Fortinet FortiGate vs ShieldX comparison

The compared Fortinet FortiGate and ShieldX solutions aren't in the same category. Fortinet FortiGate is ranked #1 in Firewalls , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 20.4% mindshare in the category. ShieldX is ranked #13 in MS , and holds a 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Fortinet FortiGate users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ShieldX users who would recommend it.

Fortinet FortiGate

Read 575 Fortinet FortiGate reviews

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58,242 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

ShieldX

Read 4 ShieldX reviews

283 Views
85 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Fortinet FortiGate

ShieldX

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Fortinet FortiGate and ShieldX both compete in the network security category. ShieldX appears to have the upper hand with its advanced features, justifying its higher price.

Features: Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive threat management capabilities, robust performance, and extensive firewall features. ShieldX has advanced micro-segmentation, automation, and ease of integration with cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiGate could improve its reporting features, VPN configuration simplicity, and address basic usability concerns. ShieldX should enhance scalability options, add more automation features, and work on expanding its scalability potential.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fortinet FortiGate is noted for its straightforward deployment process and efficient customer service. ShieldX has a more complex setup but provides detailed support documentation and effective customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Fortinet FortiGate is known for lower initial setup costs and better return on investment for small to mid-sized businesses. ShieldX, while more expensive, is seen as worth the investment due to its advanced features and longer-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiGate vs. ShieldX Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate vs. ShieldX

December 2024

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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

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

575

Ranking in other categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (2nd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)

ShieldX

Average Rating

9.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Microsegmentation Software (13th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Security Systems solutions, they serve different purposes. Fortinet FortiGate is designed for Firewalls and holds a mindshare of 20.4%, up 19.1% compared to last year.
ShieldX, on the other hand, focuses on Microsegmentation Software, holds 0.5% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.

Firewalls Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	20.4%
OPNsense	11.0%
Netgate pfSense	10.8%
Other	57.8%

Firewalls

Microsegmentation Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ShieldX	0.5%
Illumio	29.4%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	26.7%
Other	43.400000000000006%

Microsegmentation Software

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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MichaelProcyshyn

IT Director at park holidays uk

Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance

The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

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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

"Fortinet FortiGate SWG's content is its most valuable feature."

"In terms of cost, features, and security, everything is top-notch."

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is more realistic in application, allowing for more specific, customized security policies without the extensive work involved with static rules."

"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."

"SD-WAN has had a positive impact by reducing the operational costs in terms of headcount and management."

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."

"FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."

"The solution provides an easy way to filter information and Fortinet lab is a great place to discover new things."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."

"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."

"...It takes the exact same policies that you would apply to your on-premise environment and enables you to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."

"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."

Cons

"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."

"There are no areas that need improvement at this point in time."

"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."

"FortiGate needs to be elastic to the market's trends. It should be easy for SMBs to get the solution."

"Zero trust could be added. Nowadays, solutions like Zscaler, Netskope, and even SecureWorks combine multiple features into a single product."

"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."

"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."

"Areas that have room for improvement in Fortinet FortiGate include support and GUI enhancement."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."

"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."

"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you look at these end security systems and firewalls, these firewalls even five years ago were $50,000 or perhaps $25,000 to implement in some types of customer sites. Now we're talking about tools that are $1,000. In this case, it might have been $500 or something like that."

"If we have an older version, the support costs get quite high."

"They are more expensive than others."

"If the price of the license in Fortinet FortiGate was less expensive it would be better."

"I do not have first-hand experience with the rice of Fortinet FortiGate, but I have heard the price was reasonable."

"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 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."

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

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."

"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."

"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."

"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."

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Comparison Review

it_user216600

Senior Technical Consultant with 51-200 employees

Jan 3, 2016

Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate

I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

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 at large. In my opinion, Fortinet would be the best option and l use Fortinet too...

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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 the firewalls change every 5 to 7 years as stated but you really do need to upg...

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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 good. The most valuable features for me are their web and email filtering. I wou...

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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

Cisco Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Illumio vs ShieldX

Compared 100% of the time

More ShieldX Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

October 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

September 2025

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

No data available

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

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

The ShieldX Elastic Security Platform dynamically scales to deliver comprehensive and consistent controls to protect data centers, cloud infrastructure, applications and data no matter where they are or where they go to make the cloud more secure than on-premise deployments. Our frictionless approach leverages agentless technology as well as the ShieldX Adaptive Intention Engine which autonomously translates and enforces intention into a set of comprehensive controls - microsegmentation, firewall, IPS and more - making security the easiest thing you do in the cloud.

Fortinet

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

Iowa State University

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate vs. ShieldX

December 2024

Free Report: Fortinet FortiGate vs. ShieldX

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiGate vs. ShieldX and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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