Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

The product is quite flexible.

There seems to be a lot of very useful feature sets.

Technical support is very helpful.

We found the initial setup to be pretty straightforward for the most part.

We've had issues with integration. It hasn't gone well.

We have had some stability issues.

There are some instances where configurations can get complex.

I've only really been dealing with the solution for the last six months. It hasn't been too long.

We've had some stability issues. The product could be more stable.

We are not in production just yet, and therefore it would be hard to comment on scalability.

Technical support has two tiers. Typically, if we need help, we have to reach out to Fortigate, who will direct us to help in Bangladesh. If we still need assistance, then it goes directly to Fortigate and they have engineers who can assist us.

We're largely pleased with the amount of assistance we receive. 

I've only really used Cisco solutions in the past. I've only recently been introduced to Fortinet.

The installation process is very easy with FortiGate VM. We can easily deploy it. That said, we did run into issues with some customer requirements and our engineers were forced to get involved. Occasionally, it takes too much time to configure certain aspects. However, a basic configuration is pretty easy.

I didn't require any outside help in order to deploy and configure the solution. I didn't need the help of outside consultants, integrators, or Fortinet techs.

Our clients tend to deal with the licensing aspects of the solution.

We're partners of Fortinet.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

We have been using the solution while we have been waiting for the hard drive version of the solution, which has been delayed.

I would recommend the solution to other organizations. I'd rate the product eight out of ten.

This firewall appliance is part of our overall security solution.

Using this product protects our company from attacks that come from outside of our network. At the same time, we get better speed and performance when connecting to the internet.

This product is affordable and it's a good, high-performance appliance.

The updates are regular, so we're sure that the attacks are somehow mitigated at the front-end of our gateway.

The technical support is not very responsive and is an area that needs to be improved.

We have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for almost two years.

Since we first implemented it about two years ago, we haven't experienced any major problems aside from the firmware that we needed to have upgraded.

I am okay with the scalability, although we had to upgrade the appliance as our requirements increased. We currently have more than 170 users, and we may increase our usage next year.

The technical support is not very responsive. The last time we contacted them was when we encountered slow performance because of the firmware. We needed to upgrade it.

The initial setup is very easy.

We deployed this product with the help of the vendor.

Of all the firewalls that we compared, FortiGate is the cheapest and most affordable, so we are satisfied with the pricing.

Prior to selecting FortiGate-VM, we evaluated Meraki and one other solution.

At this point, aside from technical support, we have no issues with this product. It has everything that we need at the moment, and I cannot think of any other features that should be there.

My advice for anybody who is implementing FortiGate-VM is that they need to understand how their business operates and what their requirements are. They need to understand the technology in terms of security and performance before they purchase any devices.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

In the years that we've been using this product, we've deployed it five or six times. Most of our customers have dedicated firewalls, either physical or virtual format and a few are on a shared platform. We're authorized sellers of the product and I'm the founder and managing director of our company. 

The best feature of the solution is the EPM bundle, a lot of our clients are interested in that. Truth be told, it's quite difficult to roll that out because we have very little trust in the FortiManager and the FortiAnalyzer integration and technology.

The solution could be improved by making deployment easier and dispensing with the reliance on FortiManager, as well as FortiAnalyzer to get any meaningful reporting out of it. If they could exclude both of those from the whole equation so that it bundles direct to the firewall, that would be a big improvement. It should be decoupled from the whole ecosystem, the security fabric side of it, and that would improve things. I get the feeling we have limited functionality if we just look at the data itself, and that's not cool when you're spending thousands of dollars on a product.

The technology is just not there yet in terms of UX and true integration. We have had endless woes with our Analyzer services and the Manager seems rather rudimentary on its own. We believe that the actual Fortigate should have all this disparate functionality baked-in.

I've been using this solution for close to six years. 

The stability is absolutely awful. Every time Fortinet releases a new version, there's always some bugs that you absolutely can't avoid, so stability from our perspective, in between maintaining the service on the FortiGate, is really tricky. It's difficult to trust the quality. 

The solution is scalable if you have the budget. If you don't have the budget, it's not tied into customer budgets very nicely. There are too many moving parts and it is too expensive.

Technical support is horrific, absolutely terrible. I'd give them a negative rating. 

To install a FortiGate is a complex task. The installation engineer need to be strong technically and familiar with FortiGate. The end user also needs to be well versed in their network and have a firm technical grasp on their business requirements and how those translate to what the firewall is capable of doing/ enhancing. This can drive a prolonged pre-install and installation process.

I would recommend this solution. As a piece of tech, as a firewall, it's really good. Local channel support in South Africa is very strong. The functionality of the gate is good. I think it probably surpasses many of its competitors. So I would recommend it. I'm very familiar with the realities of looking at it so I'll be very open with my customers in recommending FortiGate and at the same time explaining the pitfalls to them. 

I would rate this product a seven out of 10. 

I use FortiGate-VM for testing.

The user interface, stability, and scalability are the most valuable features. It's also simple to deploy. 

I have been using this solution for one year. 

Stability and scalability are okay. 

I haven't used technical support.

I like FortiGate-VM for constructing VPNs. It's easy to deploy. I would recommend it. It's quite easy.

I would rate FortiGate-VM a seven out of ten. Not a ten because I think that Cisco is better.

We provide Fortinet services to our clients, sometimes on-prem and sometimes on cloud. 
We are a system integrator which makes us a partner of Fortinet. I am an information technology solutions manager.

I like the web filtering and I like the IPS functionality.

Data reporting could be improved and also in terms of performance, some improvement should be made on VM, it should be more optimized. Scalability of the solution could also be improved. 

For an additional feature, Fortinet should add more SD-WAN with caching as a special functionality. It should be integrated with Fortinet. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

Stability is good enough. It's not that problematic for now.

Scalability is a problem because the solution is VM. As a VM, you cannot have much scalability.

The Fortinet technical support is generally good. There are times when we don't get an immediate response and it requires escalation but that's all. 

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment time depends on the case but can normally be done anytime from two hours to two days for it to be functional.

FortiGate-VM would be for more like a cloud or on-premise SMB environment. And for anyone wanting to scale-up and get big performance, it should be used as a physical appliance.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We primarily provide the solution to our clients. We typically use it in the financial services industry.

The solution is very easy to set up. It doesn't take a lot of time and offers a quick deployment, so you can start using it almost right away.

It's a very secure product. The security provided is excellent and an organization can feel very safe while using it.

The scalability of the solution needs to be improved.

The price model is not transparent by any means and should be made more clear. What's included in the packages is often not very obvious.

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

The stability of the solution is pretty good. We don't have any blocks and we don't have problems with the solution in terms of bugs or crashes. We have a monitor. We have an aux for many services. It really is problem-free.

The solution has some issues with scalability. I wouldn't say it's easy to scale at all.

Also, with the pricing model being so confusing, companies can't really wrap their arms around what the final pricing would be when they scale up, which makes it difficult for budgeting purposes. 

We don't use technical support from Fortinet. Rather, we get it from a local company. They are okay. They aren't terrible, however, they could be better. Their service is average at best.

The initial setup is straightforward. We didn't find it to be complex at all. 

Deployment is quick and easy. It takes a maximum of two hours to handle everything.

The pricing of the solution is strange. We don't understand exactly how it's calculated or how it works.

We recommend this firewall often and we've actually used many solutions previously. Since we chose this one, we've been overall quite happy with the results. We recommend it largely due to the fact that we use the solution ourselves. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If it wasn't for the pricing model and the scalability issues, I would rate it higher.

The client wants to use the solution for a mix of things, however, I can't recall exactly what they are at this time.

The user interface is the most valuable aspect of the solution.

It's important that, over time, the solution just keeps up with additional features. There's nothing specific that comes to mind, however, it's important for Fortinet to stay as much on the edge as possible, as far as keeping up with what's out there.

The solution is fairly complex.

I've probably been using the solution for three or four years at this point, although I'm not exactly sure.

We don't really need to worry about stability. Most of the time, what we were running into is just trying of get the client familiar enough with the solution, so that way they can deal with it going forward on their own. There's a little bit of training going on at the outset.

That's primarily why we steer clients in the direction of Fortinet. With this solution, clients have the potential to grow in the near future. It's just one of those items that we wanted to make sure they had. It's something that is robust enough to be able to handle growing. It's somewhat robust without breaking the bank, initially. 

Our organization doesn't use the solution ourselves, so we don't have a large number of users on the solution. Out of 160 people, maybe a third use it here. It's different, of course, with clients, who use it more extensively.

We've never had any technical issues on the solution and have never had to reach out to technical support. However, I've heard that they are quite helpful. I just can't personally speak to the quality or responsiveness of their services.

For those trying to troubleshoot on their own, the solution doesn't really need or have tutorials, however, you can find so much information online, it's not necessary. It would be nice it newly released features had a bit more information. It doesn't happen often, so it's not too big of an issue.

We previously worked with a lot of open source products.

The solution's initial set up was pretty complex. There were a lot of on-site VPN connections to set up, so we went through a lot of additional setup for the clients.

The deployment was pretty quicksand was probably completed in just a couple of days.

We didn't need a consultant or integrator. We handled the implementation ourselves.

Since we don't primarily work with the solution, I'm not sure what the licensing costs are.

We aren't really a customer or reseller, however, we do occasionally recommend the solution to clients from time to time.

The entity I was recently researching for was looking basically to replace some existing solutions. That was the reason why they were asking me to help them do some research. I, on a normal basis, don't do that much with it anymore. However, because I have access, I've been helping them.

I'm not using the latest version. I may be using the one before that, although I don't know the exact version number.

I would warn other organizations that there are some places where some people run into some roadblocks, and they're not sure what to do. My experience in the past has always been that, at least, the support is actually really good. Therefore, if they're running into a situation that they're not sure about, it's probably better to call and seek professional help, as opposed to trying to force it, because it can get confusing really quick.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The solution is mainly used for remote connectivity and endpoint and gateway network security.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the V-Scanner which is the monitoring software. That's something that I love. 

We are able to closely monitor the usages of individual users and see their usage habits and other items, including the data itself, which gives us quite a bit of visibility.

I think one thing we couldn't find in the software console was all of our logs. In the logs themselves, for example, we couldn't find if a user was accessing all of the VPN. We don't get to know or we don't have a report that shows on what date or for how long and from what time he user has logged on. We don't have that particular feature or that kind of visibility. That could be improved. Reporting, therefore, in general, could be improved.

The one thing that could be improved is the integration with the exchange. The gateway level controls can be enhanced a bit more. For example, it's still little here and there. You do get malicious attacks and suspicious emails like spam. It's not like Sophos where we got a lot of spam email, and yet, it's still relatively vulnerable. It can be upgraded, maybe with a fifth-generation firmware that it is ready for unknown threats. 

Especially after this pandemic situation, it requires a little more enhancement. For an SME level organization, it's okay, but when it comes to corporate and banking enterprises it still requires a lot of enhancement. Comparing it to Palo Alto, for example, it's still very behind the curve.

We've been using the solution for two years.

The solution is very stable. It's reliable, for the most part.

It's stable, comparatively, to the fifth generation UDL appliances or other software that is available in the market. It's quite stable for the integration. It still requires more of a formal enhancement for speedy patches and speedy updates.

The solution has a moderate amount of scalability potential. I wouldn't say it's the best, however, it is possible to scale it if you need to.

We have about 25-30 people on the VM currently.

We've never had to contact Fortigate's technical support, so I can't speak to their quality of service. If we have any issues on the solution, we tend to handle the problem internally.

We used to have Sophos and we shifted to Fortinet about two years ago.

The integration of the active directory with Sophos was not up to spec. We decided to drop it and instead went ahead with Fortinet.

The initial setup was a bit difficult. It's not perfectly straightforward. This may have been due to the fact that we were using ISA, which is pretty determined, and we had to migrate from ISA to Sophos and from Sophos to Fortinet. It was a little difficult, but not that complex.

For us, the implementation took about two weeks.

Each quarter we have a managed service contract with the integrator and they do any preventative maintenance every quarter. We have four visits in a year that we have agreed upon. Every quarter they come to us and they do some penetration testing and see the usability features and give us a report.

We outsourced the implementation to an integrator that handled the setup for us. They also handle quarterly maintenance for us.

The pricing of the solution is moderate. It's competitive, although I wouldn't consider it a cheap solution per se.

Aside from the licensing, there are some add-ons that need to be added that we personally haven't added. There are features such as content filtering, etc., that we haven't opted for. However, users can add them on if they need to for an additional cost.

We're just customers. We don't have a professional relationship with the organization. We're using the latest version of the solution.

I have learned that they have some internal resources available. However, those who are not trained and certified should not be experimenting with it. 

I'd advise other organizations that, if they don't have a proper administrator who can monitor and maintain their appliance, it's better they if don't implement it. It's not like somebody who has a background of software can handle Fortinet. They need to be properly trained and knowledgable.

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

We primarily use this solution for the firewall and IPS.

The most valuable feature is the UTM, which gives them an advantage over other firewalls.

The reporting is not as good as it is with other firewalls and it should be improved. There should be a customized report, for example.

The dashboard seems to change quickly from version to version, and they should follow the lead of vendors like Palo Alto, Juniper, and Cisco, and always keep it the same.

The bandwidth limitations should be increased.

I have been using FortiGate-VM for approximately one year.

FortiGate-VM is stable and I have not faced any problems with it.

It is working fine and I have had no trouble with scalability.

We have very rarely had to contact Fortinet about anything. When we have a problem then we have local support with our vendor. They will send their technical people if we need help on-site. We are very satisfied with our local experts.

I have worked with McAfee for a long time. The only thing that is better with McAfee is reporting, which is very good. They offer customized reports. We have decided to keep McAfee as our endpoint solution and use FortiGate-VM as our firewall.

The initial setup is very easy. Somebody who has a little bit of experience in VMware or with firewalls will be able to do it in no time.

There is a benefit in terms of the cost of using this solution because the price is very good. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I tried SonicWall, Cisco ASA & Sophos but Fortinet is best among them in term of service and price.

I will say that for low-end firewalls, Fortinet is good compared to the others. The pricing is good, and when you need a new feature, you don't have to buy a new device.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution simply for its firewall functionality. It's the main reason we use it.

For myself, the UI is pretty much perfect. It's much easier to work with than Cisco's FirePOWER, for example. I prefer the way it is designed above everything else, even though Cisco may be better for a different reason. Fortigate is just hands down more intuitive and therefore users need less training. While a non-tech person may need a bit of training in terms of configuration, it's still easier than Cisco.

In terms of general features, I find Fortigate and Cisco very comparable. They technically do the same things. Both can drill down by IP or region, so, application-wise, they're very much the same. 

The stability could be improved. I find Cisco to be more stable than Fortigate, which is I major differentiator between the two.

I haven't really explored the cloud too much, as we deal mostly with an on-premises system. However, now with everyone working from home due to COVID-19, it's something I'm beginning to explore and something I think Fortigate needs to invest in and expand on. If they could do something that integrates the cloud effectively, maybe with a cloud provider like Azure, that would be helpful.

Fortigate could speed up its level of customer service in our region.

I've been using the solution for quite a few years now. It's been perhaps five or six years in total.

While the stability maybe isn't quite to the level of Cisco, it is a very cost-effective solution. It's cheap compared to Cisco. Licensing is very, very easy. It's much, much easier than Cisco where licensing is a pain. The Cisco licensing is very difficult to configure, which makes Fortigate a more attractive alternative even with less stability. 

That said, after working with Fortigate for many years, I haven't really encountered a lot of crashes or glitches. The hardware is very, very good. Once a power adapter failed on us and we just replaced it on the device and it was able to recover. With ASA, I can say so far so good. The hardware's really good. They've improved a lot of the hardware specs.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. If a company needs to build it out or expand, they really shouldn't have any issues.

The customer support for Fortigate is fine. Compared to Cisco, however, I would say Cisco's response might be a bit faster. If a device fails, they'll be onsite to replace it themselves. In my region, in terms of Fortigate's response to a similar event, users would have to go through the distributor and not directly to Fortigate. That's why it takes longer. It could be a bit easier, and if they did it a bit more like Cisco, I think it would be better. However, Fortigate's response isn't bad.

The initial setup was straightforward. A company just needs to get requirements from its customers and then they can just deploy. It's not complex at all.

Deployment takes about two weeks. The setup itself is very fast and you will have limited downtime. However, there will be fine-tuning that will be required and this may take weeks. If a customer gives new requirements at any time, you'll need to make some tweaks.

With Cisco, licensing is quite complex, but with Fortigate, you simply need to buy a bundle and they give you everything you'll require.

Right now, I'm also interested in learning more about Cisco, and how it compares to Fortigate. I know Cisco quite well, but I've never directly compared Cisco and Fortigate together before. Of course, I still believe I know Fortigate better.

We're resellers of both Cisco and Fortigate solutions.

I'd advise other companies or users to give a try. The Virtual Appliance is very easy to set up. In terms of scalability, it's easy enough to expand out, especially if you compare it to the hardware. For the virtual solution, it's easily upgraded. For the physical, you need to do a POC.

It really depends on what kind of distributor a company is working with. Some provide you all the resources. Others don't. I'm not sure how it works with the Cisco Virtual Appliance. For Cisco, I only know about the cloud. 

Normally, I provide my customer with Meraki. I won't provide a Cisco solution, even though Meraki is part of Cisco.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. There's still room for improvement. There could be a bit better support and not all solution providers offer this kind of Virtual Appliance in my region. Once more people use it, they may begin to improve on it even more.