KerioControl vs Meraki MX comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
306
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (2nd), WAN Edge (1st)
KerioControl
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (29th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (18th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (11th)
Meraki MX
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (2nd)
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Unified Threat Management (UTM) category, the market share of Fortinet FortiGate is 224.2% and it increased by 17.1% compared to the previous year. The market share of KerioControl is 11.8% and it increased by 158.4% compared to the previous year. The market share of Meraki MX is 19.9% and it increased by 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Unified Threat Management (UTM)
Unique Categories:
Firewalls
22.9%
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
21.5%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
2.3%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

Viraj Fernandopulle - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 7, 2024
Includes built-in APIs, is easy to deploy, and provides good insight into our network
FortiGate offers visibility into the types, brands, versions, and users of connected devices. This visibility is crucial for our industrial devices, as their reliable operation is essential to our business. Fortinet Security Fabric empowers us to comply with regulations, governance, and compliance requirements across regions like the US and Europe, ensuring smooth operations for our global business. FortiGate's built-in APIs enable us to integrate with the vendors of our choice. Fortinet's FortiGate is easy to deploy in our environment thanks to its well-written and easy-to-follow documentation. FortiGate is a highly benchmarked product that improves efficiency and adds value to our organization. Although we don't see a benefit overnight, we gradually see the benefits of FortiGate over the years. It has provided a lot of insight into our organization's activities. FortiGate significantly helped reduce the risk of cyberattacks that could disrupt our production. This has protected us against financial losses. Fortinet has its management suite so it helps to centralize the management of network and security operations in our company. This helps us easily manage the issues and solutions that are required. Fortinet FortiGate provides us with actionable data to inform our decisions about the most appropriate course of action. It delivers insights into resource consumption and compromised hosts, helping us identify the source of unauthorized login attempts. This comprehensive view allows us to understand what's entering our network. Fortinet Security Fabric improved security across our industrial control systems. Fortinet FortiGate helped reduce our mean time to remediate. Fortinet FortiGate helped to mature our approach to cybersecurity for protecting our industrial equipment. The level of detail we can see regarding incoming traffic and ongoing activities is quite high. This detailed visibility extends to host configuration and other such aspects, providing us with valuable insights. As a result, Fortinet can provide a clear understanding of how to manage our network and quickly mitigate any issues that may arise.
RB
Jun 25, 2020
VPN enables us to do remote work and we can better manage security
It is scalable up to a point that then you might have to use a user faster, bigger one, but on the whole, it is scalable. It's because based most installations I have are over 300. Whereas if they start to get really big, you'll need to increase the model to the next model up. In my company, it's me that manages and installs them all. We install, manage, and offer basic management and support. The environments we've installed for can go from three to 50 users. We've never had any problems with it not being able to manage the traffic.
TD
Jun 17, 2022
Offers simple cloud-based management in a stable, scalable solution with responsive technical support
The solution is highly scalable, there are different models available depending on how many users will be behind the firewall. That can be a few users or thousands. We have deployed in locations that have one site with two or three users, and we have deployed in other places that have ten locations with ten firewalls and behind each firewall might be 50 people, so up to 500 people or more. Then we create site-to-site VPNs between each of the locations. I put in Meraki for every customer in need of a firewall who does not have this product. I have some customers with Cisco ASA contracts lasting another one or two years, so when they expire, I will put in a Meraki.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"The most valuable features are simplicity, management, and that it's constantly evolving."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"The installation is straightforward."
"Its support is very good, and it is stable product.​"
"One thing we use quite a lot, as well, is the DHCP Server, because we do a lot of work where all our devices need to have static IP addresses. Rather than going around and configuring every box, we do it all through DHCP reservations. It's easier. We've got a record of it. We can manipulate it if we need to change something or change some hardware. It's all easy. Even guys who are not used to using it can pick it up quite quickly."
"I have found the most valuable features of Kerio Control to be the IPS and firewall."
"​Setup is simple. The Kerio interface is very intuitive.​"
"Kerio has improved my organization's security."
"The most valuable feature is to provide users with the ability to log in to the portal page, keep track of their data usage and perform bandwidth management."
"The traffic insight page or the administrative portal is really helpful because you can see all the internet usage down to the point where you can see if it's big files or streams. It gives us a good view of what the internet usage is of users who are coupled to an IP address. That way, if there are problems with, for example, a lot of data usage or problems with the connection, we can narrow it down to a single user or server and address the problem. It's really helpful for diagnostic data."
"You can use your web browser to do the configuration which is easier than Cisco CLI transcripts."
"Intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IPS): The best feature. It can detect malware, even a virus, and warn you by email about the device that has it. When the Meraki detects that something is wrong, it automatically blocks the connection or the intrusion, delivering a graphic report with all the necessary content."
"We switched to Meraki because it lets you see what's happening in your LAN and WAN in a graphic and web environment."
"To me, the analytics feature is one of the most valuable in Meraki MX. I also find that it has good usability as it's cloud-based. Another valuable feature of Meraki MX is that it's simple to use and it's user-friendly."
"It is a robust SD-WAN solution."
"The security level of our organization has changed by using Meraki MX Firewalls. We didn't have the UTM before, but now we have sandboxing, tray scanning, attack preventions and monitorization. Our security level has improved."
"Point-to-point VPNs can dynamically follow IP changes with no need for static IPs."
"It has very good features; it's easy to use, configure, set up, and deploy."
 

Cons

"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"They should add wireless features."
"I would like for there to be a difference between international and national links."
"The security part of the software, like virus scanning, website, traffic monitoring, things like that, can take a beating on the appliance. And when there's a lot of things going on, the system can get bogged down. The actual security functionality of it needs a little bit more work, which I believe they are remedying or attempting to remedy at this time, but that's the downfall at this time."
"One area that confused me a bit when I was building my current network. I use VLANs to have separate functionality on the network, and the appliance I got was the WiFi model, but I discovered that you can't assign WiFi channels to the VLAN. So, you can have WiFi, but its own subnet. You can't run that over the VLAN. Effectively, I can't use the WiFi facility in the appliance and had to purchase a separate web that supports VLANs. In the end, I had to go to GFI support. They confirmed this is just a limited functionality of that device, as it is a low-end device. I don't know if any of their high-end models have a better facility or not."
"I would like for them to add more security features."
"Kerio Control has just improved on their biggest problem, which was to introduce better support for high-availability requirements in production."
"The filtering on the unlicensed version of Kerio Control is inefficient - you have to add each website manually, which isn't feasible."
"I would like to see a little improvement in their technical support when you have a problem. I may be a little jaded because I came from Kerio when we could call and get a person on the phone who worked on the product. Every tech had their own demo setup. They had instant messaging capability with the developers. If we found a problem, then we could get a result for it quickly. Now, the product seems to be 24 hours. They have also gone to the model that if you need quicker support, then they now charge you additional for the exact same level of support that they used to give. I am assuming it's the exact same level of support that they say it is. I'm not paying extra for it. That's the biggest flaw with the product."
"It is very expensive."
"The current lead time is longer for Meraki MX, and it needs to be improved."
"MX can only be managed via a web interface, but I'm accustomed to using a CLI or a graphical interface. I would also like to see more reporting features. It doesn't provide enough information for me to know precisely about some clients."
"Meraki MX can come across as an expensive solution."
"What I would like to see in the next version is to have more interfaces for WAN links."
"The product could incorporate tools like ThousandEyes into the system so we can see things directly."
"When it comes to cost, that's a pain point."
"When we do API integrations with Meraki, they have always been hard as well as tedious to build. The data that we want out of the API integrations has been only recently available. Six months ago, it was hard to get someone to build something correctly or useful with Meraki APIs. Recently, they have made more data available on the API, but it is just a start. They need to do more."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of FortiGate support is too expensive."
"I would say that all things considered, the pricing is pretty good."
"Work through partners for the best pricing."
"It's expensive, but compared to the competition it's okay."
"The price of FortiGate is good."
"They are very competitive, but we like to have the factory warranty taken care of."
"Fortinet is the least expensive solution."
"It is an inexpensive solution."
"It is a good fit for SMBs because of its maintainability. When you want to keep your costs low, then Kerio Control is a very good solution. It's not an expensive product that is well integrated. It has a complete set of features within it that make it a very strong product."
"It is priced low enough for entry-level, but it has the power to grow with a company without them having to replace it."
"Search and compare."
"It gives us a lot. It does prove to be a very robust product for the cost."
"Its initial cost is less as compared to other products. It becomes a bit costly when you pay for the products that you don't use. We paid for almost all the products through subscription, but we are using only a few products. We use EndPointSecurity, Kerio Connect, WebMonitor, and LanGuard. We don't use the rest of the products."
"KerioControl's pricing is good."
"I am living in Iran and we cannot buy the product from Kerio because of sanctions."
"The yearly maintenance fee is a bit high for the Kerio Control Boxes. The end of life for the devices is kind of short. It seems like they're making you upgrade within a short period of time. They should at least allow five years, but it seems like they are changing their end of life to be shorter to generate revenue."
"capabilities" What is our primary use case? The solution is mainly based on the cloud which is highly adaptable to the needs of its users due to its large user base. By employing over fifty VPS, we strategically position these units where clients require them the most. Remarkably, the cost of this setup is notably more affordable compared to competing alternatives. The management dashboard allows users to oversee each branch within their network. This comprehensive view is unified within the dashboard, offering insights into the entire branch network. The system works mostly for financial institutions, particularly banking clients. What is most valuable? The cloud management system is really valuable. What needs improvement? Direct logging is something that can be introduced. In the absence of cloud management, the possibility of local configurations and on-premise logins becomes restricted. This limitation stands as a primary concern. When it comes to resolving issues, the inability to access login options hampers troubleshooting efforts. The stability is noteworthy; but when compared to alternative products, its stability is comparatively lower. Additionally, certain limitations are observed in terms of remote control. Price-wise, the solution stands out for its competitive and cost-effective nature compared to other alternatives. Operationally, it is user-friendly and requires minimal effort from administrators, making configuration hassle-free. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Meraki MX for the last three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is stable however there are issues and we need to reboot sometimes. I would rate it five out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Considering the needs of medium-class clients, scalability proves to be highly advantageous. I would rate it nine out of ten. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is easy via the cloud portal, primarily because managed support is needed for internet access. Without this, the direct configuration of the box becomes unattainable.The duration required is significantly shorter compared to alternatives. Occasionally, when dealing with a larger number of branches, like fifty or more, we managed to complete the implementation within 14 days. In cases involving complex processes and discussions, additional time might be necessary. However, once the system is set up and connected to the cloud, other configurations can be done within an eight-hour timeframe. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The solution has three licenses; enterprise, security, and SD WAN. This subscription-based method aligns with customer requirements. When procuring hardware, the minimum requirement is the enterprise license, granting access to cloud management and the portal. Customers can opt to acquire the security or SD-WAN licenses if needed. This adaptable pricing model offers great flexibility. All licenses are linked to the device count, proving advantageous for customers. If there's a future demand for additional devices, licenses can be expanded accordingly without any concerns. The flexibility of the licensing system is indeed valuable."
"Meraki MX's pricing is cheaper as compared to Cisco's standalone products."
"The price could be lower, but compared to the TCO of other products, it's not really that expensive."
"The product is a little expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"I rate the tool's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"The license cost depends on the box. We acquired a different product line. We are dealing with MX appliance now, that is, MX6, MX54, MX100, MX250, MX450. Every box has got an identity, and it has got its own specification. Every box has got a different license fee. We deployed Meraki MX in UAE when it was not a mature product. We took a risk, but we were successful. We saved a huge amount of money after implementing and removing all the MPLS and leased lines. We got a broadband connection because Meraki MX could work on a broadband connection. We have drastically saved a very good amount of money, which was one of the successful things apart from the successful solution."
"The larger MX products are on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Media Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
5%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What do you like most about KerioControl?
The solution provides feasibility regarding cyber privacy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for KerioControl?
The pricing is reasonable. We have to pay approximately EUR 175 for the product.
What needs improvement with KerioControl?
The pricing of the product can be improved. The trial duration of the product should also be extended.
Fortigate 60d vs. Meraki MX67 for a small company without a dedicated IT Department
We have Meraki Mx devices now, we are looking to replace them. But that is because the Meraki MX platform lacks SSL I...
Which is better - Meraki MX or Cisco ASA Firewall?
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the operating software for the Cisco ASA suite. It supports netw...
What do you like most about Meraki MX?
I am happy with the technical support for the solution. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate
No data available
MX64, MX64W, MX84, MX100, MX400, MX600
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Amazon Web Services 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Cisco 5. Dell 6. HP 7. Oracle 8. Verizon 9. AT&T 10. T-Mobile 11. Sprint 12. Vodafone 13. Orange 14. BT Group 15. Telstra 16. Deutsche Telekom 17. Comcast 18. Time Warner Cable 19. CenturyLink 20. NTT Communications 21. Tata Communications 22. SoftBank 23. China Mobile 24. Singtel 25. Telus 26. Rogers Communications 27. Bell Canada 28. Telkom Indonesia 29. Telkom South Africa 30. Telmex 31. Telia Company 32. Telkom Kenya
Triton Technical, McDonald's
Hyatt, ONS
Find out what your peers are saying about KerioControl vs. Meraki MX and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.