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Fortinet FortiADC vs Fortinet FortiWeb comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Fortinet FortiADC
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (7th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Fortinet FortiADC and Fortinet FortiWeb aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Fortinet FortiADC is designed for Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) and holds a mindshare of 10.1%, up 7.5% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiWeb, on the other hand, focuses on Web Application Firewall (WAF), holds 8.2% mindshare, up 7.3% since last year.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Saeid Khanipour Ghobani - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level load balancing and routing protocols but scalability is limited to 200 gigabits
The initial setup and configuration are very easy because the solution includes a simple OS. Initial configuration takes about ten minutes for simple environments. It is important to assess the environment and decide what services, servers, and web applications are needed. The solution can be configured in router mode or one-arm mode which uses source NAT as destination NAT to send traffic to the firewall. One-arm mode is more complex and requires discussions with our engineers. For example, you have a website with Node.js for your programming language, Amazon S3 for your CDN, NGINX for your web server, and you use both React and reCAPTCHA. Our team meets with your developer to learn your website and OS through a multi-step process and then we configure the solution to protect everything.
Kacem CHAMMALI - PeerSpot reviewer
Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb
The xFF, or X-Forwarded-For feature, IP reputation, and protected hostname. We can block access using the IP address, so no one can connect to our web server or website using the real IP. They need to use the FQDN instead. Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb and the option to protect the hostname. All traffic passes through FortiWeb. Machine learning capabilities in FortiWeb: I don't use machine learning all the time. In the initial phase of FortiWeb deployment, we use the learning process to detect the traffic passing through FortiGate to our website.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Because ADC is the intermediary between the servers and the end-user application, it gives thorough information about the traffic, what the problem is."
"Although FortiADC has multiple features that I like, the global DNS is the most helpful. It is primarily useful for customers with huge environments and at least two data centers. FortiADC can act as your DNS server. It can check which data center has the lowest latency, and route traffic to that one. It's an intelligent DNS."
"TSL and SSL offloading are both very good features."
"The most valuable feature is its simplicity."
"Fortinet FortiADC is a good product because each and every piece of content is monitored by it."
"It's a good product because it supports all the features that ADC solutions in the market can support, like F5 solutions, for example, such as the LTM of F5."
"This ensures that clients can connect to their applications without interruption."
"It helps with defining server load balancing tasks and managing SSL certificates, ensuring the communication flow through the Fortinet gateway."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Fail-Open."
"The product has a very user-friendly dashboard."
"The policies and the filtering are the most valuable features, especially traffic, URL, and application filtering. The solution is excellent at detecting vulnerabilities."
"What we like about Fortinet FortiWeb is it has all the features. We use all of them, so we have to turn on all the options."
"It can scale well."
"High-performance and detection engines, provide a high rate of exposure of web attacks."
"We find that it is quite stable and reliable."
"I have recently been looking at the SSL certificate features and the learning mode of the appliance. This appliance learns from the pattern of SSL attacks."
 

Cons

"The L7 Persistent load-balancing algorithm has not worked for me after having tested it many times with my customer's in-house application. I'd like to suggest that the company make sure that all load-balancing algorithms work properly with most applications, even those that are in-house apps."
"The user interface could be more friendly and CLI could be more like that of Fortigate."
"When the FortiADC is part of a platform with components like FortiManager and FortiGate, automation and pushing configuration are very inconvenient."
"The product's stability for VMs could be better."
"If I need design help, they do not assist; they say it is a design issue they cannot support, and I must approach the system integrator."
"I think it would be helpful if Fortinet put more video examples on their cookbook site."
"The configuration is relatively complex."
"It would be good if they built in a fully functional web application firewall."
"New releases and old releases have some bugs, some features do not work as good as we want but every new release the Fortinet team fixes up problems."
"I see no room for improvement at the moment."
"Lacks functionalities that are available in other solutions."
"Fortinet WAF came out recently, and there is not much feedback about customer experience. For each project, customers ask about the scenarios and references of the customers who have implemented this solution, which we don't have. They need to simplify the customer experience and provide more information so that we can propose Fortinet Fortiweb as a WAF solution to customers and convince them. They need to improve their service and training. We need good training to implement and use it properly and know more about it. We still don't know much about Fortinet WAF. We didn't get any proper training sessions. Other vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto, Check Point, and Barracuda provide such sessions. Whenever we receive a request from a customer for this solution, we just give the price. We don't propose this solution because we don't know much about it. We propose whatever we are familiar with and what is supported."
"When there is downtime at their data center, it becomes a transit point issue for us, causing downtime in our environment as well."
"I would like to see more improvements with respect to threat intelligence."
"It may be better if it were easier to create roles."
"The solution could improve by being able to handle different use cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They offer a perpetual license."
"The solution's pricing is an issue and should be improved."
"The product has affordable pricing."
"The solution could be more cost-effective."
"I believe the price is good. It's fair. There are no extra costs."
"The price is competitive"
"The product has average pricing. I rate its pricing a five out of ten."
"Our basic license excludes features such as antivirus and IDS. Due to license limitations, some functionalities are not configured."
"The solution is a bit expensive when compared to other products."
"It is not a cheap product. It is not like a Linux or a Genex that you can deploy. It is a hardware appliance, and it is built for a specific reason and reliability. It is an enterprise-class solution. You wouldn't find an SMB investing in something like this."
"It should be somewhere about 36,000 Euros. That's the cost for three years. It's moderately priced."
"It is fine now. We had to earlier negotiate the price."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb depends from customer to customer because some customers are considering using other solutions, such as Imperva. The price of Fortinet FortiWeb sits well for the middle-sized customers that we deal with."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is expensive in our Ethiopian currency."
"All our Fortinet pricing is bundled together for different products, like FortiGate, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiWeb. FortiWeb, by itself, is probably around $2,500 to $3,500."
"There are no licensing costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.
Do you recommend Fortinet FortiADC?
I recommend Fortinet FortiADC. My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. Our company has been using it for around five years. We mainly use FortiADC for the load balancing of application ...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiADC?
The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily.
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
I would rate the licensing cost as seven out of ten, considering it good value for money. The price is affordable and reasonable for the features offered.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
There is room for improvement in the portability on multi-cloud environments. Enhanced DDoS integration to make FortiWeb more unified with other Fortinet products could be beneficial.
 

Also Known As

FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: March 2025.
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