We performed a comparison between Fortinet Fortigate and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate seems to be a slightly superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be one of the most expensive products on the market. Some also felt that the user interface and the documentation could be improved.
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The product is easy to use and is stable. The SV1 functionality is a benefit."
"This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"With FortiClient, you can easily connect when you are home, check out what you want to do, and connect to your network when you are not at work. You can switch on servers and you can check what is wrong."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"The App-ID, Content-ID, User-ID, and encryption and decryption are valuable features."
"We have found the application control to be the most valuable feature. Also, Layer 7, because all other products are working up to the maximum capacity. But Palo Alto is benefiting us, especially in application control management. We are able to differentiate between Oracle traffic and SQL traffic."
"The first time I came across these firewalls, what surprised me the most was their web user interface. It is complete and gives you a lot of information. You can do 80% of the things related to your network and firewall through the web UI. In some of the other devices, the UI is not as complete. App-ID is also very valuable in customer networks. When you're seeing a lot of traffic in your network, you can see in your web UI which users have the applications that are consuming the most bandwidth. You have a broad context, which is very good."
"A feature introduced by Palo Alto with the version 10-OS is embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. Machine learning analyzes the network traffic and detects if there is any usual traffic coming from outside to inside. Because of Palo Alto, organizations detect around 91% of malicious attacks using machine learning. The machine learning helps customers by implementing firewalls in critical and air gap areas so there is no need to integrate with the cloud sandbox."
"I like to install Palo Alto mainly on the data center side to have visibility into all VLANs. That gives full visibility into the core."
"I'm using most of its features such as antivirus, anti-spam, and WAF. I'm also using its DNS Security and DNS sinkhole features, as well as the URL filtering and application security features."
"I like all the functions and features."
"Application control, IPS, and sandboxing towards the cloud are the most valuable features. It is a very user-friendly product with a very easy-to-use interface."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"The areas that need to improve are network protection and user identification."
"The support could be improved. Palo Alto does not have a support team located in Bangladesh, and their support team operates from another location. Therefore, when we raise a ticket, it takes some time for them to respond, which can be problematic for us."
"Most other VPN clients include mobile VPNs but Palo Alto does not."
"The built-in machine learning features provide some automation, but I think there should be an option for manual review because nothing replaces the human eye."
"The solution would benefit from having a dashboard."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls don't provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities. It's missing some features for geofencing and understanding locations."
"In the future, I would like to see more OTP features."
"People sometimes find it more expensive as compared to other solutions. There are also fewer training opportunities for Palo Alto than Cisco and other vendors."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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