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Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Menlo Secure comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
575
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (2nd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Fortinet FortiGate-VM
Ranking in Firewalls
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Menlo Secure
Ranking in Firewalls
54th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (29th), ZTNA (25th), Cloud Security Remediation (9th)
 

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
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate20.4%
Fortinet FortiGate-VM1.9%
Menlo Secure0.1%
Other77.6%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Sitti Ridzma Salahuddin - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Olivier DALOY - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"It has upscaled our security posture, especially regarding external connectivity, because any access or connection from the company has to go through the Fortinet FortiGate firewall."
"The solution is scalable."
"The reporting on employee behavior and the prevention of new viruses are essential features."
"There is a tool called FSSO, which is a single sign-on user ID agent that works perfectly."
"The interface is user-friendly, so it's easy to add policies and block traffic."
"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall has a very high ROI"
"There are many features packed and significant flexibility from Fortinet FortiGate in being able to do numerous things."
"The most valuable feature is that its IPsec works perfectly."
"Fortinet is user-friendly."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM is easy to use."
"The most valuable features are site-to-site connections and UTM."
"It's very easy to set up, even for more junior developers."
"A top feature is the really good web interface and the classic Fortinet features, such as IPS, IDS, AV scanner, and spam filter."
"The features I find most useful in Fortinet FortiGate are its simplicity of utilization, which is very important, and its provision of interfaces to see the alerts and other things."
"FortiGate-VM's firewall is excellent."
"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."
"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."
"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."
 

Cons

"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"Lacks training for new features."
"Right now, it's not really scalable, but it's okay for us. However, looking ahead to three years from now, we might have a problem with scalability. We foresee a little risk down the road. The stability is okay for now."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"One area for improvement for Fortinet FortiGate could be the price, as my clients here are small companies, and they might not have the resources or money to always buy a Fortinet FortiGate solution or FortiGate products."
"Interoperability could be improved. The API needs better integration to match accounts and objects more effectively."
"In terms of room for improvement, logging could be improved."
"Integrating multi-factor authentication with FortiGate-VM can be challenging. While multi-factor authentication is important, not all customers have it enabled. Integration with third-party solutions like ManageEngine or Duo can be complex and sometimes problematic during testing."
"Right now, we have two data centers that are a thousand kilometers apart. It would be nice to be able to string them together."
"FortiGate should be more customer friendly and budgeted better."
"​The tech support calls were not the best and could be improved. ​There have been times when we felt as if we knew more about the device than the support person on the phone.​"
"The GUI could be improved."
"There is always room for improvement in any solutions, including Fortinet's FortiGate-VM. Although the solution claims to have a superior throughput compared to other OEMs, upon closer examination and comparison, there is potential for significant improvement in this area. In today's rapidly evolving technology world, it is important to continuously strive for enhancement and development, and I believe Fortinet can make significant strides in this direction for the FortiGate-VM."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The solution requires a license annually, it is not a user license, you can have as many users as your want. I must renew the license regularly per device."
"It is more expensive than Sophos. Fortinet is overall more expensive than Sophos. The small range of Fortinet, such as 60F and 80F, is more expensive than the small range of Sophos. Sophos is cheaper. In addition, if you jump from 80F Series to 100F Series, the price doubles."
"The license of Fortinet FortiGate should be reduced."
"Fortinet Secure SD-WAN delivered the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) per Mbps among all other vendors."
"The solution is offered as an annual license."
"For the price, I'd rate it a ten because it's very cost-effective."
"Cost-wise, there is not much difference from Sophos, but feature-wise, we get more features."
"We don't have to pay for the licenses. But we might purchase licenses in the future."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"For large enterprises, price is not a problem because they need that solution. However, in the Philippine market, many of our clients are still small to medium businesses, so the price can be challenging. The license for Fortinet FortiGate-VM costs 100K to 150K Philippine pesos per year for VM1 or VM2."
"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."
"The license can be purchased at intervals of one, three, and five years."
"Licensing is pretty standard. It's approximately 15% of the total cost per year as a subscription cost."
"We are on an annual license for this solution and it could be cheaper."
"Of all the firewalls that we compared, FortiGate is the cheapest and most affordable, so we are satisfied with the pricing."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business351
Midsize Enterprise130
Large Enterprise187
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business69
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise34
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
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 ...
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...
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...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiGate-VM?
An enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured.
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....
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 ...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
FortiGate Virtual Appliance, FortiGate-VM
Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Menlo Secure and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,952 professionals have used our research since 2012.