Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

I am using Fortinet FortiGate as a perimeter internet firewall.

The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management.

Fortinet FortiGate could improve if it had a cloud-managed solution.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for approximately 10 years.

Fortinet FortiGate is approximately 80 percent stable.

The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good.

The technical support from Fortinet FortiGate is terrible. They can improve.

The presales, account management, and post-sales are the three worst things about Fortinet.

I have previously used other solutions such as Cisco, Check Point, and Palo Alto.

The solution I would recommend largely depends upon the environment it is being implemented. We tend to mix and match firewalls, but Check Point tends to be,  easier to manage, but more expensive. Their support is much better than Fortinet's when it comes to pre-sales and post-sales.

The price of Fortinet FortiGate is better than Cisco, Check Point, and Palo Alto. In terms of pricing, it's probably a better-priced firewall solution overall.

I rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.

We primarily use this solution as a firewall.

It's our main firewall, but we're planning to replace it with a pfSense for reasons I will discuss.

It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it. Within the four years that I've been using it, maybe two or three times, resetting the firewall was what solved the problem. It's been super, super solid. I never have to think twice. If I ever experience a problem, the firewall is the last thing I think about. I never need to check it because it's never the problem. It's just super solid. It's also pretty robust. I know that there are more robust solutions out there, but not by a lot.

In the enterprise proprietary world, Fortinet, in my experience, considering its cost and reliability (maybe they could bring the price down or maybe they could make more plans), I honestly don't think that there is much room for improvement. I think it's a pretty good solution for anyone who is looking for a proprietary solution. I wouldn't look anywhere else.

Cisco, for example, is probably way overpriced. Fortinet on the other hand, one of their strong sides is that they have an all-encompassing solution with a very reasonable price point. Cisco and other brands are a little bit more modular — to get everything you'd have to buy a lot of different packages.

An automated guide feature or templates that you could pick and choose would be a nice addition.

It's definitely not as easy to look at traffic as I would like. Sometimes when I'm trying to see what traffic has been blocked or what traffic has been passed, it's not as easy as I would like to filter it out or to monitor bandwidth.

The monitoring is not as good as it could be. It could be a lot easier to understand. For example, I was trying to figure out, in a given timeframe, how much was downloaded off of a certain interface and I didn't really understand how I could get that information or if it was even available. I was searching the documentation online and I couldn't even figure it out. Monitoring and reporting could be better; It's very good, but there's definitely a lot of ways to improve it.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for four years.

Fortinet FortiGate is super stable, one hundred percent. Just works 24/7 without any issues like you would expect from an enterprise product.

I know that it's scalable, but I don't actually have any experience regarding scalability. It's probably not as scalable as pfSense because pfSense is based on open hardware platforms. I definitely know that proprietary platforms usually tend to be less scalable because they're more constrained with licensing. The scalability in my opinion would be decent, satisfactory, but I believe pfSense is probably more scalable. I know that there are a lot of big corporations like Google and others that use pfSense. I don't know the details. I'm just giving my educated guess.

I personally prefer pfSense as it's open-source and you only have to pay a minimal fee for support. But for people who want that platform, I think it's a great solution. If I wasn't using pfSense, I would definitely go with FortiGate.

The two products are completely different. If you're using pfSense, you're basically using the entire open-source world — so you're based on FreeBSD, you're using Snorts, everything is open-source. It's very easy to make modifications and to figure out what's going on. You're not dependent on your single company's documentation, there's a huge user base. It's very easy to modify and extend. You can see what's going on — it's very transparent in that sense. It's probably a little bit more manual. With pfSense, You have to put in a little bit more effort to get things done, but, in the end (aside from the huge cost savings), you get all the features that are available in an enterprise firewall for just the price of support, which is also very minimal.

If you need to make any tweaks, you can do it all yourself. If you need to tweak ciphers for SSL for compliance (for PCI, for security compliance) it's not a difficult thing to do; it's a fairly trivial task.

I didn't set it up initially, but I did set up a lot of things from scratch. I think it could be more simple. When you're looking at a proprietary solution, usually it's aimed for end-users and they just want to do point and click. I believe in certain aspects, pfSense was simpler. I think there's maybe just a bit of a learning curve, but I guess you would experience that with any platform.

I think that the pricing is fair.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Fortinet FortiGate a rating of nine.

Other than the price and the lack of extensibility and transparency (which is inherent in any proprietary platform); if you're going to compare it to pfSense, then I would not give it a nine. I would give it an eight, and I would give pfSense a 10. pfSense has its drawbacks, but not that many, in my opinion. 

Take the time to learn the platform and you won't run into trouble later. That's my advice.

Other than that, it's super solid, super reliable. It does the job.

Our primary use cases for FortiGate are SD-WAN and the next-gen firewall.

Most clients in the Philippines seek a cost-effective solution that can secure their network, and FortiGate is often their first choice. If your network is secure, there's less downtime and threat exposure, increasing overall efficiency. 

Fortinet's secure SD-WAN helps us remedy threats faster. It's user-friendly, and you can see everything on the FortiGate dashboard through a single pane of glass. Secure SD-WAN has reduced our mean time to detect. We haven't had any significant issues so far. 

SD-WAN has reduced our help desk tickets by making us secure. Many of our clients switched from other brands to Fortinet, and they feel that the FortiGate box and the added security FortiGuard provides have exceeded their expectations. 

FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features. 
FortiGate has always had good interoperability. Their fabric enables you to integrate a lot of products into one vendor. 

The secure SD-WAN gives you a tool for failproof your connections, especially with a branch-to-branch setup. FortiGate also comes with FortiGuard, which is an excellent threat-detection service. They have their own R&D and threat intelligence for FortiGuard.

While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up. 

We have been using the solution for more than two years.

I rate FortiGate an eight and a half out of ten for stability.

I rate FortiGate a nine out of ten for scalability. 

I rate Fortinet support a nine out of ten. 

Positive

We also use Meraki. FortiGate has advantages in terms of usability. Also, if we don't pay for the Meraki license, it becomes useless. 

Deploying FortiGate is straightforward. It typically takes about three days to deploy and configure the solution. One person is usually enough to deploy it. 

Most of our clients are still using the FortiGate D Series, so they have gotten their money's worth. 

Fortinet is much cheaper compared to the other leading platforms. However, most of our customers are asking for bigger discounts on license renewals. 

I rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten. 

We use Fortinet FortiGate for the protection of our perimeter, VPNs, web filtering, application filtering, and general edge protection.

I received four tickets a year when I joined my current company, and what the solution has really done is enabled the SD-WAN feature. This has given us more value and reduced the amount of time spent on the manual management of our edge device. We are now able to set our SLAs and be on autopilot.

The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN. The new web flash is especially noteworthy because it supports Google and the single sign-on for our VPN activities.

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

I have been using the solution for three and a half years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is very scalable. To scale our firewall we only need to add more hardware. We currently have over 2,000 users.

We previously used Mikro Tik before the organization decide to switch.

The initial setup is straightforward. As long as we know what we are doing the deployment can be completed within one business day.

The implementation was completed by a partner and two people were required. We completed the configurations ourselves.

The pricing is flexible. We pay for our device and our subscription according to our needs.

I give the solution a ten out of ten.

One interesting and critical thing about Fortinet is the add-ons they have included with their firewalls, such as SD-WAN, which would cost a lot of money with other providers but is included with Fortinet's firewall.

When looking for a solution that can better optimize our connectivity and also keep providing security along the website for our branch offices, Fortinet FortiGate is the best solution. The solution is worth every cent. I use FG-61E and for the size of the device it has been very stable for the three years with only occasional reports to apply updates. Fortinet FortiGate has been very responsive to vulnerabilities that have been released. Our business is 24/7 and we don't have leaks. Our servers are always available.

I like its interface. It is a simple solution. As compared to Sophos, its interface is easier. It is easy to create a policy, and you can easily understand it. 

The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy.

Its reporting and pricing need improvement.

I have been using this solution for five years.

Its stability is good. It has 90% stability.

Its scalability is good.

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.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

We primarily use the solution just for internal segmentation and connection of some ranges using IPSec.

Currently, the solution is saving costs for us and blocks applications effectively using layer seven.

The solution's most valuable aspect is the IPS for potential mitigation from the cloud inside our network. 

The VPN SSL is important for us. 

The web filter is very good. 

The GUI is okay.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The documentation provided is okay, I find that sometimes, with other startups, it's hard to find a good amount of documentation in order to assist you with the product. In this case, the solution offers a good amount of detail.

The solution offers good analyzing capabilities.

I'm not sure if the solution is really lacking anything major. For us, it works okay.

They seem to have made a lot of improvements since the last release.

Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away.

We've been using the solution for about ten years at this point. As it's been about a decade, I'd say we have quite a bit of experience with it.

For the most part, the memory and the CPU are good. It's generally stable. We don't face any issues with this aspect of the solution.

The scalability is fine. If a company needs to expand it, they should be able to do so without any issues.

We only have about 40 users on the product currently. It's not a big company.

For now, the product is good as it is and we don't have plans to increase usage in the future.

By and large, technical support is good. It's okay. It's not bad. It could be better, however, they do answer our questions when we have them. We're mostly satisfied with the level of service they provide. Of course, it could always be a bit better.

Sometimes the first contact is useful, and sometimes you don't get the kind of help you need right away. It would be nice if it was more consistent.

We also use Sophos. We use both solutions at the same time.

We didn't face any complexity when handling the initial implementation. The process is quite straightforward.

The implementation itself can sometimes take less than a week. On average, you should expect it to be about a week in total.

I didn't need the assistance of a reseller or integrator. I handled the implementation myself.

We're charged a licensing fee on a yearly basis. I'm unsure of the exact cost to the company, however. I'm not sure if there are other costs over and above the standard licensing fee.

We also looked at Juniper when we evaluated FortiGate. FortiGate is much easier to use in comparison which is why we chose it. The documentation was also better. That, and there was no integration for SSL in Juniper.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

Overall, I would recommend the product. It comes with a very good set of features.

I would rate the solution ten out of ten. We've been quite happy with it.

We use Fortinet FortiGate 100E for a VPN. We also use the solution for word filtering. These are our primary business requirements.

We were not fully operational previously. Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. 

In Egypt, to make this possible, we built connections for everything between the two sides through the internet using the VPN side-to-side with Fortinet. 

We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E.

The main feature that Fortinet FortiGate has that is very useful for me, is that I can connect two sides of the network to each other with Fortinet. 

I can make two VPNs run side-to-side. VPN is very simple and so easy with FortiGate.

Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files (like in the 101E, the old product). We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. 

I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need to log locally, it is not available. Also, the log only records a little time and needs to be longer.

Fortinet FortiGate offers good stability. I have been using it for around two years.

FortiGate is a very scalable tool. They have an app to manage the access points, switches, and other solutions. 

For our project, now we're over a hundred users at the headquarters. The other branch supports about 20 persons.

Fortinet tech support is very helpful. I have not faced any trouble with their technical support. 

The other product I was previously using was ForgeRock but did not have the experience of integrating it with Fortinet FortiGate.

For the Fortinet installation, our initial setup was for word filtering. It was very easy and did not take a lot of time. The deployment took about three days. 

FortiGate is very easy. The entire solution setup processes took about three days. I can make many of the rules for most users as we need it configured easily.

I am the integrator for Fortinet FortiGate solutions at our company.

The licensing price for the Fortinet products is approximately a thousand of dollars per year for the FortiGate 100E and $200 per year for the FortiGate 50E. 

I don't use additional licensing, just the yearly subscription.

We did not evaluate any other options for this purchase.

If anyone asks me for my experience with Fortinet solutions, I would recommend FortiGate, especially if they need to use it for security. 

I would recommend the FortiGate series for integration with any hardware or software product. I am very satisfied with Fortinet. I would rate it a 9 out of 10 overall.

We use Fortinet FortiGate mostly for a data center firewall.

The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for approximately seven years.

Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box.

The coverage and scalability of Fortinet FortiGate are good.

We use the solution for daily operations in the data center. There are hundreds of users that use the solution.

The support from Fortinet FortiGate is great. When I have an issue with the support team, it is when I can't understand what they need and they do not understand. They then typically ask for a remote session which can help us receive the solution. Overall, the support team for Fortinet FortiGate is very good.

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate is very straightforward.

I rate the initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate a four out of five.

We pay for the solution annually.

The sizing is very important for the Fortinet FortiGate because after designing you have to choose what size and what kind of FortiGate you will implement. Sometimes you need to implement profiling and this will take from your processing.

In my area, this solution is recommended for many projects because it's very easy to do the implementation and troubleshoot and is highly stable. The integration between many devices, such as the FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager, is good and helps us. Fortinet FortiGate is recommended for any firewall design.

I rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten.