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Aruba Airwave vs Fortinet FortiManager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
Aruba Airwave enhances efficiency and reduces costs with a high ROI, improving productivity and decreasing troubleshooting time by up to 50%.
Sentiment score
7.4
Fortinet FortiManager offers cost-effectiveness and ROI benefits, enhancing security and reducing administration costs with improved configuration visibility.
We have seen a bit of ROI in that we save time providing the service to clients.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Aruba Airwave's customer support is efficient, though integration challenges and escalation speed hinder consistent satisfaction across users.
Sentiment score
6.9
Fortinet FortiManager's customer service is praised but experiences delays, wait times, and variable expertise among support engineers.
I was successful in pushing the FortiOS onto the device, but both devices stopped functioning after that.
I have opened many tickets with Fortinet in the past and found them to be very helpful and responsive.
I'd rate their support a nine out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Aruba Airwave is highly scalable, catering to medium and enterprise businesses, with scalability reliant on hardware and licensing resources.
Sentiment score
7.5
Fortinet FortiManager is scalable and suitable for large enterprises, supporting multiple devices but may have hardware and cost limitations.
Fortinet FortiManager is a scalable solution.
It is a good solution for medium and enterprise companies.
It expands easily.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Aruba Airwave is highly stable and effective, though minor performance and downtime issues slightly affect user perceptions.
Sentiment score
8.1
Fortinet FortiManager is considered stable and reliable, with minimal bugs, occasional reboots, and infrequent minor upgrade issues.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give stability a ten.
I rate the solution's stability ten out of ten.
We haven't dealt with any issues so far.
 

Room For Improvement

Aruba Airwave needs enhancements in cost-effectiveness, user interface, integration, device compatibility, and support speed for better competitiveness.
Fortinet FortiManager requires enhanced documentation, integration, support, stability, scalability, and improved usability for configuration, VPN management, and automation capabilities.
Instead of paying separately and having all of these licenses, it would be nice to centralize everything and maybe reduce the price for a bundle.
You have to order licenses for different endpoints and devices, and calculating the costs can be confusing.
The VM model is scalable by simply adding additional licenses.
 

Setup Cost

Aruba Airwave offers flexible, cost-effective pricing with a lifetime device warranty, though perceptions on affordability vary among users.
Fortinet FortiManager offers competitive pricing for enterprises, particularly in large deployments, though smaller installations may find it costly.
Although there is a cost associated with Fortinet FortiManager, its price is undoubtedly justified by the value it provides in terms of the purpose it serves.
It isn't like other solutions where you need to pay for SD-WAN or additional bandwidth.
Fortinet has the best pricing currently on the market.
 

Valuable Features

Aruba Airwave provides multivendor support, intuitive management, enhanced visibility, and efficient large-scale deployment capabilities with comprehensive reporting.
Fortinet FortiManager excels in centralized firewall management, scalability, automation, and integration, enhancing network efficiency and security.
The most helpful feature I noticed, yet did not utilize, allowed us to add our Cisco switches for monitoring.
The product does help save a lot of time thanks to its efficient management capabilities.
I can automate the installation of configurations using different programming languages like Python or HPE, and it's a GUI solution, so it's pretty easy to use, even for basic users.
This feature allows me to gather information about the interfaces without having to physically connect to the device.
 

Categories and Ranking

Aruba Airwave
Ranking in Network Management Applications
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiManager
Ranking in Network Management Applications
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Aruba Airwave is 7.8%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiManager is 5.5%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant-Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution has multi-vendor support, and it can be used for network management
Aruba Airwave is an on-prem solution, so you have to manage it with your servers to be deployed. You can also deploy it on the cloud if you have your own private cloud. All the configuration guides and the different types of designs you need are available from Aruba Airwave's portal. I would recommend Aruba Airwave to other users. Overall, I rate Aruba Airwave ten out of ten.
HamedWasel - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up with good integration capabilities but we've had troubles when moving devices
We've faced an issue when we need to move devices. Templates need to be recreated instead of having the policies, et cetera, cut and pasted over. Everything should just move over when we need to move devices instead of recreating everything from scratch. For the IPSEC tunnels, Fortimanager doesn't have all of the features that are available on Fortigate.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
8%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Aruba Airwave?
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aruba Airwave?
The tool is expensive. If one is bad or expensive, and ten is very good or cheap, I rate the product's price as a six.
What needs improvement with Aruba Airwave?
The tool's expensive nature is an area of concern where improvements are required. The product's scalability can be improved.
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiManager?
The most valuable feature is the centralized management console.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiManager?
FortiGate offers the same features as Palo Alto yet at a more reasonable price. The ROI justifies the investment.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiManager?
FortiManager needs to handle different firewall versions more efficiently. If FortiGate devices have different versions, managing them is challenging. There's also a need to upgrade firewalls or ch...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Henkel, University of Findlay, University of Minnesota Duluth, University of Iowa
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about Aruba Airwave vs. Fortinet FortiManager and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,615 professionals have used our research since 2012.