care of by reading the release notes and seeing what changed in the firmware upgrades.

It is highly scalable. A customer had about 500 users.

The installation was straightforward.

We deployed it ourselves. You just need one engineer for its deployment and maintenance.

We are skilled in Fortinet and Check Point. For customers who specifically want Fortinet, we will continue to provide this solution. Our first preference is Check Point, but if a customer insists on Fortinet, then we can do a lot of integration there and incorporate other products like FortiNAC, FortiWifi, and so on.

I would recommend this solution to others. I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a seven out of ten.

Our clients use it to protect their network. They're into public safety. They're police, fire, and EMS, and they're very concerned about security and what gets in and what doesn't get into their networks. We have got another client for whom we're deploying 30 firewalls in HA pairs over a huge network. That, of course, is a Cisco setup, not FortiGate.

Everybody is cranking up on security to find new ways to block and protect not just the inbound but also the outbound traffic. They want to protect what goes out. They also want to protect DMZs and all that kind of stuff.

It is simpler to configure. It is not like Cisco Firepower, where you go crazy trying to follow the Cisco documentation to figure out how to configure one little thing. Unlike Cisco Firepower, where you can't do everything through the web interface and you have got to do some command line stuff, Fortinet FortiGate SWG is simpler. There are four different things in Cisco to get in, which is not the case with Fortinet FortiGate SWG.

It is one of my favorite solutions to work with. I would much rather work with it than Cisco Firepower, for example. Even though I've got 20 years of Cisco experience with different firewalls, I would much prefer this solution.

Their technical support could be improved a little bit in terms of responsiveness.

I have been using this solution for almost three years.

For me, so far, it is fire and forget. You just set it up, and you really don't have to mess with it. It has been really reliable. It hasn't gone down, and I haven't had any outages.

It is scalable.

Technical support is okay. It, of course, depends on the kind of contract that you have. I've had better support from Cisco than from Fortinet when I'm having a problem that I can't figure out. Fortinet support is not bad, and they do get to the solution. However, they can be a little bit more responsive. That's the nice thing with Cisco. When you've got a network down issue, and they can get people on the phone immediately, and they stay with you until it is done. I find Fortinet's documentation better than Cisco's documentation.

We didn't have anything before, so this was brand new.

It is fairly straightforward. The only complexity to it is that it has a little bit longer setup than the old generation firewall thing, where you slap an IP address on the outside and the inside interface and turn it on, and you're going to have a basic firewall. You have got to go through several configuration steps to get it to a good base setup.

It is less expensive than a Cisco solution.

If you are brand new to this solution, you're going to want to read the documentation and follow it while setting it up because otherwise, you will miss something. To use this solution, you've got to know what you're doing. You can't just take someone who is a decent network guy and expect him to figure out what he has to do. It isn't that simple.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate SWG an eight out of ten.

We use it for routing and restricting user access.

We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall.

The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility.

I have been using this solution for maybe five or six years.

It is stable.

You can have the availability features. All the traffic goes through this firewall for access to the outside world.

Their technical support is good.

We were using some open-source solutions, and then we directly moved to firewalls.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was completed in a month or so.

We implemented it on our own. We are a small team, so a person with a few other duties also manages this solution.

It is not a very costly product if you compare it with other products. The return on investment is also good. If you compare the return of investment and money that you are spending on this product with Palo Alto, Cisco, Check Point, and other solutions, the investment is very less. We are happy with this solution.

The optional licenses are there, and you can choose which one you want and which one to avoid.

It is a fine solution. We have been using this solution for some years, and we are happy with it. We will continue using it unless the FortiGate solution is running itself in some other ways with new features.

I would recommend this solution. It is working fine for us. 

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

We are a system integrator and Fortigate is one of the firewalls that we implement for our clients. I am a solution architect.

Our primary use for this firewall is the IPS.

One of the things I like best is the ease of configuration.

Management-wise, it is very good.

The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing.

The firewall throughput is very good. Most of the customers in this region use FortiGate for their data center firewalls, and the main reason is because of its high throughput.

Fortinet is good in terms of security and threat prevention, but they are not leading. For example, the signature database can be improved.

If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement. Customers that have ISE implemented are able to provide inputs based on malicious traffic, and then ISE will automatically block it.

We have been working with Fortinet FortiGate for the past two years.

Stability-wise, they are good at the job of a data center firewall. For a perimeter firewall, it is for smaller customers, preferably.

The scalability depends on the design and how it was done. You have to think about the next five years. We get lots of new updates on the older versions and if the product is still in support then the new features will be included.

The responsiveness of the support depends on the level of support that you have. If you have premium support then you will get immediate access to them. Otherwise, you have to wait for some time, perhaps an hour, before they get back to you.

On the technical details, there are different levels of access. Once you have engineer access then most of the cases are going to get resolved, or otherwise, they will go to their development team.

In addition to FortiGate, we are using Cisco SFR.

The initial setup is straightforward. We have field configuration guides that we follow and you don't need to have much in-depth knowledge to set it up initially. However, performing the fine-tuning requires that you have proper training on the device.

Deploying the firewall for a new customer will be completed within two to three days, or perhaps a week at the most.

Compared to vendors like Cisco and Palo Alto, FortiGate is the cheapest. However, they only have a small segment of the market. Fortinet is trying to appeal to small and medium-sized customers, and I think that their prices should be a little lower for this segment.

On the high-end devices, it is fine. However, the problem is that their subscription price is very high. If you purchase a one-year subscription with the hardware and then you want to renew for the second year, it is very costly. Your whole price ends up being very high.

As a system integrator, we sell a lot of similar solutions from a variety of vendors. We have found that the Fortinet firewall has a much better throughput than that of the other vendors.

If a large customer is looking for a perimeter firewall then we suggest another vendor, such as Check Point or Palo Alto.

FortiGate is a product that we recommend and we have migrated many customers from other vendors. FortiGate is a better option, although small customers don't care much about security. They only care about basic security. There are only a very few who are really concerned about it and most of them don't have a proper IT group in their company. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.