Fortinet FortiGate Reviews

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.

• Flexible enough to handle everything we could want
• Configuration layout is easily understandable
• Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”
• VPN support and some anti-virus protection.

It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

No scalability issues, but communications is severely limited in our case by design.

They were our first firewalls on site.

It does require someone knowledgeable in routing, firewall rules, and these firewalls in particular. Once it is set up, they are easy to modify and maintain.

It is difficult as an end-user to setup continuing license contracts. It is possible to do between emails and their website, but it is practically impossible to find a phone number to call anyone directly.

We considered SonicWall .

It is an excellent product and works extremely well. If it is set up in a logical way, it is very easy to understand and modify. It is highly recommended to have a service “expert” familiar with these to set it up initially with customer direction.

• Load Sharing
• VDOM
• Security Profiles
• Vulnerability Assessment

6 Years

Yes, bugs.

No.

Poor.

We use FortiGate for controlling traffic and policies for web caching, user profiles, IPS, antivirus, etc.

FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful.

I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products.

My company has been using FortiGate for about four months.

This solution is very stable.

This solution is scalable.

Support is very responsive and their staff is well trained.

The initial setup was so easy! FortiGate has everything facilitated for deployment and we are able to do everything from their web interface.

This solution has a very user-friendly interface.

I would rate this a nine out of ten.

Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information. Additionally, you can determine if an action has taken place such as virus scan information.

In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three.

The stability is amazing.

The scalability is good. We have approximately 50 employees using this product in our company.

The setup is easy.

The solution is easy to implement, it takes approximately one day for deployment.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.

It is a safe product.

The solution could be more user friendly.

I have been using the solution for approximately 6 years.

It is a stable solution.

We have over 5000 users using the solution at my company.

All the firewalls, more or less are similar, it is very easy to install this type of equipment on the premise of the customer. 

I configured the solution for my clients. We have a minimal of three technical employees doing the maintenance of the solution.

I think Check Point or Cisco are more user-friendly solutions.

We do not have plans to expand usage of the product at this time.

I rate Fortinet FortiGate a seven out of ten.

It performs well.

We have a lot of bandwidth.

• Box stability
  
• Security features, like SSL scanning. 
• Their service: Whenever we raise a complaint with FortiGate, their response and resolution times are minimal.

They need faster serviceability and more security features.

It has good stability compared to its competitors.

It is scalable. We are making a cost savings on the scalability.

We have been using technical support. Their response and resolution times are good.

Our previous solution had performance issues.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy.

We evaluated Cyberoam and Cisco.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: stability and service.

Primary use would be firewalls for the central office as well as all our branch offices. For some branches, we use the wireless feature.

The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support.

• Stability
• Ease of use
• Configuration
• The available feature sets

• It needs more available central management. 
• It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices.

It is very stable.

Since we are not virtual, it is a physical box. It scales well if you know what to buy from a physical box standpoint. They seem to offer something for every level.

The technical support is very responsive and qualified.

Cost and convenience are probably why we switched from our previous solution to FortiGate.

The initial setup is straightforward, once you understand the operating system environment.

I was not here at the time that they were evaluating other solutions.

I highly recommend the Fortinet product because of its implementation. It is a solid product with an easy configuration and good support.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Experience
• Installations of similar types which met our needs
• Pricing
• Support
• Ease of implementation.