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Fortinet FortiOS vs Huawei NGFW 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
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
317
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Fortinet FortiOS
Ranking in Firewalls
28th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Huawei NGFW
Ranking in Firewalls
30th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.3%, up from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiOS is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei NGFW is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable
In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.
RaynoPowell - PeerSpot reviewer
Great IPS and DNS filtering with useful tutorials available  
We don't really find a lot of issues on it. If I really have to complain about something, and there's not much, is the free VPN solution is a bit limited. Then again, it is a free solution. That's essentially it. Nothing else on the FortiGate or on the Fortinet OS side is really an issue. That's one of the main reasons why we use them: everything works and works well. For what we use, there isn't really any missing feature. In fact, we actually want to get rid of some of the features that they have due to the fact that, for the security model that we need to implement, having more features actually opens up potential risk. We actually would like to have a device that is more focused specifically on OT environments the operational technologies. We would prefer a device that's stripped down, that doesn't have all the other fluff in the more enterprise system. We actually want a feature where we can remove features that are there that we don't use. That is actually a thing that we find. We use it now in an operational technology environment. We use normal IT equipment. However, it's not a normal IT network. It differs significantly from a normal corporate IT environment. In a normal corporate IT environment, you like the fluff, and the additional features, and you can click, click, click, and you're done. However, all of those features you add to a device open up risk for us. And that is something we do differently in the OT environment in operational technology. We prefer to not have the fluff. We prefer to have only what is needed for the device to do what it needs to do. For example, imagine an additional feature for some sort of additional VPN technology has been added. However, it's not really needed for the OT environment, and it's not configured on the device, yet there's some sort of security threat in there. Now, all of a sudden, somebody can hack your system, and he's in there, and he's switching the lights on and off the entire city. And you don't know about it due to the fact that the additional fluff that we added to the system, we weren't aware of that issue was on there. You can enable and disable certain modules in it. However, with disabling, nobody can really tell us if that module is disabled. Is it really disabled? Is it actually unloaded? Is it uninstalling Word from your laptop, or is it just not running Word?
Muhammad-Nadeem - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable and easy-to-setup product that can be used to configure different policies for specific users
In other next-generation firewalls, if you are creating virtual systems, they will create separate hardware resources for different virtual systems. Other products will create a different routing table when we create a routing protocol. In Huawei, the routing table, control plan, and data plan will share the resources. Every virtual system should have separate resources, routing tables, and hardware resources. We have created multiple segments and virtual systems, and we don't want one segment to communicate with another. The product must divide the virtual firewalls with different utilization systems. The hardware, routing switch, and security bundle should be separate and different. The solution does not have sandboxing features. It should provide a sandboxing solution. It should also work on zero-day attacks. The solution should be comparable with the products provided by Palo Alto, Check Point, and Cisco.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"Fortinet FortiGate meets all the security demands of my industry. It covers endpoint security, including web interface, DNS security, and ELP. I'm currently using the latest version. The features that have most improved our network security are Web Control, filtering, application control, IDS, IPS policies, and Deep SSL inspection."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"It has improved our organization with control data."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"The technical support on offer has always been quite good."
"The classification of the websites is helpful."
"The solution is very easy to configure and has a good interface, plus it offers more configuration options than other vendors."
"The firewall options in FortiOS allow us to open up access to our vendors for EDI and all its features."
"What I like about this solution, is that it is the only solution that currently offers VPN for clients."
"The VDOM (Virtual DOM) is a virtualized firewall that has some opportunities for flexibility that are an advantage in certain configurations."
"The user experience is great. The graphical user interface is also good."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiOS are its constant updates and definitions."
"The solution's performance is good with IPSec."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The most useful feature is the performance of the firewalls and networking operations."
"The support for the solution has been excellent. If we ever had an issue they would send an engineer to help us with our problem."
"I had no difficulty using the Huawei NGFW."
"The UI is quite good."
"The operational management dashboard is easy to use for the customers."
"Huawei was able to assist us in the installation of their product. The installation was very fast."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"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."
"The support system could be improved."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"The solution is good, but they have poor marketing in Nigeria. They need to market their product better."
"The product needs a feature that allows users to create another site on a VPN."
"Some features I have found to be hidden and cannot be accessed through the graphical user interface, you can only access them through the command-line interface(CLI). All the features should be accessible through the graphical user interface."
"Could be improved by supporting an allocation of quota base management regarding user data."
"The solution could improve the log retention and reports."
"In the future I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards and a drop in the price."
"Right now, all the features meet my requirements."
"The complexity of the VPNs should be improved."
"The tool lacks features."
"Huawei should improve their threat intelligence."
"Huawei NGFW should have better reporting and a dashboard for the visibility of traffic."
"The solution does not have sandboxing features."
"The solution doesn't seem to be very mature. Our networking team says they are experiencing a lot of issues in the firewalls and some routers."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"I would like to see an antivirus solution included with the product."
"The documentation needs to be improved. When they retire old models, they also retire the documentation. However, if you are still using an older model, you still need access to that documentation. And yet, they go ahead and removed it. It's gone. You are therefore stuck with a device with no documentation and technical support that isn't very helpful as they also remove support assistance as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet is reasonable in pricing and licensing. Overall, FortiGate is affordable. The licensing fee can be a little high, depending on the budget for your project."
"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."
"The price of FortiGate support is too expensive."
"Fortinet's pricing is more straightforward than other solutions. If Fortinet doesn't stick out when you're searching for a solution, you are a glutton for punishment. You only need to know two things when purchasing a Fortinet solution: your total bandwidth and bandwidth at the site. You need to estimate the future bandwidth with other solutions if your customer plans to upgrade."
"Pricing for this product is comparatively lower than other products. It's an affordable solution, but when expanding the number of users, they'll ask you to replace the model, so that's an added cost."
"The pricing depends on the FortiGate model we are using, ranging from $3,000 to $20,000 US dollars."
"Setup costs and pricing depends on many variables, but it's mostly affordable."
"The Indian market is different than the European and American markets. When you compare they need to be a bit more aggressive on pricing."
"The cost is around $40,000."
"The Fortinet solutions can be a bit expensive."
"The solution could have a better licensing model. It's a bit more expensive than other solutions. The annual subscription is very pricy in Fortinet. The cost could be reduced."
"The price of Fortinet FortiOS has been reasonable."
"The price of Fortinet FortiOS is less than $10,000 annually. The price of the support is reasonable compared to competitors."
"The solution is cost effective. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The pricing is competitive for the medium and high markets but for the small markets it can be expensive."
"Pricing depends on implementation and licensing choices and is usually not a practical budget choice for small businesses."
"The pricing is cheap."
"Huawei is priced lower than most competitors."
"The solution isn't cheap. It's market price."
"I believe that we are entitled to a one-year extension on our licensing."
"The price of the license of this solution is high."
"The solution is inexpensive."
"Licensing fees are billed on an annual basis."
"Huawei is 30% cheaper than Arista."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
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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...
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...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiOS?
The SSL VPN is fee for use is most attractive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiOS?
Regarding the cost, the initial purchase is relatively cheap because it comes bundled. However, the subscription rene...
What do you like most about Huawei NGFW?
The solution's implementation is pretty easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei NGFW?
The pricing is quite cheap compared to other NGFWs like Palo Alto or Cisco.
What needs improvement with Huawei NGFW?
Huawei should improve their threat intelligence. They need to have a more diversified platform and continuously updat...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
No data available
Huawei USG Firewalls, USG9500 Series, USG6600 Series, USG6300 Series
 

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
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
KMITL, Peking University
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiOS vs. Huawei NGFW and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.