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FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) vs Portnox comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is costly yet effective, offering high security and potential cost savings compared to competitors.
Sentiment score
7.3
Portnox CORE improved network visibility, security, and efficiency, reducing costs and enhancing decision-making through detailed analytics and automated features.
Using FortiGate has enabled us to increase security, control user access, manage bandwidth, and enhance the ability to provide a variety of operations solutions to clients.
If you were moving from a traditional on-premise NAC that was 100% managed by the IT department, there would be great savings in going to a cloud-based NAC with Portnox.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Experiences with FortiGate support vary, with praise for initial contact but concerns over follow-up times and regional delays.
Sentiment score
7.2
Portnox customer service is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, though some users suggest improvements in local services and ticketing.
Fortinet provides a prompt response.
FortiGate offers good support.
Usually, it is fast and provides advice effectively.
They resolved issues quickly and provided clear explanations.
I was seeing weird things, and they were able to explain things to me and help me quickly find a resolution.
They respond very immediately and provide detailed, amazing support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
FortiGate is praised for scalability across business sizes but may need model upgrades, affecting cost and feature expansion.
Sentiment score
7.4
Portnox is highly scalable, supporting thousands of endpoints, though large-scale deployments sometimes need additional resources.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
FortiGate NGFW is highly stable, performs well with SD-WAN, and is reliable for large enterprises despite occasional bugs.
Sentiment score
7.5
Users find Portnox stable overall, with occasional minor issues; experiences vary by configuration and version. Stability rated 6-9/10.
The product itself is available and its uptime is 100%.
 

Room For Improvement

FortiGate Next Generation Firewall requires enhancements in cost, interface, integration, stability, support, threat intelligence, and scalability for competitiveness.
Portnox needs GUI improvements, better remote site functionality, enhanced support, integration, and more effective licensing and firewall features.
Configuring these services is quite complex and not very user-friendly, requiring technical steps that are difficult for normal users to understand.
Improvements could be made when companies expand and need better equipment and more licenses.
There should be more testing before releasing software since it can be a little buggy sometimes when new features come out after updates.
Ideally, we should be able to search for any MAC address in the database, regardless of its authentication status, to see all its associated groups and potential conflicts.
When I'm doing filtering at times, it doesn't filter the items properly.
They don't have much support during Asia Pacific hours.
 

Setup Cost

FortiGate's pricing is seen as both competitive and expensive, offering scalability and amortization with potential additional costs.
Portnox pricing includes annual per-device fees, valued for flexibility but considered high, offering notable features and scalability.
It offers cost savings as it is generally cheaper than the competition.
Fortinet tools like FortiGate are costly for us as a higher education institute in India.
The pricing of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is competitive.
If you compare Portnox with all other well-known standard products, it is the cheapest.
The pricing is a bit high, possibly due to the cloud features and running instances across regions like the US, Asia, and Europe.
It is a bit on the high side, but considering the cloud features and how much it costs to run the instance in the cloud, it is not unreasonable.
 

Valuable Features

FortiGate Firewall offers a user-friendly interface, robust security features, seamless integration, quick updates, and fast deployment.
Portnox provides agentless network security with easy deployment, intuitive UI, seamless Azure integration, and comprehensive reporting for operational efficiency.
The firewall and VPN features are the most valuable in protecting our customers' networks.
The most valuable features of the FortiGate firewall include SSL inspection, VPN functionality, and threat intelligence features for preventing threats.
The common valuable feature for FortiGate is its UTM functionality, which includes various features under a license that is commonly implemented.
It's notable how Portnox has improved operational efficiency.
We use Meraki for our switching, making it simple to point all our networks and offices to Portnox.
It is very easy to implement on our current network hardware.
 

Categories and Ranking

FortiGate Next Generation F...
Ranking in ZTNA
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (10th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (9th)
Portnox
Ranking in ZTNA
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (7th), Passwordless Authentication (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the ZTNA category, the mindshare of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is 4.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Portnox is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA
 

Featured Reviews

MOHAN SUKUMAR - PeerSpot reviewer
User-based policies improve network security but integration complexity persists
The main area needing improvement is the user-friendliness of FortiGate's integration with other Fortinet tools like FortiAuthenticator and VPN services. Configuring these services is quite complex and not very user-friendly, requiring technical steps that are difficult for normal users to understand. Fortinet support's resolution of issues is slow, and the research on making the solution user-friendly needs to progress further.
Scott Kerr - PeerSpot reviewer
It is seamless and integrates well with our Azure setup
We use devices like PLCs and controllers, and when we receive a request to allow one on the network, we bypass typical authentication, associate it with a group account, and push it to a firewalled VLAN. However, problems arise when the same MAC address is requested for a different project. Our current system only finds authenticated MAC addresses, making it difficult to troubleshoot when the same device is used for multiple purposes. Ideally, we should be able to search for any MAC address in the database, regardless of its authentication status, to see all its associated groups and potential conflicts.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW)?
The tool's most valuable feature is IPS. In my experience, I haven't encountered any issues with integration. It easily integrates with the FortiGate solution. However, verifying through documentat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW)?
The pricing of the FortiGate firewall is good. It offers cost savings as it is generally cheaper than the competition.
What needs improvement with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW)?
There should be more testing before releasing software since it can be a little buggy sometimes when new features come out after updates.
What do you like most about Portnox CORE?
It's easy to manage and troubleshoot thanks to the lightweight components.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portnox CORE?
It's not cheap. It's not expensive. It's in the middle, so I'll probably give it a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with Portnox CORE?
We have been having some issues with it. That's why we're considering migrating to Portnox Clear due to some limitations with CORE. At the end of the day, Portnox Clear's capabilities are much more...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Access Layers Portnox, Portnox CLEAR
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Data Realty, Royal London, Wales Millennium Centre, McLaren Construction Group, EL AL Israeli Airlines, 
Find out what your peers are saying about FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) vs. Portnox and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.