Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

We primarily use it to protect edge devices. We use it as a firewall.

It's a very simple solution to manage.

It's quite stable.

The scalability potential is good.

It's an easy solution to configure.  

The pricing is pretty good.

I'd like for it to be possible to cluster together data centers. Right now, we have two data centers that are a thousand kilometers apart. It would be nice to be able to string them together.

I've been using the solution since 2005.

The solution is quite stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product is very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

The entire company ends up using the solution, and we have between 25,000 and 50,000 employees. We have about five offices and in each data center, we use Fortigate.

Occasionally, if the partner cannot resolve the problem, you do have to work with some Fortigate techs. They are excellent and quite helpful. 

I am working with Fortinet, Cisco, Palo Alto, and Forcepoint. I am using ASA from Cisco. It's very difficult to manage. Palo Alto is excellent, and the best in the market. Fortigate is right behind them. The central management is great.

While the product is easy to configure, I cannot get into specifics in regards to the initial setup. It's handled by a partner. We pay them to do the setup.

The actual installation process is pretty quick. It might take about half a day or so. 

I'd rate the experience of setting up the solution at a five out of five. 

There are bout five people that can handle the maintenance of the product across our different data centers. They are all administrators. 

Our partner sets up the solution for us. 

We've seen a decent ROI as it has helped us maintain a good level of security. I'd rate the ROI we've seen at a five out of five. 

We tend to have a three-year contract with Fortigate. While I don't know the exact costs, my understanding is that it is less expensive than some other options. 

I'm a customer and an end-user.

We use the on-premises version due to the fact that, in Algeria, we do not use cloud deployments. 

I'd advise potential new users that it's a good edge solution, and not necessarily the best for data centers.

I'm very happy with this product and would rate it at a ten out of ten.

In the years that we've been using this product, we've deployed it five or six times. Most of our customers have dedicated firewalls, either physical or virtual format and a few are on a shared platform. We're authorized sellers of the product and I'm the founder and managing director of our company. 

The best feature of the solution is the EPM bundle, a lot of our clients are interested in that. Truth be told, it's quite difficult to roll that out because we have very little trust in the FortiManager and the FortiAnalyzer integration and technology.

The solution could be improved by making deployment easier and dispensing with the reliance on FortiManager, as well as FortiAnalyzer to get any meaningful reporting out of it. If they could exclude both of those from the whole equation so that it bundles direct to the firewall, that would be a big improvement. It should be decoupled from the whole ecosystem, the security fabric side of it, and that would improve things. I get the feeling we have limited functionality if we just look at the data itself, and that's not cool when you're spending thousands of dollars on a product.

The technology is just not there yet in terms of UX and true integration. We have had endless woes with our Analyzer services and the Manager seems rather rudimentary on its own. We believe that the actual Fortigate should have all this disparate functionality baked-in.

I've been using this solution for close to six years. 

The stability is absolutely awful. Every time Fortinet releases a new version, there's always some bugs that you absolutely can't avoid, so stability from our perspective, in between maintaining the service on the FortiGate, is really tricky. It's difficult to trust the quality. 

The solution is scalable if you have the budget. If you don't have the budget, it's not tied into customer budgets very nicely. There are too many moving parts and it is too expensive.

Technical support is horrific, absolutely terrible. I'd give them a negative rating. 

To install a FortiGate is a complex task. The installation engineer need to be strong technically and familiar with FortiGate. The end user also needs to be well versed in their network and have a firm technical grasp on their business requirements and how those translate to what the firewall is capable of doing/ enhancing. This can drive a prolonged pre-install and installation process.

I would recommend this solution. As a piece of tech, as a firewall, it's really good. Local channel support in South Africa is very strong. The functionality of the gate is good. I think it probably surpasses many of its competitors. So I would recommend it. I'm very familiar with the realities of looking at it so I'll be very open with my customers in recommending FortiGate and at the same time explaining the pitfalls to them. 

I would rate this product a seven out of 10. 

The majority of my use cases are firewalls and SD-WAN.

Most customers are moving to SD-WAN, so with FortiGate-VM, when solutions are traditional WAN, limitations have been addressed by the SD-WAN.

I've found the UTM features and the SD-WAN to be most valuable.

The operating system isn't stable, so it goes to memory counters every night.

I've been using this solution for around ten years.

This solution isn't very stable with the new operating systems compared to the old ones.

FortiGate is scalable.

I've previously used Sophos, Palo Alto, and Check Point. We switched to FortiGate because it's straightforward and easy to manage and also has co-costing for customers.

The initial setup was straightforward, and I'd rate my experience as four out of five. Depending on the environment, deployment takes between two to three months.

I would rate the ROI as four out of five.

Licensing is usually on an annual, two-year, or three-year basis. I would rate the product's pricing as four out of five.

I'd give this solution a rating of nine out of ten.

The primary use of this solution is to provide information about SD-WAN and how Fortigate helps to reduce costs.

The most valuable features are the SD-WAN and the web filtering applications control.

Areas for improvement would be application control and web filtering.

I've been using this solution for three years.

I haven't seen any problems with stability.

The scalability of this solution is limited.

The technical support is very good.

The initial setup was very straightforward, and deployment did not take a long time.

This is a very easy appliance, and they make it easy to learn. I would rate it as eight out of ten.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM may be installed on Azure or AWS.

You can either install it in your data center alongside your virtual applications or put it in the public cloud to secure it.

It is very versatile.

More monitoring should be included with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, in my opinion.

It has a monitoring tool, but it could be improved.

We have been selling Fortinet FortiGate VM for at least 12 years. It could be 15 years because it has been exclusive since the beginning.

It's available both on-premises and in the cloud.

It's a stable product.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very scalable because you can use Fortinet FortiManager.

We have a big team of many people.

Technical support is good.

With Fortinet FortiGate-VM you can bring your own licensing, or it can be paid on a yearly basis.

Pricing is very flexible.

Definitely, I would recommend this solution to others.

FortiGate Cloud and FortiGate-VM are the same product.

FortiOS is the operating system on FortiGate.

Fortinet has a very large product portfolio. You have the VM, and you have physical appliances for Firewalls.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM a nine out of ten.

I am using this solution for testing the protection, but not in a production environment.

The Security Fabric feature is beneficial allowing us to have centralized visibility of all our devices and traffic on our network in one place. This is not typically offered on traditional firewalls.

The most valuable features are locking applications from in and out of my test network and testing malware on different devices. I use malware detection, antivirus, and basic firewall policies to check for different types of security breaches. The UI is really nice and easy to use.

I have had a data issue with physical devices that could improve.

I have been using this solution for a few months.

The solution is stable in terms of performance, but I have faced some issues with memory. The solution does not use the creation memory approach, that other vendors do, or what you would normally find in these kinds of devices. I think it is because the memory gets over-utilized a lot is why I am having the issue with the memory.

In my previous employment, I used to work with approximately six people, and we were responsible to monitor and manage FortiGate itself. I most recently switched my employment and in this particular role, there are approximately five other testers using this solution.

I am satisfied with all of the support for this solution. They have great documentation that is well written of everything that you need to know, such as UI functionality. There are different guides for many things that are really helpful. The technical support is really good.

Before installation, you are able to download the solution online based on the platform you are planning to use it on. For example, if you are going to use it on ESXi, Hyper-V, or AWS, you will have a separate specific installer file for each. The installer is based on the platform you are trying to install it on.

If you have some experience with using virtual technologies or virtualizing software, it is not that complicated to do the installation. For beginners, it might get a little complex or complicated because you have to replicate the properties of a physical device in a virtual container.

For firewall devices, Fortinet is very good. They can improve on other solutions, I have used some solutions in the past that did not have a good UI. There are other things that Fortinet as a whole can focus on.

I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM a nine out of ten.

We use Fortinet FortiGate-VM as a firewall to deliver high-performance network security solutions that protect our network and data from evolving threats.

It gives all the features of a full-fledged firewall with great performance.

We are experiencing a failed login issue. There should also be improvements in functionalities we store to enhance our services.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for the past ten years.

The initial setup process was straightforward.

There should be a reduction in the setup price and licensing costs.

We primarily use the solution for firewall purposes.

The firewall capabilities are great.

We like the EPS antivirus.

It's quite a complete solution. The features on offer are good.

We find the solution to be stable.

The product can scale.

We occasionally have issues when we are doing firmware updates.

The log settings and filters could use some improvement.

I've been using the solution for ten years. It's been about a decade.

The stability is very good. There are no bugs. It's not glitchy. I can't recall it crashing or freezing. It offers pretty good performance. 

We have found the scalability to be very good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

We have about 500 users on the solution right now. 

Technical support has been fine. We have no complaints. They are pretty helpful and responsive. 

We only use Fortigate. We don't use any other solution.

We only have one person for deployment and maintenance.

It took us only two days to deploy it with our desired configurations.

I am able to set up the solution myself. We did have a reseller who assisted us as well.

We currently have a three-year licensing agreement. There are standard features and you do not have to pay extra fees for extra add-ons.

We are customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Fortigate.

I would advise potential new users to check the compatibility of the UTM firewall, of the rules of your organization. It's not magic. It's hard work implementing that.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been pretty happy with its capabilities.