Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

We are using an IPS and an IDS at the moment. 

Before using Fortinet, the company had an attack (DDoS) from the outside and had many points of failure, when they started to use Fortinet, I think the attacks stopped. The DDoS attacks were no more. This was from 2015.

It is very useful to make lists for rules and prepare firewall rules.

It is stable. We have not had a bad experience with the Fortinet firewall.

Not really, but it does have it limits.

The technical support will reply quickly and everything will be okay.

The customer care center of Fortinet is good. For all the requests that we have done, they work as fast as possible, so this is a good point for Fortinet.

I have previously used pfSense (open source) before joining this company.

However, the company has been using Fortinet for a long time.

The first setup is easy and very simple. After that, you may require assistance implementing the new rules.

The price: It is a bit higher than the other competitors. This is why I started to look at other brands. For example, I am looking at Sophos firewall and whether it can meet our requirements, since I am sure that their price would be cheaper than Fortinet.

I would recommend a company to use Fortinet, because it is an attractive solution. No bugs with a very easy installation guide, and also the support and the customer care, are very important. 

Fortinet is a nice solution with economic interfaces and a very useful installation guide. Very nice customer care, too, but the price, it is sometimes very expensive.

I work with a lot of small business companies in Austria. Small businesses in Austria are from one to 100 employees. The FortiGate 60E is a top product for these Austrian companies for all cases of Internet usage.

There is an interesting possibility of building a tunnel to a firewall from access points. We use this feature for small branch offices with one to two employees with access to central RDP servers.

One top feature is the ability to use the appliance as a WLAN controller for up to 10 access points with the new 5.6 firmware.

Another top feature is the really good web interface and the classic Fortinet features, such as IPS, IDS, AV scanner, and spam filter.

At this time, I can't say anything against the device. It has been doing a great job.

In the first two releases of FortiOS 5.6, we had some trouble with the SSL VPN service. Sometimes it stopped working, and the IPS daemon too. Since 5.6.2, it has been running without any issues.

There are no problems with the scalability.

There are only two times that I had to contact Fortinet support since I have used Fortinet devices (15 years). Here in Austria, the distributor is doing a great job. It is very good to have the ability to contact an NSE 8.

For somebody who does not have experience with Fortinet appliances, the initial setup is very easy, but basic networking knowledge is necessary. The Setup Assistant will guide you through the first steps, and you can config basic settings for basic security.

The basic pricing in Austria is OK, but asking for special offers, e.g., NPOs, NGOs, trade up, and/or trade in, is always useful.

No, I did not evaluate other products.

Look for the latest OS version, read the release notes and the technical documents for comparison.

The improvement was felt in the traffic use. Without the firewall, there is unauthorized traffic coming in from the Internet. We can’t be sure whether it is legit traffic or something malicious. With this solution, all unauthorized traffic is filtered out.

The most valuable features are the firewall and security. They filter out unwanted connections.

We are using a product from eight years ago. I am sure there have been improvements in the newer versions. Improvements on the following are needed:

1. Responsive UI
2. JIT and detailed traffic reporting.

There are no stability issues.

We did scaled up quite well. We moved our locations from 10 to 20 people accessing it to 100s of people. It could handle the traffic load well enough.

I have not requested tech support (all these years).

No.

Initial setup was quite straightforward, as we can simply head to the required sections to apply the planned network.

I have yet to research a hardware replacement. If anything, I am the one that needs some advice!

I can't remember.

This product surely will fit your basic needs at the very least. However, always match up the specifications of the products you will buy to your current and future needs.

We use it our network, not in the cloud.

It is a firewall. We use it to ensure that our network is properly protected from viruses and malware.

The best part of Fortinet is the license is bundled together, so it is easy to use and apply.

The management tools should be more user-friendly.

No issues.

No issues.

I would rate technical support as a seven out of 10.

We previously used Fortinet 620B.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. 

You The initial setup was quite straightforward. 

The price is expensive compared with other vendors, like Cisco and Huawei. However, the performance is good.

We evaluated Cisco, Huawei, and Palo Alto. 

If you have enough budget and care about performance, Fortinet is a good choice.

There have been no improvements. We would just use another device if this one did not exist.

None of them. It is a classic firewall, but better than the free versions.

Yes, we encountered stability issues in IPSec Module. The tunnels freeze sometimes.

Yes, we encountered scalability issues in IPSec Module. The tunnels freeze sometimes.

I would give technical support a rating of a nine out of 10. 

I used SonicWall, before they were sold to Dell. After Dell bought them, some issues came out.

I used Check Point, which was terrible for me. You can do almost nothing without software. The web interface does nothing. I do not like solutions with many components. In Check Point, you need to use over three interface to dig up anything.

I used Palo Alto 3020. It is a marvellous solution, but a bit expensive against its competitors. You can do everything in the web interface. There is no need for any installation (does not exist) and to manage it. It works quickly changing configuration and applying configuration. (Comparatively, FortiGate is fast in applying configuration.) You can easily rollback the previous configuration and backup configuration in Palo Alto. The firmware upgrade is like a baby's toy in Palo Alto.

İt is not fast to rollback config in SonicWall.

I used Untangle, pfSense, etc. However, there is no need to talk about them.

The pricing and licensing are not as expensive as its competitors. This applies to SonicWall, too.

Check Point and Palo Alto are very expensive solutions, because of the ownership and renewal costs.

I evaluated different options before choosing FortiGate. It has four separate modules which give fast reactions when it is analysing. It has an app ID and user ID option, which are the most important.

Be aware of your own requirements.

Use of this product does not require daily interactions, like our previous firewall service option.

Simplicity of daily operations would be my favorite facet of this gem.

No issues. Operations have been flawless, so far.

No issues noted.

Technical support has been super responsive and dedicated to getting any challenges resolved.

We had a previous solution and switched due to a corporate decision to eliminate some subscription fees.

This product was nearly plug and play. There are some tables and rules to make custom decisions based on our daily workloads and philosophy as an educational setting.

I was not involved in that aspect. Therefore, I cannot provide information along these lines.

I was not involved in the corporate decision-making.

Draw out a plan of what traffic to unconditionally allow (whitelist) and what traffic to restrict under what conditions, before you even unwrap the box.

It has taken me a little while to gain confidence in this product, but I am there now. There were challenges during setup, and many of them were self-inflicted.

High network throughput while providing leading edge network security technology for a competitive price.

Real-time sandboxing with the FortiGate UTM network.

The user interface (UI) and the performance of interface both need improvement.

No issues.

No issues.

I would rate technical support with a 10 out of 10 (perfect score).

Our previous solution simply did not live up to expectations.

Setup is straightforward. I am certified in the Fortinet line of solutions. Even without this knowledge, it is easy to adjust the product to your requirements.

It is on par with what you receive. It can be expensive upfront. 

It would be nice to have the ability to extend FortiGuard subscriptions at a reasonable yearly cost versus a bulk three year pricing.

We evaluated Cisco, Meraki, SonicWall, and Juniper.

Having support from your vendor is nice. Calling Fortinet directly with a support contract, they will help you take care of all your requirements. 

It has allowed us to centralize every network service into one appliance, administrating all traffic going in and out of my company. Its given us only one point of monitoring and auditing, getting us visibility of all network traffic in an easy way. 

The UTM. In particular, the IPS module is my favorite because of the security advantage reached with a few clicks and its automatic updates.

Yes, we have experience stability issues, when the product sizing is wrong or on configuration errors.

Yes, we have experience scalability issues, but only when the product sizing is wrong.

Technical support is good.

We previously used mostly Cisco products. We changed because of support and feature costs.

It is always complex when you migrate from a complex solution to another one.

It is an expensive solution if you are migrating from an open source solution. 

If you are in a licensed solution, like Cisco or Palo Alto, it is cheaper. I do recommend using it with a license, because it is a security solution and it needs updates.

Cisco, Sophos, and SonicWall.

I recommend it 100%. Go ahead and implement it.

We are implementers of Fortinet among other things (Cisco, Sophos, HPE Networking, VMware, EMC, Zimbra, etc.).

From security changes to VPN setup to web filtering, changes happen now more quickly.

The web GUI is easy to use. 

The tech support calls were not the best and could be improved. There have been times when we felt as if we knew more about the device than the support person on the phone. 

No issues.

No issues.

I would rate technical support as a seven out of 10. It is hit or miss. Most hits, but a few tech support calls were not the best.

We used ASA (ASA 5510) before this. You had to have ASDM loaded and fight with different versions of Java just to administer the device.

We needed to do an upgrade, and for the cost of a new ASA, we got two FortiGates which have a web GUI that do not rely on Java.

Initial setup is very straightforward with a wizard, if needed.

Not applicable.

No, we did not evaluate other options. It was the firewall rated numerically behind Palo Alto, and we could afford this one.

It was no different than any other rollout. Do as much configuring before dropping it into your environment (especially if you are using content filtering with multiple groups) and make sure you are able to rollback to the old device, if necessary. 

We can control application filtering and UTM with Fortinet FortiGate-VM. We rely on it for configuring IP address filters, VPN settings, and point-to-site connections. We haven't encountered any issues with its use cases as a firewall.

The tool ensures inbound traffic, specifically on a specific port. We have Fortinet FortiGate-VM as well as F5 for application support.

It gives us an enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured.

The price and licensing of the solution can be better.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for 3 to 4 years. We are using the V7.4 of the solution.

I rate the solution’s stability a six out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

We have used Sophos and Palo Alto before. Palo Alto is expensive. Fortinet’s UI is more user-friendly. You can easily understand the source and destination requests.

We have not faced any difficulty. We recently migrated our data center from on-prem to the cloud and then established the firewall.

The solution is more reliable for firewalls.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.