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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 (4th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
 

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 5.3%, up 5.1% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiWeb, on the other hand, focuses on Web Application Firewall (WAF), holds 8.2% mindshare, up 7.3% 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's most valuable feature is the consolidation and the single point of administration solution."
"Fortinet has the option of synchronization in the cloud, so you can manage everything if you have a cloud account."
"We look at the traffic to segment the network and it improves and increases the performance. When we have a mobile connection and local laptops are on the same network. We have seen a big performance upgrade."
"The most valuable features are the centralized management of the firewalls."
"Without FortiManager, you cannot manage a complex environment across several sites with multiple firewalls."
"FortiManager offers a full zero-touch provisioning feature that allows us to create a template of our devices and onboard them remotely without visiting the site."
"I pushed templates from FortiManager to our site, and they were deployed successfully."
"The most valuable feature is the central configuration for firewall policies."
"Even though most products have the same functionality nowadays, FortiWeb is easy to integrate."
"It's the extra security that is the most valuable feature. You have insight into your traffic. There are some great insights into what utilities hackers are trying to exploit. It blocks a lot of stuff from the internet."
"FortiWeb offers machine learning in the latest product. This fixed many problems. There are no false negatives."
"It offers some feedback and suggestions that guide our system development while helping our vendors to update their applications and fix any issues or bugs."
"All the features that FortiGate contains are very suitable for our business. We work with other products in Fortinet, FortiWeb, FortiSandbox, FortiMail, and FortiCache. We use all UTM features like self-encryption, encryption, all UTM features."
"Banks have to be compliant with PCI and other things, and FortiWeb is absolutely amazing in terms of providing these reports. Otherwise, they will have to spend a lot of time on them."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall (WAF)."
"The product has a very user-friendly dashboard."
 

Cons

"I didn't like the connectivity with FortiManager and FortiSwitch, which was buggy and annoying and had fewer features."
"It requires a lot of resources. This is the main challenge."
"There may be a communication issue. However, other items may be the culprit, such as network connectivity. It depends on the customer's network."
"The graphical user interface could use improvement as it appears complex and not user-friendly."
"The graphical user interface could use improvement as it appears complex and not user-friendly."
"The solution has to be enhanced to manage new switches."
"When I started, it was a bit difficult, however, now it's okay. It can be a bit complex for basic users."
"We have some visibility issues with the reporting."
"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."
"It may be better if it were easier to create roles."
"In my experience, Fortinet FortiWeb could improve the intelligent features to acknowledge whether any threat or incident that's running happened. Then give us the ability to escalate it to layer 2 or layer 3 in the network operations."
"For advanced users, it would be really useful to have access and the ability to manipulate packets. If we can access and manipulate the contents of packets, even encrypted packets... that would be powerful. Since we're looking at packets arriving at our network, we would have the private key to access those packets and their information."
"The support side of things can be improved."
"The dashboards are not that configurable. Application-specific dashboards can be improved. If we have 50 applications, there should be something to see what's happening with these 50 applications. There could be a graph or a consolidated alert page where all alerts are inbuilt. They have other products that I can use, but this feature should be built into FortiWeb."
"The false positives are annoying.​"
"A better load balancer is needed when multiple servers are used for the same website."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is based on a licensing model by feature."
"The price of Fortinet FortiManager is inexpensive."
"On a scale from one to ten with one being the highest price and ten being the lowest price, I would rate FortiManager's price at three."
"The solution requires you to have a license for every device, as well as for any advanced features being used, which makes it costly for high-volume users. However, for a large-scale environment with a lot of customers we have found it to be a worthwhile investment."
"Fortinet FortiManager is a low-priced product."
"Fortinet FortiManager is costly."
"FortiManager isn't expensive, but its cost is dependent on which services are required."
"FortiManager is reasonably priced - I pay around US$40,0000 per year, which covers fifty locations."
"​It really pays off to buy licences for multiple years​."
"​The pricing is reasonable."
"We are on an annual license for this solution and the price is approximately €100."
"It's an expensive solution, although there are no additional costs."
"Due to the situation in Iran with the sanctions, the price of this solution is very expensive."
"FortiWeb can be purchased in VM mode for a lower price and the same features."
"The solution is a bit expensive when compared to other products."
"The pricing is pretty good. We do pass a lot of traffic through our API servers. Something like 100 gigs of web traffic is a fair amount for reduced JSON API calls, but the cost is $50. For that peace of mind, we have thousands and thousands of customers that are protected by that $50, so it's a no-brainer."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
9%
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, NetScaler and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.