Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

We primarily use the solution for security - for the firewall.

The solution has a variety of excellent features.

The cloud base that they have on offer is great.

Overall, the solution is very good and we've been very happy with it.

The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice.

The integration is great.

The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are.

I've been using the solution for one year so far.

So far, the stability has been very good. We haven't had any issues at all. I haven't had issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's great.

I haven't run into any issues when it comes to scaling. If a company needs to scale it should be able to do so without much of a problem.

I haven't really dealt directly with technical support. Once, when I ran into an issue, I spoke with my local partner. Other than that, you can find the answers you need via the help navigation.

Therefore, I can't speak to the helpfulness of technical support. I can't speak to whether or not they are responsive or knowledgable.

I have been satisfied with the help I've received from my local partner, however. They've been quite good.

We do use other solutions as well, such as Cisco. We find this solution to be better in general, and more user-friendly. That said, Cisco does do customization better.

The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward. We found it to be quite simple.

When I bought it, I found that the user interface made everything pretty easy from the start. They also have very good help features that can assist you if you get stuck. It was pretty easy to configure the items I needed to.

The price is pretty much standard with the competition. It's not overly expensive.

That said, if you want to have a good security VPN or firewall, then you should invest more than money and pay interest in local devices. If you want a better network structure and better security, then you need more local devices.

I use FortiGate quite a bit. I'm just a customer and end-user. I don't have a business relationship with the company.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the solution at an eight. I've been pretty happy with it so far.

We have some that are doing IPS, and we have some that are for AV. That's basically their main role. We are using one version below the current release.

I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job. 

If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox.

I have been using this solution for probably 20 years.

They are pretty stable. We never had any real issues with them.

Their scalability is pretty good. We have upgraded and changed them, and we have been running them for 20 years. They run for a long time. We are not replacing them every couple of years, and we have scaled up a lot. We have over 10,000 users behind it. We have three people for maintenance and deployment. 

I never had to deal with technical support directly, but I've never heard the guys complain about it.

I never set them up.

We are using FortiGate, but we are switching to Palo Alto. We are just moving over to the new next-gen and do an extra layer or higher layer filtering. Being a government organization, it was RFP, and basically, Palo Alto won the RFP. I wasn't part of the RFP review, so I can't tell which features pushed Palo Alto over the edge or not. For all I know, it could just be price.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten. I would also rate Palo Alto the same.

We primarily use the solution for the firewall. We use it for a perimeter firewall or access firewall inside the network to allow some zones to be disabled from one zone to another zone. 

The stability of the solution is excellent.

The user interface (UI) is very, very good.

The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now.

When we need to engage with the endpoint or our customer during an investigation, there should be a way to investigate the issues without the need for the customer to be present. It would make it much easier.

We've been using the product for the last few years.

We find the solution to be quite stable. It's very reliable. We don't have to worry about bugs or glitches on the system. It doesn't crash or freeze.

We have more than 7.000 users on the solution right now.

We do plan to continue to use the solution going forward.

The technical support is very good. We're quite satisfied with the level of support we receive. We find them to be knowledgeable and responsive when we have issues. 

Before using FortiGate, we used Cisco. However, we found the Cisco solutions to be unstable and we needed to move away from them. We do still have some legacy Cisco solutions, however. We find they work better now, with FortiGate.

We didn't have a problem with the installation. It wasn't complex in any way. We found it to be quite straightforward.

The deployment process was very fast. It took less than a day for us to do everything we needed to do.

In terms of maintenance, we have eight people taking care of the troubleshooting of tickets.

An integrator helped us with the implementation process they were very helpful and extremely knowledgable. We had them in case something we wrong, however, nothing has gone wrong so far.

We're a service provider. We work with clients that use the solution.

We utilize both the 1500 and 3000 series of the product.

I would definitely recommend this solution to other companies to use. We've had a good experience overall.

In general, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I am using it as an IPS, intrusion protection system.

The first benefit is the cost. It is very affordable.

Also, it's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls.

It's a complete solution. You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. That's a very nice feature because with, for example, Cisco, you need to set the switch, you need to set the firewall, and you need to test it. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it. It's very easy.

In the last version of the FortiOS - the operating system of the firewall - they put a lot of new features to support communications in a firewall. Whatever the communication that you have, you can put that in the firewall, and that's great.

For me, at this time, it's very complete.

Stability is very good. I have no problems right now with any of my customers. I haven't had a call from a customer in about three months, other than to make new policies. That's it. They are not complaining about the Fortinet, that it is damaged or something like that.

Scalability is very good. We just did a quote for a university here that has about 25,000 students, and all the solutions that we put in the RFP, they were accepted. The only thing is the cost. As far wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you.

Technical support is very good. If you have any questions, they have a forum and, apart from the forum, depending on the FortiGate that you purchased, they have very good support from second-line engineers. Whatever your problem is, you call and at least you get a callback.

I was using a SonicWall. The problem with SonicWall is that they were purchased by Dell, and apparently, Dell is not putting any research money into the devices. That is the reason I changed because there are a lot of new things, new generation firewall technologies and they are not using them. Also, apparently, the price is very high right now. If you compare the price with a FortiGate, which has a lot of additional features, it's not worth it.

When selecting a vendor the most important criteria are support and cost.

Setup is very straightforward.

Pricing is good. They offer a lot of things, the most important is the support. Every time you upgrade your license, you also get insurance for the equipment. If you have any problem with equipment, they send in new equipment.

We did a total cost of ownership analysis against Sophos and also Palo Alto, but that was out of scope, it was too expensive. Another one was WatchGuard. When you start looking at the cost of the license for all the things that you get, Fortinet is by far the best option. The problem with the other companies is the licensing.

I rate FortiGate a 10 because every time I need to use the support, they are there. There were times when I went to a customer to give support, I called Cisco, they pass me to Brazil, and on another call, they passed me to India. After I gave the guy in India all this information for an hour, he asked me, "What's the problem?" So there was a communication issue with them and they don't know the problems very well. With Fortinet, they are in the US, not in India.

Do a total cost of ownership analysis with all the features you are looking for and, based on that, make the purchase. Also, reviews are very important.

Fortinet FortiGate is used as a firewall.

The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate for approximately four years.

I rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate a five out of five.

I rate the scalability of Fortinet FortiGate a five out of five.

All sizes of organizations can use this solution. All levels of a company are using this solution.

The support from Fortinet FortiGate could improve. They are not easily accessible when we need them. They could improve their response time.

I rate the support from Fortinet FortiGate a three out of five.

Neutral

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate is very simple and user-friendly. The configuration for the solution is easy. The time it takes for the deployment depends on the environment of the company. It can take a week, but typically it takes three to four days.

We have more than six certified engineers in our company that can do the deployment of the solution.

The customers have seen an ROI from using Fortinet FortiGate. They are satisfied with the solution.

The price of Fortinet FortiGate is affordable. Most of our customers are on a three-year license to use the solution. All the features and support are included in the price.

I rate the price of Fortinet FortiGate a five out of five.

I rate Fortinet FortiGate a nine out of ten.

We are partners with Fortinet, so we are system integrators. We are the bridge between Fortinet and the customer.

I'm satisfied with the product more or less. If we are presenting Fortinet and proposing Palo Alto also, Fortinet is not able to develop the kinds of features available right now in the market. Even with the sandboxing feature, which is an advanced synchronized security, right now most customers are asking for a complete solution like EDR, XTR, or a kind of firewall. It should get synced, and there should be a type of URL filtering application that filters all kinds of visibility.

The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture. The firewall architecture is a kind of an operating system in the chip. We have our kind of base operating system in raw mode, so nobody is able to hack it out. The problem is that every time your base operating system gets an upgrade, customers need to upgrade the firewall. It means you have to replace the older firewall. That's a pain area. It should not be that kind of ASIC base. It should be based like Check Point and Palo Alto so if there is a major update coming in, they can be updated on the same firewalls.

We have been working with Fortinet for about five years.

The product is stable. Normally we are selling Fortinet for customers who have 100 or 150 users, not more than that. Over time, there is a lot of worry about insecurity. For big accounts, we are not able to satisfy the customer with the Fortinet firewall because they ask for a lot of features. Even in PLC, we have some challenges in that.

Technical support is okay.

Initial setup is easy to configure.

The price is fine. We were expecting that Fortinet would give competition to Palo Alto, but the market that we are covering with Fortinet is kind of SMB. They are compatible with Sophos, so we are not dealing with the big boxes because then there will be a requirement of big boxes. If there are more than 2,000, 5,000, or 15,000 users, we are selling for Palo Alto, but not lower than that.

I would rate this solution 6 out of 10. 

The people who are working right now as system engineers are doing a kind of formal activity with the configuration. That means they are doing the basic activation. They are not doing a lot of experiments on them, so they should go with that because Fortinet is also having sensors, which can be highlighted to the customers. 

Training should be available to the partner. The people who really implement the Fortinet firewall or Check Point or Palo Alto don't have enough knowledge about that because there is no public document or public training available.

We use FortiGate to protect our company network. We have a wireless plan (WLAN) environment.

The user interface is very good.

FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use.

This is a secure solution.

FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required.

I have been using FortiGate and other products in the Fortinet suite for approximately two years.

It is used on a daily basis and in general, stability is okay.

There were two instances where the memory was full and the WLAN was blocked. The system had to be restarted. This may not have been a problem directly related to FortiGate. It may be that I didn't have enough to support the product. Perhaps a larger model would solve this issue.

We have approximately 80 employees that are protected by FortiGate. We have approximately 20 that work in the office, with a total of about 50 PCs.

It has not been necessary to scale beyond that.

I have never been in touch with technical support.

Prior to FortiGate, we were using Cisco for our firewall and our switches were from HP. Every five or six years, we upgrade our devices. The last time, we decided to buy Fortinet products because of a suggestion from our vendor.

Our vendor suggested Fortinet because the security is good, it's simple to use, and the price is good.

I have an external technician that manages FortiGate for the company. This person was responsible for the initial setup.

I do simpler network changes myself, such as altering ports on the firewall or the switch.

I am very satisfied with this investment. It's a good device and works very well to protect us.

This is not a cheap solution but it isn't expensive, either. It's a good solution for the right price.

FortiGate is regularly updated and my last update was within the past couple of months.

In our company, we have not needed to use any special features, so it is difficult to consider what new features I might want to see in the future.

Overall, this is a very good solution and I personally haven't had any problems with it. I would recommend that my colleagues buy Fortinet devices because they are good.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for routing and restricting user access.

We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall.

The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility.

I have been using this solution for maybe five or six years.

It is stable.

You can have the availability features. All the traffic goes through this firewall for access to the outside world.

Their technical support is good.

We were using some open-source solutions, and then we directly moved to firewalls.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was completed in a month or so.

We implemented it on our own. We are a small team, so a person with a few other duties also manages this solution.

It is not a very costly product if you compare it with other products. The return on investment is also good. If you compare the return of investment and money that you are spending on this product with Palo Alto, Cisco, Check Point, and other solutions, the investment is very less. We are happy with this solution.

The optional licenses are there, and you can choose which one you want and which one to avoid.

It is a fine solution. We have been using this solution for some years, and we are happy with it. We will continue using it unless the FortiGate solution is running itself in some other ways with new features.

I would recommend this solution. It is working fine for us. 

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate an eight out of ten.