Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

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.

We primarily use the solution for the security so that our systems will not be penetrated externally.

The security the solution provides is its most valuable feature. All the basic security we need is found within this product.

The functionality provided is very good.

It integrates well with FortiMail and the two combined add a nice layer of security for our on-prem emails.

As we just began implementing the solution, I'm not sure if there are any features missing. We haven't come across any shortcomings in the product yet.

We purchased the product through a reseller, and we don't have any issues with them and therefore, so far, don't have any issues with the solution itself.

The product may not be as robust as Palo Alto. However, unless you are a big bank, you probably won't need it to be.

This is the first time we've acquired a firewall. It's pretty much a new experience on our end. We haven't been using it long at all. 

We haven't had any issues when it comes to stability. It's been very good.

The scalability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues with expansion.

We have yet to contact technical support, as we've just started to use the product and haven't had any issues to speak of so far.

This is our first firewall. We didn't previously have a different solution.

The solution's setup was pretty straightforward. It took the team about two to three weeks to deploy it.

We had a reseller assist us with the implementation.

Fortigate is cheaper if you compare it to Palo Alto, a main competitor.

Our team evaluated Palo Alto as well, although I did not evaluate it directly. I'm not sure what the main difference was between Palo Alto and Fortigate.

However, we have evaluated Fortinet for the last four or five months and now we're officially acquiring the licenses for it. 

I believe the pricing was a big part of the decision to choose Fortigate.

We've also recently acquired FortiMail as well.

This solution has the basic functionalities required for a firewall. In fact, in terms of our evaluation, it's basic functionalities are enough for us. If I were to compare it to Palo Alto, it does not necessarily have the full capability of that particular solution. We're not a bank. We don't belong to the banking industry so we don't really need such high caliber firewalls that provide multiple levels of security. It's not required with our industry, so a mid-range firewall like Fortigate is perfect.

If your business is small or even enterprise-level, if it doesn't necessarily need multiple or heavy firewalls, Fortigate will actually work just fine for you.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It perfectly meets our requirements.

I am a design engineer and we are designing a security operation center for data censoring in Turkey.

We are using FortiGate to protect more than 3000 end users.

More than one gigabyte per second bandwidth is necessary. FortiGate was quite useful for this scenario, but we are just in the planning and analyzing phase. The tender should be in the near future.

The most valuable features are the web proxy for protection and web gateway for deployment.

Pricing should be more competitive, it's expensive.

In the next release, I would like to see integration capability with SIEM tools, such as QRadar, and LogRhythm.

I have been using this solution for more than five years.

This solution is stable.

From the datasheets that I have read, I can see from its specifications that it is scalable.

In this project, we have more than 3000 end users. Most of the users are security admins and security engineers.

I have not contacted technical support.

The price is similar to Symantec Endpoint, but it's more expensive than Forcepoint solutions. Fortinet is better than Forcepoint.

I don't see that it's a problem concerning the pricing, but it is expensive for Turkey.

We do not pay any additional costs for technical support or additional features.

I would recommend using Fortinet, especially its web security proxy and web security gate because it is quite useful for them.

I would suggest this solution.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for LAN connections.

The solution has similar attributes to other competitors. 

The encryption detection is good.

In terms of administration, it's perfect.

The encryption detection could be improved. In my opinion, I think Sophos has better encryption detection than this solution.

The security of the solution could be better.

The interface needs to be updated and simplified.

The management could be more in-depth or clear. 

I've been using the solution for close to a year now. I've also been working with Fortigate's firewall solution for about two and a half years.

We haven't faced any issues with stability since I've been with the company. I haven't witnessed any bugs or glitches. Our organization is satisfied with the level of stability it has provided.

About 50% of our network users are currently on the solution. For the two companies that we have on the solution currently, there's probably 100 users in each company that use the solution.

I personally have never been in touch with technical support for Fortigate. I can't speak to any kind of experience. I have heard good reviews from other people, however.

I've used Sophos in the past.

There are some technical issues with Sophos, at least on the older version, but with XG they kind-of did an upgrade. The interface of Sophos is great. It makes it easy to manage. In terms of functionality, both Fortigate and Sophos are very good and have almost the same functionality. It does depend on the license you apply for, however.

If you subscribe to Sandstorm in Sophos, you should expect that you get the functionality of Sandstorm. 

They are both quite equal on the market for the most part.

In terms of the initial setup, a vendor did that for us. We just manage it. The solution was already in place before I started at the company. I don't have details in relation to its initial complexity or how long it took.

Our vendor set up the solution for us.

At this time, I'm unsure of what the costs related to the solution are. It's my understanding that support is part of the OEM fee and you do have to pay that yearly. However, it does depend on the arrangements with the OEM.

We did look at Barracuda, but we decided against them because it gets a bit too technical. Also, unlike Sophos, for example, you can't pick the license you want and instead have to buy a package that may include things you don't need. Barracuda's interface looks like something designed in the 90s as well, which was a turn-off.

We used to be on the cloud, but we phased it out more than a year ago.

I'd recommend the solution. It's one of the best on the market. It's great for financial services institutions. Security is important because of the type of companies that are typically dealing with it.

I'd advise that users use it within a firewall, to create a double layer of protection or something similar.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten, especially when comparing it to other solutions.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

The most valuables features are the ease of use and deployment. 

It is easy to back up and easy to transport.

This is a flexible solution.

Our customers are happy with the performance and capacity.

The user interface is ok and we haven't had any problems with it.

The price of FortiGate-VM is high and should be more competitive.

In the next release, we would like to see full integration with VMware NSX virtualized networks.

We began working with this appliance about five years ago.

This is a reliable solution and we haven't had any issues with the virtual appliance.

This is a largely scalable and flexible solution.

We have not been in contact with technical support.

I have personal experience with Palo Alto, Check Point, pfSense, and SonicWall.

This solution is very expensive. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I have tested virtual appliances from almost every vendor and the only ones that I can recommend are those from Fortinet. Many do not have the maturity or a proper licensing model, whereas others lack performance optimization for the virtual scenarios, and some vendors lack field engineering experience.

Our customers for this virtual appliance are very happy with their deployments and I recommend it. This is not a perfect solution but we are not seeking one. Every product has room for improvement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use cases are using the solution as a configuring solution or data management. We use it for simple data center segmentation.

We got a PCL segmentation instance that has been replaced with a virtual instance. This has benefitted our organization by quite a bit.

The solution's most valuable aspects are IPS and the signature.

I don't see any specific features that are missing from the solution right now.

The user interface needs to be improved.

I've been using the solution for about six to seven months now.

The stability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues at all while using the product.

I haven't attempted to scale the solution, so I can't speak to how easy or hard it would be to expand it.

In our organization, we currently have 500 users on the solution. They're mostly end-users and admins.

We were previously using Palo Alto before we switched to Fortigate. We switched after seeing the solution on a commercial.

The initial setup was not complex. The implementation proved to be straightforward.

The project took about one week in total, including deployment and configuration.

There was only a single person needed to handle the deployment process.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. I only really use the solution for communication and ordering support.

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

FortiGate-VM is installed in our data centers and is used for site-to-site connections between offices. 

The most valuable features are site-to-site connections and UTM.

When new versions are deployed they tend to be a little buggy, so they should be more fully tested before release.

I have been using this solution for about a year.

We have had no issues with respect to stability, except that when new versions are released we do notice problems.

Scalability has not been a problem.

We have contacted technical support at times when the appliance was not working well and they were ok. We have no issues with support.

I also use Cisco equipment and the main difference is that Cisco is more expensive.

The initial setup is not very complex and involved only a few settings.

The deployment took us a couple of days.

We had assistance during our implementation and we were satisfied with the service.

The price of this product is great compared to others.

Overall, this is a good product with good features and priced well compared to others. It is GUI-based and I am happy with the interface. I would recommend it and cannot think of any changes that I would make. The only problem is that new releases tend to be a little buggy.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.