Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

There is a tool called FSSO, which is a single sign-on user ID agent that works perfectly. You can configure anything on it, and it is better than Palo Alto's version.

The GUI is written in JavaScript, so when you move any object or policy to another one, it becomes easy to use. It is user-friendly and not complex for network configuration.

Run Script is the best tool to use in Fortinet FortiGate with multiple environments. You can perform multiple tasks at once with the script functionality. It is available through the GUI, whereas in Palo Alto, you need to run it in a separate tool, such as Python.

I prefer Palo Alto over Fortinet FortiGate. Its IPS engine is not better than the Palo Alto version. The monitoring tool needs improvement, and the syslog configuration needs enhancement.

The management plane and control plane are not separated as they are in the same hardware devices, whereas in Palo Alto, everything is separated. So, if the CPU and GPU usage gets higher in the data plane, the admin also becomes unreachable.

The web filter in Fortinet FortiGate is not very useful. While you can add web filters in security policies, it is difficult to understand and not flexible to use.

Fortinet FortiGate frequently experiences IPS engine problems. 

I have been working with it for four to five years.

In most cases, the IPS engine uses too many resources, which makes Fortinet FortiGate devices unstable. When clients encounter different issues, the IPS engine is usually the problem because it consumes excessive resources.

I have not worked directly with technical support, but I am familiar with the distributor, partner, and vendor. People who work with Fortinet provide adequate service.

I mostly migrate from Fortinet FortiGate, Check Point, and other solutions to Palo Alto. For migrations from various solutions to Fortinet FortiGate, it takes a few days, depending on the environment.

Fortinet FortiGate is cheaper than Palo Alto. It is about 20% cheaper. 

I prefer Palo Alto over Fortinet FortiGate. Fortinet FortiGate is not the best firewall, but it is acceptable. If you have a budget to buy a firewall and Palo Alto is too expensive, then Fortinet FortiGate can be usable. As an instructor in Palo Alto Networks who knows all the techniques, I naturally prefer Palo Alto.

For a small company or branch, I would choose Fortinet FortiGate because it is cheaper and the features are sufficient. However, for more critical environments, such as government institutions or banks, where privacy and security are paramount, I would opt for Palo Alto.

In a hamburger topology setup with the internet side and internal side, I prefer using Palo Alto Networks on the internet side and Fortinet FortiGate on the internal side. This creates a multi-vendor environment, avoiding dependency on a single vendor. The internet side requires more security, hence I would go for Palo Alto, whereas the internal side would benefit from Fortinet FortiGate's flexibility and ease of use.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

On-premises

We use Fortinet FortiGate 100F, which is one of two firewalls that we have, one at the entrance of the DMZ and one just outside. One is facing the internet, and the other is at the entrance of the DMZ. We use the one outside to essentially work as a VPN.

As compared to our previous firewall, WatchGuard, which is a good firewall, the successful hacking attempts were far fewer and further with the Fortinet FortiGate, but at the same time, I don't know if the credit goes to only FortiGate, as we have two firewalls versus one in the second implementation. Overall, it is more secure. The VPN is also more stable than the offering from WatchGuard at that time.

Fortinet FortiGate is one of the most solid and secure firewalls as long as you keep it up to date. The price is right; it's not very expensive. 

It's quite feature-rich. While we've mostly used the VPN, we've also utilized it to create high availability. 

We are pretty happy with it. If anything, I believe the web interface could be simpler, especially for someone who has limited networking experience. I mostly do administration, and I found Cisco to be the hardest major firewall manufacturer to deal with, with Fortinet FortiGate being the second hardest for me. In comparison, there's a bit of an easier and more user-friendly interface with WatchGuard.

I have about three years of experience with the Fortinet FortiGate firewall. We also use FortiClient VPN.

The VPN was more stable than the offering from WatchGuard at that time.

I would evaluate the service and technical support of Fortinet FortiGate as pretty good. Whenever we needed them, they would be there for us. I would rate them a nine out of ten. We had no complaints, although they were sometimes extremely busy.

Positive

Before using Fortinet FortiGate, we were using WatchGuard, which is another good firewall.

The initial setup process was efficient, as it took us less than an hour to set up both firewalls.

I was involved in the deployment of the Fortinet FortiGate, handling the physical deployment myself while our vendor managed the initial setup.

We got the Fortinet FortiGate from Telus, which is a Canadian phone company. Our experience was excellent. They're a major phone company, so the services are never less than stellar.

The maintenance for Fortinet FortiGate involves just the occasional patch update. We have software that informs us whenever there's a new patch, and if it's critical, we run the patch update immediately; if not, we usually run it at the end of the month after it's released.

We had uninterrupted service. If one firewall failed, we still had a secure infrastructure. I believe we essentially had a great VPN compared to the alternative offerings, so that's a good return on investment.

It's good. I would rate the price of the Fortinet FortiGate as an eight out of ten. It's not the cheapest, but it's value for money. Given everything we've got out of it: the DMZ port, the VPN, and the high availability, it's a pretty reasonable price.

I would advise others considering or evaluating the Fortinet FortiGate to buy it. It's one of the best products for the price. 

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten.

On-premises

It is our security gateway that performs website checks and related security functions.

Fortinet FortiGate is stable. I am told that Fortinet FortiGate is one of the best solutions available, and I believe it. We rarely have any issues with it. My only concern is that they charge separately for every option that is available. It has not improved anything; it simply maintains and keeps operations going.

We are not utilizing Fortinet FortiGate to its full capacity because we have to pay for every small feature. It is also something I would replace once it starts to fail. Fortinet FortiGate appears very old, and everything we use requires additional payment.

Fortinet FortiGate has been with us as long as the switches we've had. It was already here when I came on board, and it was implemented when we started up the school facilities about 10 years ago.

I would rate it low because we rarely ever have to call support. When I call in, I do not have any issues to report.

Positive

We used to have a router, but we have since replaced them all.

It has not improved anything; it simply maintains and keeps operations going. Every year we pay close to $2,000 for this security, and we only use it for web filtering.

The unified security gateway would be my first option. I think it does not charge separately for every product we need to use.

We have Cisco products at our site, including Cisco switches deployed among our campus. We have Cisco WSC-3850 24-port switches, SG 300 28-port switches, and some old WSC-2960 48-port switches.

We use a Fortinet FortiGate 300e for our medium-sized organization. We have approximately 600 students, 200 staff, faculty, and office workers, totaling about 1,000 users going through it. It serves one location with three buildings.

We are planning to move away from Cisco switches as they have become quite expensive. Our strategy is to transition to Ubiquiti enterprise solutions.

This review has a rating of 5 out of 10.

On-premises

Other

The typical use case for Fortinet FortiGate is perimeter security, which is why our clients use this solution.

We are an implementer of Fortinet solutions.

It works well to protect the edge. For protecting the edge, Fortinet FortiGate secures any data traversing the network back to the cloud or data center through encryption. I have found it easy to configure, which results in no problems.

The security services provided by Fortinet FortiGate firewall are among the best. They have been in Gartner's quadrant for a very long time, which always helps.

Fortinet FortiGate has been able to secure mission-critical data effectively. It secures our customer's network properly, so that's always beneficial.

The ability of Fortinet FortiGate to provide network and security convergence is impressive, as they have stable features including application control. They also have advanced routing policies that set themselves apart in network security. Their solutions gel effectively with a single console for management, which is a significant advantage.

FortiOS is quite good in my experience with Fortinet FortiGate, and it works very effectively and is stable for companies. The customers have given feedback that FortiOS has been very stable for a long time. 

From a feature standpoint, it's easy to set up if people want to try and set up VPNs and other configurations. Policy control is quite nice, and we have a lot of experience with this solution, which helps us a lot.

Their support can be better, and there should be better policies for immediate replacement in critical situations. Their replacement policy varies depending on the type of support subscription. With the standard support subscription, if the device goes down, the customer has to first ship the box, and then Fortinet sends the replacement. With the higher support, the customer has to ship the device after they have the replacement. It would be better for customers to get immediate replacements even with a standard subscription.

I have more than 10 years of experience working with Fortinet FortiGate.

It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

If you size the solution correctly based on the customer's network, number of users, and throughput required, there is no problem regarding scalability, so I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

We have small, medium, and large customers who have opted for Fortinet FortiGate.

I would rate technical support from Fortinet an eight out of ten. Their technical support can be improved slightly as we sometimes experience delays in support for urgent customer needs.

Positive

The typical deployment model for Fortinet FortiGate is mostly on-premises. However, there is a virtual appliance available for cloud setups, but in India, most of the sales are for on-premises appliances.

Fortinet FortiGate definitely reduces the total cost of ownership because it offers better management capabilities through a single platform. Its widespread use makes skill sets more available, making it much more cost-effective for customers than other products which may require higher resource costs.

It is more affordable than Check Point and Palo Alto. Another thing is that all the features and the OS remain the same irrespective of the size of the device.

Pricing-wise, Fortinet typically provides one-year support with the firewall appliance. There is also an option for three years which is how their licensing works. They also offer add-ons for features to keep more logs or data, which is standard across their competitors as well.

The price-to-performance ratio for using Fortinet FortiGate is always better compared to any other competitor, so they are rated better than the likes of Check Point or Palo Alto.

The network availability improves when implementing a Fortinet solution; it's definitely much better for a customer compared to having no solutions in place. They are affordable overall.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten.

On-premises

Fortinet FortiGate is commonly used by many customers in my region requiring a low-cost and better solution. Fortinet offers antivirus, next-generation antivirus feeds, DLP, application control, URL filtering, and IPsec VPN. These are the common use cases that many customers use, including IPsec, SSL VPN, URL filtering, DNS filtering, video filtering, and application filtering.

A useful feature of Fortinet FortiGate is its firewall capability because when I create and implement a rule, it is simple to execute. I just need to select the incoming interface, outgoing interface, and apply the source and destination, and that is all. This is the simplest way to implement the policy, and I can easily create a simple rule in this manner, which I consider one of the best features in Fortinet FortiGate.

When considering the effectiveness of Fortinet Unified SASE in providing consistent security policies across multiple locations, I find there is a very good positive response from many customers and from my side as well, as it provides centralized, verified policy creation. For many locations, I can create a simple policy from a centralized location without any difficulty, simply by putting one Fortinet FortiGate in the branch and creating a central policy from my head office.

I would like to improve the application filter aspect of Fortinet FortiGate, similar to other solutions that offer a simple click to select categories. If I do not want to block an entire category, there should be a provision to just enter the website or application, which I believe would be a beneficial improvement.

Regarding how stable and reliable Fortinet FortiGate is, I find it reliable as far as the rule implementation is concerned, and I can rely on the simple way of creating the rule. However, one feature that I cannot rely on is the application filter, which requires tedious steps compared to other solutions like Check Point and Palo Alto, where creating the application filter rule is simpler. In Fortinet FortiGate, I need to create and edit the profile and add websites according to my list, making it a bit cumbersome.

For around two years I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate as a partner, and I have deployed the Fortinet FortiGate firewall at more than twelve to thirteen customer locations.

In general, I think that Fortinet FortiGate is mostly used by small to medium enterprises, as it offers a low-budget option for security. Fortinet is the best choice for small enterprises because it provides security as per their requirement and comes under their budget, making the pricing very acceptable for medium-level and small-level enterprise customers.

My experience with the initial setup and deployment of Fortinet FortiGate is that it is very easy, as I just need to open the box and power on the appliance. I can register the appliance on a portal from the firmware, and within half a day, I can make Fortinet FortiGate live in any office setup with a simple policy.

When rating the technical support from Fortinet, I can say that I am personally not happy with it, so I would rate it at a six out of ten.

My frustrations with the technical support come from the need to log a ticket for issues with Fortinet firewalls and FortiSwitches, as I have to create separate tickets for each, which increases my workload and delays issue resolution since I must manage multiple tickets for the same problem.

Positive

I have integrated SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet FortiGate when multiple customers have two ISPs, as it provides ISP redundancy failover with simple configuration. I have integrated with SD-WAN as well.

Comparing Fortinet FortiGate with similar tools in the firewall area, I find that Fortinet FortiGate does better in pricing for small to medium businesses, as they offer a good deal compared to other OEMs.

The last time I worked with Fortinet FortiGate was two to three days ago when I assisted a customer in migrating from Check Point to Fortinet.

I have not worked on a Fortinet FortiGate data center solution currently, as I have mostly deployed for medium branches and small offices.

These are all the improvements that I would like to suggest for Fortinet FortiGate.

My customers usually prefer deployment on-premises for Fortinet FortiGate.

My experience with integrating Fortinet FortiGate with third-party tools involves LDAP, which integrates very easily by entering the LDAP ID, username, password, and port number, making the experience fairly good.

I would rate this review an eight out of ten.

On-premises

The typical use case for the Fortinet FortiGate firewall for my clients is its ease of use. My clients are using Fortinet FortiGate as SD-WAN.

The effectiveness of Fortinet's unified SASE in providing consistent security policies is notable because there is one security profile from either the head office or the branch office, allowing your profile to move seamlessly with you wherever you go. You have end-to-end visibility, and you can look at the analytics. To me, that moves towards SASE.

My clients appreciate it for its features. It is easy to install and manage, and it offers all-around protection, including web filtering, content filtering, IPS, and IDS.

My clients find the next-generation firewall feature of Fortinet FortiGate to be particularly valuable. It provides internet security, network security, cloud security, ZTNA, and SD-WAN security. There is a unified agent for FortiClient. There is centralized management.

Areas of improvement for Fortinet FortiGate include the need for more training and certification, especially when dealing with distributors globally, which presents challenges in product availability and delivery timelines.

There should also be more training and certification.

I have about 10 years of experience with Fortinet FortiGate.

I find Fortinet FortiGate to be a stable solution.

Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution, as you can start small, maybe with FortiGate 40F, and then move to FortiGate 60F or FortiGate 80F, depending on your needs.

It depends on who your distributor is. 

Neutral

It is not straightforward, but the implementation is pretty good overall. Every site is different for me. There is no standard site. We have a few different issues here and there, but overall, it's pretty good and straightforward to install. Its integration is not difficult.

It is a matter of learning and understanding the reasons why people need Fortinet FortiGate.

Fortinet FortiGate positively provides my clients' organizations with a high return on investment. There is visibility into network operations, allowing us to identify network issues. It has advanced security features. You can achieve about 200% ROI over three years, while enhancing IT teams' productivity by about 50%. It simplifies security across branches and enhances hybrid and cloud security. There is even a feature where you can predict the application performance.

It's very competitive.

Many users nowadays prefer agentless installations over installing agents on their devices, which presents challenges for endpoint security, especially concerning ZTNA, VPN, and endpoint protection.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

On-premises

In our organization, FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) serves as the main security system for our firewall needs. I have utilized it to manage the firewalls and some other security appliances, such as VPNs. Currently, my usage focuses primarily on firewall management. I set up rules, search for logs, and consult logs when issues arise. This approach covers most of our security management tasks.

One of the most valuable features of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is the ease of usability it offers. It is quite easy for me to learn to use. Additionally, FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) has improved our efficiency in setting up security and provided us with more visibility over some issues and incidents we previously faced.

FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) could be improved by including more templates for setting rules or regular jobs. I do not recall if the software includes any AI features.

I have had experience with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) for about five or six years.

When deploying FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW), it required one week for the initial setup and just two hours for effective deployment. There were no significant issues during this process.

In my experience, there are usually no significant stability issues with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW). However, updating the software during issues can be quite convoluted, especially if there is an unexpected attack, such as on a Saturday.

Customer service with Fortinet for FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) has been quite good. We experienced a major issue during one of the upgrades, and it took about an hour to reach support and rectify the problem.

Positive

Before using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW), we used Cisco for our firewall needs. Cisco presented a lot of usability challenges. Setting up firewalls and rules with Cisco was difficult and required extensive knowledge of their system, which led us to switch to FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW).

The initial setup of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) was relatively smooth. It took about one week for the complete setup and two hours for the actual deployment.

The deployment involved two people from my side, and we also had assistance from a vendor during the setup.

In terms of return on investment, FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) has been straightforward. It has notably improved our efficiency and visibility.

The pricing of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is reasonably affordable. It is suitable for mid-level and high-level companies, though it might not be cheap for small companies.

I would recommend FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) to others. Despite some issues with upgrades and vulnerabilities, Fortinet quickly addresses concerns. Overall, on a scale of one to ten, I would rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) as an eight.

My main use case for Fortinet FortiGate is for VPN and its appliances and for securing all of our remote locations.

A specific example of how I use Fortinet FortiGate to secure my remote locations is that we set rules on each of our locations about what traffic can and cannot go in, so we can allow certain connections for our partners such as Frontiers.

The best features Fortinet FortiGate offers are the built-in security functions, which I think are very nice.

We find the built-in security functions most valuable in Fortinet FortiGate, particularly web filtering, as it is all hands-on. Web filtering is our standout feature, and I don't want to add anything else about the features.

Fortinet FortiGate has positively impacted my organization by centralizing the way to access all of our network firewalls.

I wish Fortinet FortiGate's UI updates would be done in a more simplified way to improve it.

I choose nine for my rating because I think there's always room for improvement, and I think some of the things in the UI need to be adjusted so they're a little bit more simplified and not overcomplicated.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for at least three and a half, maybe four years now.

In my experience, Fortinet FortiGate is very stable, and it has been quite consistent during times of downtime.

Fortinet FortiGate's scalability has been keeping up well with my organization's growth or changes, as each location gets larger and we feel the need to put a Fortinet FortiGate in each one.

We have had to reach out multiple times to Fortinet engineers for customer support, and it has been great every time; they always seem to get to the bottom of it within one to two calls.

We did use a different solution before Fortinet FortiGate, but it has been so long that I cannot remember who it was; it may have been Palo Alto.

I believe we have seen a return on investment in terms of fewer employees needed, but otherwise, it is outside of my scope.

I was not directly involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Fortinet FortiGate.

We did consider other options before choosing Fortinet FortiGate, but it was a straightforward decision, and I am not quite sure what the other options were.

I do not have anything that is unique to us about how we use Fortinet FortiGate in our setup.

We do not utilize Fortinet FortiGate's data center solution, and we do not feel the need to consider AI and ML enhanced FortiGuard services within Fortinet FortiGate.

I would advise others looking into using Fortinet FortiGate to make sure that they get their configurations right from the start, as that means they have less of a need to get support involved. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)