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 #54. 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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Menlo Secure

September 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 October 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.4%, up from 19.1% 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 Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	20.4%
Fortinet FortiGate-VM	1.9%
Menlo Secure	0.1%
Other	77.6%

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

"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."

"The primary feature I appreciate about Fortinet FortiGate is the ease of setup."

"The solution is very user-friendly."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."

"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."

"I find that Fortinet FortiGate is pretty easy to use and integrated, offering many features in one box at a decent price compared to other enterprise vendors."

"The solution protects the environment from internal and external threats."

"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The web GUI is easy to use."

"GitDM, like FortiGate VM, provides similar features to FortiGate appliances or cloud solutions. However, FortiGate VM is more suitable for heavy traffic and inspection compared to GitDM. Unfortunately, FortiGate VM lacks a dedicated SPU for inspection, and all features rely on CPU and RAM."

"What I appreciate the most about Fortinet FortiGate-VM is that it is not much different than hardware appliances."

"The most valuable features are the IPS and Antivirus."

"It is a complete package, and it has complete offerings. It fit the needs, and our customer is happy with it."

"Its interface is good. It comes with a lot of features, and its performance is also very good."

"The solution is very easy to set up. It doesn't take a lot of time and offers a quick deployment, so you can start using it almost right away."

"It handles our current load with ease, and I think it can handle a bit more. It definitely can handle a lot more capacity than we currently use."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pros

"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."

"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."

"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."

"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."

Cons

"Security level could be increased."

"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."

"The IPS monitoring can be improved."

"The logging details need to be improved."

"Monitoring could be improved."

"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."

"The anti-malware engine could use an upgrade."

"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"There is an issue with Fortinet support, as we are using the premium support but have not received good results, since they take a long time to resolve queries after we submit them."

"We have experience stability issues, when the product sizing is wrong or on configuration errors."

"VM should be more optimized."

"The operating system isn't stable, so it goes to memory counters every night."

"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."

"Some issues with connecting to the VPN from home after firmware updates."

"The pricing is expensive."

"Pricing is complex."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM cons

"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."

"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."

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"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."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."

"When I look around at other products, such as Sophos, Fortinet FortiGate is 20% to 30% more expensive with our current cost."

"It is affordable. Palo Alto is much more expensive than Fortinet."

"It is a good product from a price perspective versus functionality."

"It is around $50,000 per month."

"Its price is good."

"The tool's pricing is neither cheap nor expensive. Overall, I find it to be competitive in the market."

"The pricing for this solution is good."

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."

"The customer must buy his own license."

"The cost of this product is too high."

"There is an annual license required to use the solution."

"We are on an annual license for this solution and it could be cheaper."

"It is an expensive solution."

"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."

"We don't have to pay for the licenses. But we might purchase licenses in the future."

More Fortinet FortiGate-VM pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

"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%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	351
Midsize Enterprise	130
Large Enterprise	187

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	69
Midsize Enterprise	31
Large Enterprise	34

No data available

Questions from the Community

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When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

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From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

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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 ...

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Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls

In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it...

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Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto....

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What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic ...

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What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some ...

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Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 18% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 9% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Azure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 23% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 5% of the time

Sophos XGS vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 4% of the time

KerioControl vs Fortinet FortiGate-VM

Compared 3% of the time

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Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 21% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Menlo Secure

Compared 16% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure

Compared 16% of the time

Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) vs Menlo Secure

Compared 11% of the time

Silo by Authentic8 vs Menlo Secure

Compared 6% of the time

More Menlo Secure Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

October 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate-VM

October 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate-VM product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

September 2025

Download Menlo Secure product report

Also Known As

No data available

FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate excels in providing integrated VPN, firewalling, and Unified Threat Management (UTM) with centralized management and high availability. It supports remote access and comprehensive threat protection, making it a preferred choice for securing networks.

Fortinet FortiGate offers a robust security platform with features such as strong intrusion prevention, application control, and web filtering. Its integration with Active Directory and SD-WAN functionality provides scalable solutions for large networks. Users appreciate its ease of use through centralized management interfaces, ensuring robust security with flexible configurations. However, FortiGate could enhance its graphical interface and technical support responsiveness, address firmware bugs and costly licensing, improve logging, integrate better with third-party tools, and strengthen scalability and memory for log storage. Complexity in configuration and the need for intuitive features are noted challenges, and there's a demand for advanced security, zero-trust capabilities, and AI integration.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN: Secure remote access and connectivity.
Firewalling: Protects networks from unauthorized access and attacks.
UTM: Offers a comprehensive approach to threat management.
SD-WAN: Optimizes traffic routing for efficient network performance.
Web Filtering: Controls and monitors web access and ensures Internet security.

What benefits or ROI should be considered?

Centralized Management: Simplifies administration and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures consistent security and network availability.
Scalability: Adapts to the needs of growing networks.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Provides robust security measures.
Ease of Use: Minimizes the complexity of security management.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries like education, finance, and government. Companies use it for firewall protection, VPN, and SD-WAN capabilities, ensuring secure perimeter and data center security. It facilitates remote access management and traffic routing optimization, offering reliable security and connectivity solutions.

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

September 2025

Free Report: Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Menlo Secure

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