Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Menlo Secure comparison

Fortinet and Menlo Security are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Fortinet is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5, while Menlo Security is ranked #52. Fortinet holds a 1.9% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to Menlo Security’s 0.1% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Fortinet users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Menlo Security users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Menlo Secure and Fortinet FortiGate-VM are two significant players in the cybersecurity market. Fortinet FortiGate-VM seems to have the upper hand due to its robust set of features, indicating better overall user satisfaction despite higher pricing.

Features: Menlo Secure is praised for its straightforward deployment, effective threat isolation, and reliable web protection. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is noted for its comprehensive security features, including advanced threat protection, extensive configuration options, and superior capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Users of Menlo Secure suggest enhancing integration with various security tools, improving its reporting features, and adding more user-friendly management tools. For Fortinet FortiGate-VM, feedback points to a need for more intuitive management tools, better documentation, and simplified initial configuration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Menlo Secure is recognized for its easy and quick deployment, minimal complexity, and effective customer support. Fortinet FortiGate-VM, although recognized for its powerful features, has a steeper learning curve and requires more substantial initial configuration, though its customer service is well-regarded.

Pricing and ROI: Menlo Secure is viewed as cost-effective with reasonable setup costs and decent return on investment. Fortinet FortiGate-VM, while having higher initial costs, is considered worth the investment due to its extensive features and long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Menlo Secure Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Menlo Secure

July 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

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.2%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate-VM is 1.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Secure is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.

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Sitti Ridzma Salahuddin

System Engineer at Trends and Technologies, Inc

Integrates seamlessly and helps with real-time threat response

Since the solution we offered was a complete suite with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, it was easier for them to manage because they have FortiManager as well. The main reason they wanted to position FortiGate in the cloud was so that they could easily deploy through FortiManager. That was the selling point we had for them. Especially for their multiple branches, where they had approximately 60 sites, and some assets were in AWS, it was really a good deployment opportunity. FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer were also part of that solution.

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Olivier DALOY

Group Information Systems Security Director - CISO at Faurecia

Secures users wherever they are and enable us to inspect SSL traffic, but we encountered too many issues

The solution should have no impact but it does have a bit of impact on end-users. For example, we encountered some issues in the downloads that took longer than they did without using Menlo. That is clearly not transparent for users. We expected not to have any latency when downloading anything from the internet with Menlo compared to without Menlo. We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution. In other words, we hope to get the same level of protection, while reducing the number of visible bugs, issues, latencies, impacts on performance, et cetera, that we have today with Menlo. We already solved most of them, but we still have too many such instances of issues with Menlo, even though it is protecting us for sure. The weak point of the solution is that it has consumed far too much of my team's time, taking them away from operations and projects and design. It took far too much time to implement it and get rid of all of the live issues that we encountered when our users started using the solution. The good point is that I'm sure it is protecting us and it's probably protecting us more than any other solution, which is something I appreciate a lot as a CISO. But on the other hand, the number of issues reported by the users, and the amount of time that has been necessary for either my team or the infrastructure team to spend diagnosing, troubleshooting, and fixing the issues that we had with the solution was too much. And that doesn't include the need to still use our previous solution, Blue Coat, that we have kept active so that whatever is not compatible or doesn't work with Menlo, can be handled by that other solution. It is far too demanding in terms of effort and workload and even cost, at the end of the day. That is why we decided to transition to another solution. If we had known in the beginning that we would not be able to get rid of Blue Coat, we probably would not have chosen Menlo because we were planning to replace Blue Coat with something that was at least able to do the same and more. We discovered that it was able to do more but it was not able to replace it, which is an issue. It is not only a matter of cost but is also a matter of not being able to reduce the number of partners that you have to deal with. In addition, they could enhance the ability to troubleshoot. Whenever a connection going through Menlo fails for any reason, being able to troubleshoot what the configuration of Menlo should be to allow it through would help, as would knowing what level of additional risk we would be taking with that configuration.

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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

"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."

"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."

"The solution is extremely reliable."

"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."

"It's very similar to a Cisco firewall, yet less expensive."

"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate are UTM, web filtering, and IPS."

"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."

"We have a redundant setup for failover, however, it has not had to fail over ever and we have not had a capacity issue."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The thing that I like the most is that they're very willing to work with us to resolve issues that they haven't taken care of before in their product."

"The most valuable feature is the WAN optimization."

"The initial setup is very user-friendly."

"The most valuables features are the ease of use and deployment."

"FortiGate-VM's firewall is excellent."

"The best part about FortiGate-VM is its strong security."

"An enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pros

"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."

"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."

"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."

"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."

Cons

"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."

"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."

"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."

"In the past six months, they took quite a long time to respond to the support tickets. I don't know if they are overwhelmed with too much activity, but for the last six months, the support has not been very good."

"The area that Fortinet may improve is customer support. When you have an incident, situation, or open a case, the support is not as good as Cisco or other platforms I have tested."

"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."

"One drawback of Fortinet FortiGate is that they provide two types of models: one with a hard disk and another without. The model without a hard disk has very low ROM where you can store very few logs, after which you need to upload it to the cloud or purchase a firewall with SSD."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The product is satisfactory. I haven't identified any features to improve, and based on the number of deployments I've handled with FortiGate-VM, there haven't been any complaints from the customer's side."

"Now they do have the ability to pop up a command line, which is nice, however, the fact that you can't do everything within the GUI is probably a problem."

"The solution should provide more useful GUI features."

"Compatibility and integration with other products or vendors such as Cisco SD-WAN products need improvement."

"Interoperability could be improved. The API needs better integration to match accounts and objects more effectively."

"In the first two releases of FortiOS 5.6, we had some trouble with the SSL VPN service. Sometimes it stopped working, and the IPS daemon too."

"The partner support is quite low, and the end-user support is delayed at levels L2 and L3. L1 support is quick."

"We haven't attempted to scale the solution just yet. If we want to scale this solution we may have to look at other models. With certain requirements, we probably wouldn't be able to scale it so well as it is right now."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM cons

"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."

"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheaper and more competitive compared to other options. For example, when comparing Palo Alto products to others, Palo Alto tends to be more expensive. If you compare Cisco's platform, including Cisco Meraki, with Fortinet products, you'll notice that Cisco's offerings are generally higher priced than Fortinet's firewall solutions."

"It's an expensive solution."

"It is cost-effective, and provides a good value for your money. The pricing, and license renewal, is very reasonable for us."

"Fortinet FortiGate allows you to purchase licenses for hardware and software."

"Fortigate's pricing is competitive."

"The price range is quite acceptable and normal."

"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is better than Cisco, Check Point, and Palo Alto. In terms of pricing, it's probably a better-priced firewall solution overall."

"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is affordable. Most of our customers are on a three-year license to use the solution. All the features and support are included in the price."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"It is an expensive solution if you are migrating from an open source solution."

"I rate the product price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."

"The price: It is a bit higher than the other competitors. This is why I started to look at other brands."

"The product is expensive. Users can opt for a one-year, two-year, three-year, or five-year subscription model when it comes to licensing."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard fee."

"I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM's pricing a six out of ten."

"The customer must buy his own license."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pricing and cost advice

"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."

"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."

"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigat...

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What do you like most about Fortinet FortiGate-VM?

An enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured.

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Comparisons

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Compared 20% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 12% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

SonicWall NSa vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 2% of the time

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Azure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 24% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 5% of the time

Zyxel Unified Security Gateway vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 4% of the time

Sophos XGS vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 3% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 3% of the time

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Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure

Compared 19% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Menlo Secure

Compared 19% of the time

Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 12% of the time

Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway vs Menlo Secure

Compared 11% of the time

Symantec Endpoint Security vs Menlo Secure

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

July 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

July 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate-VM product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

June 2025

Download Menlo Secure product report

Also Known As

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

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

Overview

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

FortiGate Virtual Appliances allow you to mitigate blind spots by implementing critical security controls within your virtual infrastructure. They also allow you to rapidly provision security infrastructure whenever and wherever it is needed. FortiGate virtual appliances feature all of the security and networking services common to traditional hardware-based FortiGate appliances. With the addition of virtual appliances from Fortinet, you can deploy a mix of hardware and virtual appliances, operating together and managed from a common centralized management platform.

Fortinet

Menlo Security Secure Application Access

Menlo Security Secure Application Access makes zero trust access easy, giving users secure connectivity to private applications, including web and legacy applications. At the core of Secure Application Access is the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser, which fetches, secures and delivers the content for users.

In addition to providing simple-to-deploy, clientless ZTA, Secure Application Access and the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser protect applications from attacks such as session hijacking, cookie manipulation, and other tactics that employ protocol manipulation.

Secure Application Access protects applications from Internet threats and provides granular controls for added protection of the application and associated data. These security controls include Read-only/Read-write, Upload/download, Copy/paste, AV scanning, Sandboxing, and Data Loss Prevention.

Last Mile Data Protection

Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection identifies and prevents sensitive data from leaving your company by meticulously inspecting all file uploads and user input across browsing sessions. Leveraging the Secure Cloud Browser, users are protected from the internet and you can protect your organization from data loss with comprehensive traffic monitoring and controls. This approach addresses the growing concerns surrounding data leakage in the age of AI tools like ChatGPT.

By identifying sensitive data through file types, regular expressions, or predefined libraries, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection empowers security teams to regulate data input into AI platforms and prevent unauthorized uploads. This capability provides crucial protection for intellectual property, PII, and other confidential information.

The solution leverages the Menlo Cloud Security Platform's visibility and control over traffic to reliably detect and prevent data leaks originating from both browser submission forms and non-browser traffic. With the ability to inspect encrypted web traffic, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection enforces DLP policies consistently across all users and devices, ensuring comprehensive data protection.

Menlo Security

Sample Customers

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

Security7 Networks, COOPENAE

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Menlo Secure

July 2025

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