Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Umbrella vs Fortinet FortiGate SWG comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (3rd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (11th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Fortinet FortiGate SWG
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 1.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 18.5%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is 6.8%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Alessandro Braga - PeerSpot reviewer
Has comprehensive reporting and scales easily
The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on. The integration between Cisco Secure solutions is pretty good. We have been able to deliver the solution in a few days. The integration of Umbrella and Meraki is literally one click away from the customer. One of the reasons why we chose Umbrella was its capability to perform end-to-end detection of malware and web traffic. In the last two years, we have been covered, detection has been faster, and we have been able to contain some potential threats along the way. We use the Umbrella stack from DNS protection to web and content protection. Our workforce is made up of 150 Macs; thus, we use Mac as a client. We have some PCs and integration with the network in our co-working spaces. Utilizing Cisco Secure has helped us save time. Being a nimble organization, we don't have IT staff who are fully dedicated to security. The maintenance is also not very time-consuming. In terms of the amount of time saved, it would be half an FTE a year, given the fact that we are informed and notified when threats arise. In terms of operating expenditures, we have been able to negotiate a better cyber insurance rate with our insurance company due to the fact that we are covered by Umbrella. Another benefit of using Cisco Umbrella is application scanning. We have been able to understand how many other applications we were consuming in the cloud, address them, and save money. Without Cisco Umbrella, we would not have realized that we had so many cloud applications in the company. We have been able to close at least four or five applications that were duplicates of others that we were already using in the company. We have realized approximately 10,000 to 12,000 euros a year of immediate savings in an organization of 150 people, which is quite significant.
David Carlson - PeerSpot reviewer
Non-IT people could plug it in, connect it to the fiber, and get it running without IT help.
FortiGate is easy to configure. We configured one of the units and sent it to Indiana to be installed. We asked them to give us a call when they got it, so we could help them through the process, but they called us back to tell us it works great. Non-IT people could plug it in, connect it to the fiber, and get it running without IT help. That was fantastic. Fortinet also offers a single pane of glass that we can use to manage our routers with gateways, so that's convenient. We're running a VPN to our remote location, and the performance is good. We're changing all our VPN connectors on our laptops from Cisco's Anywhere to Fortinet's VPN because the performance is just so much better.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"One valuable feature is definitely its simplicity in terms of deployment. It is very easy to integrate it into the environment without any heavy lifting. Users didn't notice that we implemented it. You can start with a very low monitoring mode and start observing what Cisco Umbrella sees."
"The most valuable aspect is that it is hosted with Cisco and can detect any new anomalies, acting almost like an XDR."
"I like that it integrates with the infrastructure. I also like the kind of data and intelligence that's built-in. It helps create innovative reports for security."
"I like the original functionality, which allows for providing secure DNS services."
"Stability-wise, it's good. I have never encountered any bugs."
"For me, it's important that I get a connection to my corporate network in a secure and fast way. This product just runs in the background and doesn't need any attention. For me, as a user, it's perfect."
"We immediately block impersonating users from accessing services over Cisco Umbrella-controlled devices."
"The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on."
"The user interface is intuitive. Anyone can configure the firewall with little knowledge of the product. The back-end is robust with good security."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is inspection."
"FortiGate also makes GRE tunneling possible."
"It's a flexible solution."
"The security for endpoints is the most valuable. It is very secure for our workers. It allows us to secure a transaction and enable security for a specific segment in the workflow."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate SWG are IPS and scanning."
"I rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"The product is highly stable."
 

Cons

"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"Its pricing could be better."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"The design of the screens could be improved. Sometimes you're trying to look for information, for what you think is critical that should be on that first screen of the dashboard so that you can quickly take screenshots to have people help out, but you have to hop between screens to find little pieces of evidence."
"Client delivery and client updates should be improved. Client delivery was not as easy as expected. Another area for improvement is the integration of escalation procedures for security issues."
"Although Cisco Umbrella has an excellent global network footprint, there is still room for improvement and growth in this area. Additionally, there are bandwidth limitations associated with the connectors that need to be addressed. To be a viable solution for larger offices, Cisco Umbrella must continue to expand and improve its capabilities in these areas."
"In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes."
"Cisco Umbrella is difficult to manage and needs to include a dashboard. It needs to improve pricing as well."
"It would be good if the more complex versions of Umbrella are simplified so that we can offer them in a more standardized way. We, as a telco, do not operate the same as a traditional integration partner would, who can sell all its services. We try to have a standardized approach as much as we can so that we can sell the solution with as many services added to it as possible. If you look at the structure of businesses in Switzerland, 95% of them have 10 persons or less, and they do not have a security specialist. Therefore, the higher the automated and standardized features, the better it is for them."
"The solution could be faster as the process is very slow."
"The product needs to drastically improve its reporting capability."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG's costs need improvement."
"Another issue is how deduplication services don't work reliably after enabling deduplication on Fortinet."
"Their technical support could be improved a little bit in terms of responsiveness."
"The initial setup is medium complex and takes between five days and a week."
"FortiGate needs to be elastic to the market's trends. It should be easy for SMBs to get the solution."
"One area of improvement I've noticed is the lack of built-in monitoring capabilities in the firewall. Currently, we rely on third-party solutions for monitoring purposes. However, I believe the firewall itself has the potential to do a better job in this aspect. Another aspect of Fortinet that concerns me is related to redundancy. We have a setup with two firewalls working in parallel, which requires a highly adaptable configuration. However, it feels unfair that clients need to purchase two licenses, especially when one of the firewalls serves as a backup. We have noticed that other manufacturers have different policies on this matter."
"Fortinet's support team consists of a huge networking team, because of which there is a delay in response at times."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"You can request an evaluation license​."
"It needs a better price point."
"Its value exceeds its pricing."
"I think Cisco Umbrella is priced well. We have a mix of customers with different verticals such as education. We have clients in the commercial space as well. Umbrella is at a good price point for all of our customers."
"It has a reasonable price. It is certainly not as expensive as it used to be. It is in line with other offerings on the market. There are a number of different flavors of Umbrella. They could bring Umbrella SIG down a bit because its price is a little bit high for what it does, but I also understand why its price is high."
"There are three models for licensing with different feature sets."
"The price depends on the use case, and it's a bit linear. But it depends on the customer's strategy and how Cisco plans to optimize the costs."
"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."
"The solution is cheap."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an affordable solution."
"I rate the product's pricing a seven out of ten. Its one-year license cost is competitive with three and five-year licenses offered by other products."
"While slightly more affordable than competitors, it remains relatively expensive due to its inclusive subscription."
"I rate the price of Fortinet FortiGate SWG a seven and a half out of ten since it is not a cheap solution, though I feel it is a good product for the money one pays."
"I rate the product's pricing a seven out of ten. The additional cost depends on the extra feature requirements."
"When comparing the price of Fortinet FortiGate SWG to other solutions it is expensive. The price could be better."
"We pay about $4,000 for a yearly license, and there aren't any additional fees."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
I have the same complaint about them that I have about other software companies. Sometimes when you call in support, ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We are a PreK-12 public school district, and we use iboss to filter internet content for our students at home and sta...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-nat...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiGate SWG?
The interface and other reports are all user-friendly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiGate SWG?
On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the pricing for FortiGate AWG as nine, which is perfect.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiGate SWG?
I would rate the technical support of Fortinet a six or seven out of ten. It is not very helpful. I would like to see...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
FortiGate SWG, FortiGate Secure Web Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim
Salt Lake County, Catholic College Bendigo, Azienda Unita Sanitaria
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Fortinet FortiGate SWG and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.