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Fortinet FortiManager vs Fortinet FortiWeb comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 FortiManager
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (3rd)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Fortinet FortiManager and Fortinet FortiWeb aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Fortinet FortiManager is designed for Network Management Applications and holds a mindshare of 5.1%, down 5.2% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiWeb, on the other hand, focuses on Web Application Firewall (WAF), holds 8.5% mindshare, up 7.5% since last year.
Network Management Applications
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

HamedWasel - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up with good integration capabilities but we've had troubles when moving devices
We've faced an issue when we need to move devices. Templates need to be recreated instead of having the policies, et cetera, cut and pasted over. Everything should just move over when we need to move devices instead of recreating everything from scratch. For the IPSEC tunnels, Fortimanager doesn't have all of the features that are available on Fortigate.
Kacem CHAMMALI - PeerSpot reviewer
Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb
The xFF, or X-Forwarded-For feature, IP reputation, and protected hostname. We can block access using the IP address, so no one can connect to our web server or website using the real IP. They need to use the FQDN instead. Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb and the option to protect the hostname. All traffic passes through FortiWeb. Machine learning capabilities in FortiWeb: I don't use machine learning all the time. In the initial phase of FortiWeb deployment, we use the learning process to detect the traffic passing through FortiGate to our website.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution brings device management into one single pane of glass and is a pretty good product."
"The product is a combination of management and monitoring from the same interface."
"The best feature of Fortinet FortiManager is its ease of use. It is easy to manage the firewall from Fortinet FortiManager. Additionally, the interface is very good."
"For the whole security fabric from Fortinet, with a simple click you can see if some workstations or services are affected by an attack. You can really easily quarantine it, check the solution, and fix it."
"FortiManager's ability to scale is good."
"The integration is quite good."
"The setup is very simple."
"I like the rapid deployment feature. I also like that it's easy to troubleshoot. FortiManager is amazing because we can have a centralized policy. All our devices are integrated, and we can also engage in troubleshooting. We can use it for different deployments. One fantastic feature is the ability to create a version and deploy it immediately."
"What we like about Fortinet FortiWeb is it has all the features. We use all of them, so we have to turn on all the options."
"One of the big advantages of using Fortinet FortiWeb is all the Fortinet family solutions use the same user interface and logic. This makes it easy to use, configure, manage, and understand if you have used one of their solutions before or are wanting to implement other Fortinet solutions in the future. Additionally, all Fortinet solutions can be managed with one application called FortiManager."
"Also, if you serve files or you accept files with your server, Fortiweb has built-in antivirus. The Fortinet product family also provides good IP intelligence (botnet C&C, etc.)."
"The GUI is user-friendly and it's easy to understand how to manage it."
"We find that it is quite stable and reliable."
"This product is very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiWeb is the reports and the AI-based features."
"The anti-defacement feature is very useful because it looks for web changes over time to protect pages."
 

Cons

"The scalability has room for improvement."
"The graphical user interface could use improvement as it appears complex and not user-friendly."
"Its licensing model should be improved."
"Setting up FortiManager can be complex because it involves changes from other devices and a lot of configuration."
"It requires a lot of resources. This is the main challenge."
"The reporting details have room for improvement."
"Troubleshooting for Fortinet products is more difficult than competing products like Cisco and Palo Alto."
"The SD-WAN solution is difficult to manage on FortiManager because you need to share some configurations on the firewall side. Sometimes you lose all connectivity with the firewall, so it is challenging to apply the default configuration to the SD-WAN solution."
"The automation piece can be improved. Although they say it can be automated very well, there is still manual work. Its usability should be improved in terms of automation because we want to build an infrastructure with code, but you can't do that easily with this solution. If they can give us APIs in the firewalls that we can tap into, it would be perfect."
"The solution is not very scalable, to scale up would require another deployment with a new appliance and a change to the network."
"The initial setup in our data center was somewhat complex."
"Fortinet's technical support is pretty slow."
"The GUI could be better. It's limited."
"They can introduce a scaled-down version for the SMB market. It would be very competitive in the environment."
"Most of the deployment is done by our development team because they have some parameters that match the configuration. However, when we initially did the deployment we used a consultant company."
"We would like the interface to be easier to use and more user-friendly. The interface needs to be enhanced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I hope that the prices will become more competitive in subsequent releases, as the current pricing is perceived as somewhat elevated."
"Pricing could improve a little bit so I rate it a seven out of ten."
"Fortinet is a high-end product and the cost is high. They should consider reducing the price, especially for existing customers."
"Fortinet FortiManager is not expensive at all if you compare it with other vendors like Check Point and Cisco. Fortinet products are the least expensive on the market in the category of firewalls."
"Fortinet FortiManager can be expensive."
"If you compare Fortinet and Palo Alto, Fortinet is cheaper, but if you compare Cisco and Fortinet, sometimes Cisco is cheaper because Cisco gives us more discounts because of the size. Cisco isn't cheap, but sometimes, we get a big discount from them."
"Fortinet FortiManager is costly."
"Compared to Check Point or Cisco, Fortinet FortiManager is more affordable but it is still on the higher end."
"Keep a loose margin between your actual bandwidth and the product sizing when using hardware appliances. Only virtual machines are upgradable to larger sizes."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb depends from customer to customer because some customers are considering using other solutions, such as Imperva. The price of Fortinet FortiWeb sits well for the middle-sized customers that we deal with."
"It is not a cheap product. It is not like a Linux or a Genex that you can deploy. It is a hardware appliance, and it is built for a specific reason and reliability. It is an enterprise-class solution. You wouldn't find an SMB investing in something like this."
"The solution is very inexpensive when compared to F5 Advanced WAF and Avi Networks but offers the same benefits."
"The solution is cheaper compared with other solutions. It has a yearly license."
"We are on an annual license for this solution and the price is approximately €100."
"There are no licensing costs."
"The maintenance fee for this product could be improved."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
43%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiManager?
The most valuable feature is the centralized management console.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiManager?
The graphical user interface could use improvement as it appears complex and not user-friendly. Better integration of Fortinet ADC into FortiManager would be beneficial.
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
I would rate the licensing cost as seven out of ten, considering it good value for money. The price is affordable and reasonable for the features offered.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
There is room for improvement in the portability on multi-cloud environments. Enhanced DDoS integration to make FortiWeb more unified with other Fortinet products could be beneficial.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: February 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.