Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

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.

We have used the solution as a perimeter firewall. We are using it as an anti-ATP solution also.

The firewall features are pretty good. 

The solution has very good threat and content filtering switches.

The initial installation is fairly easy.

I'm from the sales side and therefore I wouldn't really know if there are features that are lacking.

It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example.

I've been using the solution for two or three years. It hasn't been too long.

The solution is stable. It doesn't have any issues with bugs and glitches. It doesn't crash and freeze. It's very reliable.

Since we are integrators, this product gets sold to people who have a minimum 25 and up to 600 users.

At the moment, we don't plan to increase usage.

The technical support is very good. We're satisfied with their level of support. They are quite responsive and knowledgeable.

We were previously using Sophos and Watchguard.

The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty much a straightforward implementation. There aren't really any surprises.

The length of deployment differs based on the kind of policies a client would like to implement. If they are very simple policies, then there isn't a lot of work to worry about. However, if there are complex policies or multiple policies, it does take some time to get things up and running.

I didn't handle the installation personally, as I am in sales.

We have three or four people in our organization who handle maintenance.

We have a systems integrator in-house that handles the deployment.

The solution isn't too expensive.

We're integrators. We help our clients with this solution.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I'd recommend this solution to other users. 

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

We are resellers. We provide products and services to our customers.

It's not just one product. We have been using and installing different kinds of solutions for more than ten years.

I do remember that, of course, the interface was good. It's intuitive, and when we installed it together with access points, we could manage them from one place or from the cloud or from FortiGate itself. 

It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall. The fact that we received reports by email, also good. All in all, it's quite a good product, of course, a very good product.

If it would integrate everything in one place then it would be an improvement.

I wanted to buy some switches and integrate them into the system, but we couldn't find anyone here in Israel to provide them or to provide support. Also, we could not get a replacement if something needed to be replaced. 

We wanted to use one vendor to do everything from one managed central management point. It may be something they offer now, but I am not sure.  

It would be helpful if we can have one easy place to manage, or from the cloud to all the devices that are at the client's location. This is the backbone, the switches, the access points, FortiGate, everything. 

Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it. 

So, if you could do everything without that, it would be much easier when you do V-LANs.

We have been using this solution for a few years.

We are working with several versions because we install them for our customers.

It's a stable product.

It fits for small and medium-sized companies. Regarding the very big ones, I don't know, I'm not in the enterprise market. But for our clients that are offices or companies that are sized between 20 users and 300 users, it's okay. It's good for them.

When I contacted technical support a few times, they were good.

Previously, we worked with Check Point.

They are both good products that are easy to use and have good support.

They're both good. I use them both, it depends on the customer, and what their requirements are. It also depends on which would give you the best value for the money at the time. I don't know how to say which one is better as a firewall. 

The initial setup is easy.

It's an expensive solution. The price should be lower.

In the beginning, I would be the one who would install them, but later it will be our technicians.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Unlike Cisco, which is expensive, or Sophos, which has performance issues, Fortinet offers a good product with no bottlenecks.

The UTM and security features are the solution's most valuable aspects.

It's very fast and easy to configure.

The solution is extremely user-friendly.

The graphical interface is great.

Now, we are able to optimize the bandwidth. We have the level of control to be able to block specific sites - like YouTube, Facebook etc.

The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon.

We've been using the solution for the last two years.

The solution is very stable. We haven't experienced any issues in the last two years. It's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It works well.

We have 400 users covered under the firewall and 50 employees. We've never had issues with scaling. It shouldn't be a problem. However, it's not something we actively measure.

We plan to increase usage and to continue to use the product for another three years. After that we may upgrade to a new Fortinet product or seek out a new solution, depending on the landscape at that time.

We haven't really faced any technical challenges. We just install it and it runs perfectly. Therefore we don't really have any experience with technical support.

Previously, maybe five to seven years ago, I had Cisco. We moved firewalls due to the fact that the renewal cost on Cisco was so high. At the time, we moved to Sophos. It was very good on the UTM side. However, there were performance challenges. That's why we switched to Fortinet. The internet speed is okay and there are no bottlenecks or major challenges.

The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward. 

It's pretty simple for us as we're very familiar with the product. Every year we do a minimum one or two million dollars of business with Fortinet. At this point, my team is very experienced. 

It's very easy to migrate from other solutions and we can migrate within one day.

It's pretty plug-and-play. You can handle everything in an hour or two and then you can do the testing. It's very easy.

We handle the implementation for our clients as we're Fortinet partners and well versed in the product.

We received this solution for free because we are one of the leading and exclusive partners for Fortinet in Uganda.

We're partners with Fortinet.

I'm not sure of the exact version of the solution.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's offered us a very stable VPN and we can access it from anywhere in the world. We're not facing any challenges whatsoever.

I'd happily recommend Fortinet to other organizations. It's one of the best products out there.

Typically, we use Fortinet FortiGate with edge devices for businesses. 

We also use them to integrate with a SIEM product and we use it for detailed analytics.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics.

Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs.

I would like the licensing price to be better. It would be nice if it were less than 25 percent of the hardware costs.

I have been using this solution for fifteen years. We are an MSSP.

The stability is good.

With respect to scalability, it's good.

We have 15 people using this solution in our organization.

We contact technical support almost daily. They have good support.

The initial setup was not straightforward but not too complex. It's a bit of both.

For our organization, the licensing costs are approximately $7,000 per year.

Before choosing the Fortinet FortiGate, I evaluated other solutions.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten.