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Fortinet FortiGate pros and cons

Vendor: Fortinet

4.2 out of 5

318 reviews
90% willing to recommend

16K followers

Pros & Cons summary

Fortinet FortiGate is known for its robust firewall capabilities and advanced threat management features. It supports UTM, IPS, and application control, providing strong security for growing organizations. However, technical support and system stability are frequent concerns. Initial setup challenges and configuration complexity may deter less experienced users. Effective load balancing and basic reporting features often necessitate additional investments in products like FortiAnalyzer, increasing costs due to additional licenses needed for full feature access.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Fortinet FortiGate offers excellent firewall capabilities with multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs) allowing for separate firewall instances.

Unified Threat Management (UTM) features and integrated threat intelligence are highly valued for robust security.

The scalability and reliability of Fortinet FortiGate make it suitable for both small and large organizations.

Advanced routing and SD-WAN capabilities provide seamless integration into large networks.

Centralized management via FortiManager enhances network control and efficiency.

CONS

Stability and technical support are recurring issues with Fortinet FortiGate.

Configuration complexities, such as the lack of a simplified interface for managing configurations and rules, present challenges.

The performance, especially under high demand or when utilizing all features, could be improved.

The cost is considered high, both for initial purchase and for ongoing support and licensing.

Fortinet FortiGate's capability for detailed and flexible reporting and logging is lacking without additional tools like FortiAnalyzer.

Fortinet FortiGate Pros review quotes

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Apr 20, 2023

Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable.

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Presales Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Jun 5, 2023

The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall.

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JJ

IT Security Analyst at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees

Nov 16, 2023

I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager.

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Fortinet FortiGate

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JH

Chief Technology Officer at Future Point Technologies

May 24, 2023

Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility.

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reviewer1294776

Owner at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Dec 2, 2020

The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us.

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Reviewer:734513

Network Security & DataCenter Architect at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 20, 2023

The technical support in our region is excellent.

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ES

Solutions Engineer/Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Dec 23, 2020

One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them.

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JC

Network Security Engineer at Social Security Commission

Nov 10, 2020

There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth.

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DO

Network Solutions Architect at Yazata Solutions

May 2, 2022

FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features.

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Manager Network (IT/OT) at a consumer goods company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 17, 2023

The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features.

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Fortinet FortiGate Cons review quotes

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Apr 20, 2023

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.

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Presales Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Jun 5, 2023

Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem.

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JJ

IT Security Analyst at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees

Nov 16, 2023

Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation.

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Fortinet FortiGate

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Learn what your peers think about Fortinet FortiGate. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.

842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.

JH

Chief Technology Officer at Future Point Technologies

May 24, 2023

From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement.

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reviewer1294776

Owner at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Dec 2, 2020

The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall.

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Reviewer:734513

Network Security & DataCenter Architect at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 20, 2023

I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution.

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ES

Solutions Engineer/Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Dec 23, 2020

FortiLink is the interface on the firewall that allows you to extend switch management across all of your switches in the network. The problem with it is that you can't use multiple interfaces unless you set them up in a lag. Only then you can run them. So, it forces you to use a core type of switch to propagate that management out to the rest of the switches, and then it is running the case at 200. It leaves you with 18 ports on the firewall because it is also a layer-three router that could also be used as a switch, but as soon as you do that, you can't really use them. They could do a little bit more clean up in the way the stacking interface works. Some use cases and the documentation on the FortiLink checking interface are a little outdated. I can find stuff on version 5 or more, but it is hard to find information on some of the newer firmware. The biggest thing I would like to see is some improvement in the switch management feature. I would like to be able to relegate some of the ports, which are on the firewall itself, to act as a switch to take advantage of those ports. Some of these firewalls have clarity ports on them. If I can use those, it would mean that I need to buy two less switches, which saves time. I get why they don't, but I would still like to see it because it would save a little bit of space in the server rack.

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JC

Network Security Engineer at Social Security Commission

Nov 10, 2020

There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering.

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DO

Network Solutions Architect at Yazata Solutions

May 2, 2022

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.

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Manager Network (IT/OT) at a consumer goods company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 17, 2023

The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 278)

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