Fortinet FortiOS Reviews

We are system integrators and we deploy firewalls for our customers. I'm the CTO and we are partners with Fortinet. 

Fortinet is a feature-rich firewall. The ease of use is one of the primary advantages of this product. It has a very simple OS and things are pretty easy to do. Fortinet has a good price point which is one of the reasons it's so popular. It's also a good security product. With Fortinet, the link balancing features are easier to use compared to other firewalls. 

We have had some performance issues, but that seems to be improving. I'd like to see better integrations and more flexibility for different scenario configurations. In comparison to Cisco, the CLI is quite difficult to use. Finally, I believe that the reporting could be enhanced to provide better visibility into the traffic. 

As an additional feature, Fortinet could have XDR embedded into it which would mean more visibility from the reporting side because right now we have to separately install FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer for driver analysis.

We've been using this solution for over five years. 

Fortinet is a pretty stable product. 

Fortinet still has to prove themselves when it comes to higher throughput cases, because there are many places where other brands are placed with higher throughput than Fortinet. When we enable all the features, sometimes the performance migration is more significant compared to Fortinet's claims of what it should be, so that needs to be better matched. 

I think Fortinet needs to improve their support. They are not one of the gold star rating support companies. There are a few big vendors like Cisco, EMC, VMware with gold star support rating. The support is sometimes not up to the mark. 

The initial setup is quite straightforward. 

We generally deploy Fortinet, Cisco and occasionally Palo Alto which is an expensive firewall so less companies use it. We deploy Cisco and Fortinet frequently. When it comes to performance and price, Palo Alto is at the top on both counts. 

I rate the solution seven out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution as a firewall. It's protecting customers from the internet to have access to servers behind the firewall.

We co-locate customers' servers at our company, and we also give them firewall protection. Mostly, people that co-locate a server don't have any firewall so they ask for the service through us.

The solution is very user friendly. 

The product is very easy to configure, compared to other firewalls that I've worked with.

Fortinet needs to make this solution even more robust. Sometimes when we get a DDoS attack, the cannot withstand it. We can run out of sessions very easily. That said, I suppose if you want more a robust system, then you could purchase higher-end solutions, which are more expensive. Still, I would like to see more protection from even in the low-end version.

The pricing needs to be improved. It's quite pricey.

In terms of the CLI, if they could make it more intuitive, and more user friendly, it would make the solution better. I like to work on CLI instead of through the GUI. If you are used to it then you wouldn't mind the way it works right now. However, for those that don't, there's just a sizeable learning curve.

I have been dealing with the solution for three and a half or four years.

The solution doesn't really scale. If you want a bigger box, you need to scrap the box you have and trade up to get the larger capacity. You can't just "add" to it per se on existing solutions you've bought. It's hardware, so it doesn't scale well.

We're not looking to increase our usage right now. COVID-19 really slowed us down in a lot of ways.

We have a local supplier that helps us a lot every time we need to open a ticket. So far we haven't had that many issues. The few ones that we have had, we didn't have any problems with opening up tickets and getting support.

The solution is not complex at all. I'd say it's very easy. There's a learning curve, however, once you're used to the device, it's very easy to set up a firewall. It's fairly straightforward.

The solution is too expensive. If they could push down their prices, that would be great. However, I'm not in charge of purchasing. I wouldn't know about the exact costs.

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

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Most of our customers that we implemented Fortinet FortiOS for we support and manage the FortiGate. Most of them use all the UTM features, such as web features, application control, intrusion prevention, and SSL inspection. We do have some customers who do not use these features. They mostly use IPsec, VPN concentrator, but no security features, we only have two specific cases. Most of our clients prefer to use FortiGate because of all the security features.

The interface is good.

There are some features for FortiGate using FortiOS that can only be enabled via a command line. These aren't very advanced features they have been part of FortiOS for quite some time but they still aren't accessible from the graphical user interface. It makes it a little bit harder than it should be for us to manage the solution. That's my main concern with the user interface. Another concern we have is some elements for the user interface, if they're not properly configured, it could lead to hardware and performance degradation.

We have had some cases where the entire hardware is at a lockout. This means the CPU is  100% consumed and requires a reboot because of a malfunction with the graphical user interface dashboard widget. This is something that we saw a few years ago. We haven't had any new experience with this same issue. However, I'm not sure if that's because Fortinet fixed them, or because we have mow avoid using those specific regions.

I have used Fortinet FortiOS within the last 12 months.

Fortinet FortiOS is stable.

I have found Fortinet FortiOS to be scalable.

We have approximately 200 users using this solution.

We have used work with many antivirus solutions, such as Trend Micro, CrowdStrike, and Kaspersky. The antivirus engine could use some improvement when comparing Fortinet with other vendors.

I have been doing the installation of Fortinet FortiOS for five years and I am used to doing them. For someone who is new, I do see some difficulties for them to learn how to do it.

The process could be better.

For approximately 200 employees we have at least two engineers and some junior analysts for the day-to-day operation.

The Fortinet solutions can be a bit expensive.

The most advanced solution Fortinet has is intruder prevention.

My advice to those wanting to implement Fortinet FortiOS is they should do a site survey, but not exactly the site survey. They need to study and scale the environment for which they want to implement the FortiGate solution. FortiGate solutions aren't exactly cheap, but if they undersize the environment and they purchase or implement FortiGate solutions that are not good enough power-wise for the environment that's being used, it could lead to problems. Although it is a stable solution, it is prone to lockouts if it goes above the recommended use cases. Proper sizing of the environment is very important.

I rate Fortinet FortiOS an eight out of ten.

We use Fortinet FortiOS as a perimeter firewall. On top of that, we use another application as a web application firewall.

Great logging analsys with fortianalyzer

FortiVPN I think is the only one vpn that can be shared with customers and employees, however another features is FortiVM that allow us to have onne solution from Onpremise datacenter to cloud datacenters.

Docker Container to have a good integration with kubernetes and more throughput as Cisco FP

My impression of the stability of the solution is good just one support case opened to fortinet, in next firewall update I will choose again fortinet

We currently have 200 users, and we plan to increase them, so I believe in his scalability while users increase.

The technical support is great, good solutions and an excellent proactivity.

I used Palo Alto NG Firewalls before but I wasn't impressed by the features it offer and the  price was also too high.

I did the installation myself but I can't remember if the initial setup was easy. I remember the deployment took about five days. It was very long ago, so I can't remember well.

I've implemented it by myself with another colleague, probably in next firewall update I will engage the vendor team.

We pay an annual license fee. It is rather expensive so I would like to perhaps see a drop in price in the future.

I didn't evaluate other options because I like the experience I had with Fortinet, so I simply prefer Fortinet.

My advice to other customers would be to have good knowledge about the traffic in their network. In the future, I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards and a drop in the price. My rating for this solution is therefore only eight out of ten. 

This is a user friendly solution and offers comprehensive integrations. 

The reporting for this solution could be improved. It could also be more stable and offer better pricing. 

I have been using this solution for five years. 

The customer support for this solution is good and user-friendly.

Positive

Installation takes two minutes.

If you are able to afford it, I would recommend Fortinet. 

Our primary use case for this solution is for firewalls and the efficient fulfillment of orders. Additionally, with Fortinet FortiOS, you get other features like inbuilt SD-WAN, where the customers are ready to deploy once they move into the SD-WAN features. So there are several additional features within the OS and integration with third-party software, other vendors and third-party solutions. So the integrability, adaptability, and value addition of the OS play a significant role.

We have found the inbuilt SD-WAN most valuable. For example, with FortiGates, we refer to it as being SD-WAN-ready because the customer has to buy it in the box, and the OS supports it by building a connection between two units. Also, regarding the OS integrability with other third parties, for example, with Ciga Group, you can deploy a unit in Sri Lanka, and the customer may have another unit in a different geography. Within Fortinet FortiOS and other competitive products, it's integrative, so it's used for data flexibility.

The solution is good but could be improved by supporting an allocation of quota base management regarding user data.

We have been using this solution for three years.

I rate customer service and support a ten out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward, and it is very customer friendly. Fortinet FortiOS quickly provides many complex solutions when we deploy a simple firewall. So it's named one of the most customer-friendly OSs in the industry in Sri Lanka and globally. Therefore, customizability allows you to deploy the boxes and register a serial number. Eight people on our technical team are involved in deployment. I rate the initial setup process as nine out of ten.

I cannot comment on licensing costs as a different department handles that.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiOS are the SD-WAN, SSL inspection, and IDS/IPS functions.

Fortinet FortiOS can improve the monitoring function, it could be more accurate, easy to use, and understandable.

I have been using Fortinet FortiOS for approximately two years.

The stability of Fortinet FortiOS can improve.

I rate the stability of Fortinet FortiOS a nine out of ten.

My colleagues like the FortiOS because it is simple, and the easiest to understand. We have approximately 300 users that are using this solution.

I have used the support from Fortinet FortiOS. Some of the engineers who take our tickets are good but others take unnecessary steps for verification before addressing the problem.

I rate the support from Fortinet FortiOS a four out of five.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiOS is simple.

The best solution in the category including the price in Thailand is Fortinet FortiOS.

When comparing Fortinet, Forcepoint, and Sophos, Fortinet FortiOS is the best solution.

I rate Fortinet FortiOS an eight out of ten.

We are using Fortinet FortiOS for our core network next-generation firewall.

The most valuable features are the ease of use, and the overall simplicity, everyone can use it with a small introduction.

I have been using Fortinet FortiOS for approximately 10 years.

Fortinet FortiOS is highly stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have approximately five administrators that are using the solution in my organization.

The technical support is good. However, during the holidays they can get a little slow to respond.

The installation is straightforward and simple to deploy.

I can do the implementation myself.

The solution could have a better licensing model. It's a bit more expensive than other solutions. The annual subscription is very pricy in Fortinet. The cost could be reduced.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Fortinet FortiOS  a nine out of ten.