We performed a comparison between Fortinet Fortigate and Fortinet Fortigate VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Fortinet Fortigate is the winner in this comparison. According to reviews, it has better support than Fortinet Fortigate VM.
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"There is an easy process for configuring it, and it is straightforward to implement the device from scratch."
"There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"Use of this product does not require daily interactions."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM is purpose-built as a next-generation firewall, excelling in its performance of this specific function."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"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."
"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues at all while using the product."
"The thing that I like the most is that they're very willing to work with us to resolve issues that they haven't taken care of before in their product."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are the servers, analyzer, and track protection."
"The most valuable feature is that its IPsec works perfectly."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."
"The Web-filter in this solution is not very good."
"The captive portal could be improved."
"Backup can be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM should improve its asset identification, wherein the device can identify assets on the network, like computers."
"Their offering for MFA isn't the cleanest."
"SD-WAN could be enhanced to provide a clear division between control and data planes, utilizing controllers to manage tasks within the network."
"Some issues with connecting to the VPN from home after firmware updates."
"The GUI could be improved."
"We have had some stability issues."
"his is not a good solution for enterprises. It's better for smaller companies."
"The graphical user interface should be enhanced."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and SonicWall NSa, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
Purpose-built appliances offer tested performance measures and provide proven results for the specified traffic and service configuration.
VM can only provide vCPUs, RAM, and hard disk resources. However, in some cloud environments, you only have the VM option, no appliances accepted.
We have several Fortigate VM firewalls operating for 3 years now in the cloud and appliances in our centers that handle the traffic just fine. We have not had to increase the resources above the recommendations and they work just fine.
FortiGate VM
Virtual machines are less efficient than real machines because they access the hardware indirectly.
FortiGate Hardware
Fortigate appliance is purpose built with NPU and SPUs designed to increase throughput while maximizing the ability to decrypt packets in search of malware.
VM deployments are software only and do not include the NPU and SPUs.