Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN vs Fortinet FortiGate comparison

The compared Cisco and Fortinet solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #3 in Wireless LAN , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 12.9% mindshare in the category. Fortinet is ranked #2 in Firewalls , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 21.1% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Read 119 Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN reviews

15,495 Views
12,588 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Fortinet FortiGate

Read 318 Fortinet FortiGate reviews

78,842 Views
58,697 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Fortinet FortiGate

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Fortinet FortiGate and Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN compete in the network security category. Fortinet FortiGate seems to have the upper hand in cost-effectiveness, while Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is preferred for its ease of use and management.

Features: Fortinet FortiGate offers network security features like UTM, SSL VPN, and centralized management. It also includes application control, load balancing, and antivirus. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is known for its cloud-based management, remote administration, and seamless integration with Meraki products.

Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiGate users often face high licensing fees and call for better support and documentation. Meanwhile, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN users criticize its high costs and limitations in advanced configurations and integration with non-Meraki products.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fortinet FortiGate provides on-premises and hybrid deployments but needs improvement in support responsiveness. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN allows for private, public, and hybrid cloud deployment and is praised for its ease of use and supportive customer service, though it could simplify initial setup and reduce costs.

Pricing and ROI: Fortinet FortiGate is perceived as cost-effective with a good price-performance ratio, apart from its high licensing costs. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is considered expensive, yet justifies costs with its cloud management benefits. Both have demonstrated ROI through operational efficiencies and support call reduction despite high upfront costs.

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Wireless LAN

March 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.1

Number of Reviews

119

Ranking in other categories

Wireless LAN (3rd)

Fortinet FortiGate

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

318

Ranking in other categories

Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Enterprise Networking solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is designed for Wireless LAN and holds a mindshare of 12.9%, up 12.2% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiGate, on the other hand, focuses on Firewalls, holds 21.1% mindshare, up 17.7% since last year.

Wireless LAN

Firewalls

Q&A Highlights

Ganesh Waghmare

l2 network & secuirty at Invecto

Apr 03, 2023

What are the differences between Cisco Meraki MX67 and FortiGate 60?

Meraki MX series are all cloud-based management with on-premises physical firewall connectivity, so if the Internet goes down you will lose the management options to the firewall. Whereas FortiGate Firewall doesn't need Internet for the first time setup. Also, it is easy to manage the management interface being it is available to local users when the case of internet connection fails. All other security features, policy creation, and VPN related remains the same as you see in any brand firewall.

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Featured Reviews

RezaPradipta

Sr. Officer Network Managed Service Product Management at PT. Indosat Tbk

Streamline network management with a unified dashboard for seamless device integration

The primary use case for Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is mostly for enterprise wireless, including guest Wi-Fi and enterprise Wi-Fi. I use it across various industries with a focus on retail Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN offers a single pane of glass management. It only comes with a controller on the…

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EhabAli

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable

In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN are the ease of use and the ability to manage it from the cloud."

"I really don't have any problems with the stability of the product."

"The most valuable thing to me is the stability of the product."

"The cloud manageability feature is valuable."

"There are many valuable features of Cisco Meraki, including the switches, stacking, and layer 3 routing."

"The tool's most valuable feature is report generation. Its dashboard helps me a lot with user analytics."

"What I liked about these is that they worked. I didn't touch them or do anything with them. They were up and running when I came here. Once they are set up and running, you don't have to worry about them."

"Its management is most valuable. It is the major feature of Meraki."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN pros

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."

"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."

"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."

"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."

"It blocks the vulnerabilities that can negatively impact us."

"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."

"The GUI is good."

"The payment function for applications is good."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

Cons

"In a future release, they should offer a next-generation UTM, where you can manage all items and the network, and have it include a lot of security features like fingerprinting functionality."

"It could be slightly cheaper but it's fine."

"It is expensive. Juniper seems to have a lot more to offer for future expansion. Juniper has some features that are not there in this solution."

"The solution's mobile application and management of dashboards are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."

"Our only concern at this stage is how it's licensed."

"I would like to see integration with sensors."

"There's nothing that special about it."

"The logging sometimes doesn't give us the granularity needed. Some of the rules are a bit more complicated. The switch ports on the routers are not individually addressable, in the sense that with a switch you can tell what MAC address is on what port but with the security appliances, you can't, which would be beneficial for troubleshooting."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN cons

"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."

"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."

"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."

"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."

"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."

"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."

"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."

"The user interface could be improved."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is higher than other products. It is above the expectation of customers. So, every time we need to fight for a good price."

"I haven't conducted a price comparison yet, but based on information, it appears to be more affordable than the current environment. Therefore, I consider the price to be reasonable."

"The cost of both the hardware and licensing is high, and it is more than what I would prefer to spend currently."

"Cisco products are generally recognized for their performance and quality, which may justify the higher price point compared to other options on the market."

"The cost is not so much for Wireless LAN, but when you have to get the security license, it costs a lot."

"Negotiate the deal put in front of you!"

"Cost could be better."

"It could be more affordable than other solutions."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN pricing and cost advice

"The license is too expensive to renew. The license renewal process is also complex."

"Fortinet is reasonable in pricing and licensing. Overall, FortiGate is affordable. The licensing fee can be a little high, depending on the budget for your project."

"Fortinet FortiGate is expensive."

"There is a license to use Fortinet FortiGate."

"The price is really low. It's cheap in comparison to the cost of Cisco or CheckPoint, for example."

"A year or two years back, its price was competitive and reasonable. That was one of the reasons that people easily switched to Fortinet. Over the last two years, the prices have increased drastically. However, the prices of others have also increased. An advantage is there from the price point but not as much as it was previously."

"Licensing is usually on a three-year period."

"The price is highly competitive when compared to other brands that offer similar functionality."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user216600

Senior Technical Consultant with 51-200 employees

Jan 3, 2016

Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate

I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…

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Answers from the Community

Ganesh Waghmare

l2 network & secuirty at Invecto

Apr 3, 2023

What are the differences between Cisco Meraki MX67 and FortiGate 60?

See 2 answers

MURALI NIDAMANURI

Managing Director at VIPUN COGNITIVE SOLUTIONS PVT LTD.

Apr 3, 2023

Read full answer

Aymen FHOULA

Senior Network Administrator at Banque de l'Habitat Tunisie

Apr 3, 2023

The Cisco Meraki MX67 and FortiGate 60 are both firewall devices, but there are some differences between them: Deployment: The Cisco Meraki MX67 is a cloud-managed firewall, meaning that it can be managed and configured through the cloud, whereas the FortiGate 60 is typically deployed as an on-premises appliance. Security features: Both devices offer a range of security features, such as firewalling, VPN, and intrusion prevention, but they may differ in the specific features and capabilities they offer. For example, FortiGate 60 offers advanced threat protection, while the Cisco Meraki MX67 offers content filtering. Throughput: The FortiGate 60 offers higher throughput than the Cisco Meraki MX67. The FortiGate 60 can handle up to 1 Gbps of traffic, while the Cisco Meraki MX67 can handle up to 450 Mbps. The cost of the devices may also differ. The Cisco Meraki MX67 tends to be more expensive than the FortiGate 60. Scalability: The Cisco Meraki MX67 is designed for small to medium-sized businesses, while the FortiGate 60 can scale to meet the needs of larger organizations.

Read full answer

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

22%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What are pros and cons of Aruba 515 Series AP vs. Cisco Meraki or Extreme Networks?

Depends. I have personally used both Cisco and Aruba so I am familiar with them. Extreme I am not, so unless they have some feature that I need or want, I wouldn't consider them. Do you have expe...

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Which is better - Cisco Wireless or Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN?

Cisco Wireless is very robust, very rugged, and can handle indoor and outdoor coverage extremely well. We found it to be very reliable and to consistently run very efficiently. Cisco Wireless helpe...

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How does Ruckus Wireless compare to Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN?

Cisco’s Meraki Virtual MX is a virtual instance of the Meraki SD-WAN appliance. We liked the Meraki. The Wifi APs are a great feature. The dashboard is a simple interface and easy to learn. It feat...

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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 at large. In my opinion, Fortinet would be the best option and l use Fortinet too...

See all answers

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 the firewalls change every 5 to 7 years as stated but you really do need to upg...

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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 good. The most valuable features for me are their web and email filtering. I wou...

See all answers

Comparisons

Aruba Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 31% of the time

Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 16% of the time

Ruckus Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 11% of the time

Ubiquiti Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 7% of the time

Mist AI and Cloud vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Competitors

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 23% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 10% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

March 2025

Download Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

March 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Also Known As

MR18, MR26, MR32, MR34, MR66, MR72, Meraki Wireless LAN, Meraki WLAN

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

Overview

Cisco Meraki access points are built from the highest grade components and carefully optimized for a seamless user experience. The outcome: faster connections, greater user capacity, more coverage, and fewer support calls. The Cisco Meraki dashboard gives visibility into the network users, their devices, and their applications. Armed with rich analytics, administrators can quickly create access control and application usage policies, optimizing both the end-user experience and network security.

Cisco

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Advanced Medical Transport, Banco de Guayaquil, Baylor Scott & White Health, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Calligaris, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Del Papa Distributing, Department of Justice, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Hertz, K&L Gates , LightEdge, Lone Star College System, Management Science Associates, Mindtree, NBC Olympics, Quest, Sony Corporation, The Department of Education in Western Australia, Valley Proteins

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

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