Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

I am a network engineer. I deploy firewalls for customers. I also provide firewall installation and configuration services.

I mostly prefer Fortinet firewalls. The graphical user interface is user-friendly and easy to configure. I recommend it to my clients because it is very easy to deploy. 

Performance, scalability, and everything else are top-notch compared to others like Sophos or Cisco. I've used them all, and Fortinet is my go-to.

The main use case is for organizations that can't afford or procure hardware appliances. They can install the VM and license it as a cost-effective alternative.

The combination of SD-WAN and VPN capabilities is the most valuable feature.

If I could add one feature, it would be free security profiles.

I have experience with FortiGate VM. I've used it for practice and deployed it on customer sites.

I have been using it for four years. 

I haven't personally experienced any bugs, and none of my clients have reported any either.

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. 

The customer service and support are very knowledgeable and helpful.

I've deployed Cisco firewalls and hold certifications like CCNA and CCNP. But for security-level firewalls, I always go with FortiGate.

The initial configuration is very easy, even for non-technical users.

VMs can be affordable, but for high-demand scenarios, I'd still recommend the hardware. For the cost, it's a ten out of ten.

I would recommend the hardware firewall unless you have specific constraints. If you're installing on a server or desktop, and something happens like a cache issue, you won't have the same backup options as a physical appliance.

With hardware, you can claim a warranty, get a new unit, and easily restore from your existing backup. That wouldn't be as straightforward with a VM.

Over a hundred customers have deployed the physical Fortinet firewall based on my recommendations.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

The product accesses the perimeter firewall and internet proxy at the same time. It allows the creation of a virtual DMZ network. We can have services on the DMZ.

The reporting is good. The signatures are quite good. We have some confidence in the product’s protection capabilities.

The users must buy FortiSIEM to get advanced analytics. The product must provide users with more reports before asking them to buy FortiSIEM.

I have been using the solution for around a couple of years.

There are no stability issues. As long as we provide adequate resources, the solution works.

VM provides scalability options. We could pair the virtual firewalls and have more capacity. We know it's there, but it wasn't necessary, given the organization's size. Around 350 users from a small microfinance company use the solution. The product is extensively used since it also provides internet proxy and VPN. Almost all services that require connectivity are going through the firewall.

We contacted the technical support team regarding a clarification we needed on how to get some services to talk to one another. The team was very handy in that process.

The setup is not that complex. I wouldn't say it's simple, but It's relatively straightforward as long as we follow the guidelines and work with the recommendations.

We deployed the solution with the help of a local partner. We just had one engineer on-site who was supported by Fortinet Professional Services.

There is a good ROI on the product. The solution was quickly deployed, and we were able to have more protection and better visibility of our traffic on the network. We can get a lot of value out of the solution due to the reports.

The pricing is really good. The FortiGate licensing model is workable compared to many other providers who license everything. The local partner was there to guide us in structuring the license to keep the costs minimal. At the moment, there are no additional costs associated with the tool.

We had a competitive evaluation of other products. We chose Fortinet FortiGate-VM because of its affordability. It also had some of the features that were part of our roadmap.

It's a good solution. It’s worth checking out. It is easy to configure and quite easy to use. Some solutions are built by engineers for engineers. The product is a bit relatively easy to use and work with. Overall, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten.

We use Fortinet FortiGate-VM for managing inbound and outbound internet traffic through our environment. Sometimes, we also use it for managing the site's internet outbound and routing. We also use it for IPSec on Azure. We also have an on-premises environment, and we're using it for IPSec on that environment. 

All the routing happens through it because we're swinging all the traffic on the Azure side through a firewall which is basically the gateway. It acts as the gateway and manages outbound traffic in that environment. We have also set up the SSL VPN for users. We do have FortiGate on-premise, and we set up the SSL VPN connection for users.

It made the routing of traffic seamless and it helped us with SD-WAN as well as load balancing.

I like the visibility and monitoring features because they're easy to use to monitor traffic. Features like geo-blocking and more have AI, and we're currently using all of it. But for now, we're only using geo-blocking, and we're able to block traffic from different countries. I also like that it's highly responsive. VM04 is also very powerful.

It would be better if it could provide you with options before completely blocking anything through the web filter. If you are doing a deep SSL inspection on the site if it says it's expired, it doesn't give you the option to continue at your own risk. I can't say that it's bad, but SSL internally isn't really a requirement. However, its security features can help. Right now, we have people going out and spending on purchasing the SSL certificates for internal sites. 

I have been using this solution for three years.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is a stable and very reliable solution.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is a scalable solution. It's very powerful, and I've never seen that machine running out of resources. It always worked.

Tech support is okay, but we do a lot of management by ourselves. We have a third party that we use when we do implementations, and I haven't contacted Fortinet even though I have access to it. The local support that we use costs much less. 

I still remember using Check Point, and it took a long time to apply a policy. To install the policy, you had to wait for ten to 20 minutes or even 30 minutes. Fortinet FortiGate-VM instantly applies the policy on the FortiGate itself.

The initial setup was difficult because we were all new when it came to the Azure environment. It was a little difficult to create space and understand that you have to have more than one interface. But once you get used to it. It's pretty straightforward.

It's straightforward if you have all that is required when you're clearing your traffic. If you're clearing your traffic already into your internal length to communicate with the firewall range, and you have information and understand it before the implementation, it will be very seamless. It will be stress-free when you understand the environment where you're going to implement it.

Our license is yearly, but we're thinking of going monthly. I think it's somewhere around 100,000 for VM04. Nowadays, everyone wants to be a hacker, so we believe in security. That's why we also have third-party people that we involve to make sure that we're secure. 

I don't think the costs are too bad. You still want to get advice from people who worked in security for many years, so you add a third party. The third party also said they would give their share like 100K, or 200K or something like that, so I don't think it's too expensive for security. I think it just adds more trust. 

We have been using Check Point Firewall so it was easy to identity the difference.

I will recommend the solution. If it's a first-time deployment in Azure, they need to understand a couple of things, like the interfaces we need to create. The good thing about FortiGate is that they don't hide how their devices work. You can go to their website and get every instruction that you need at any time. It's straightforward and even has pictures showing you what you should expect. I've done a few changes for the first time, and I didn't have to stress. But you must know the infrastructure well.

On a scale from one to ten, I would five Fortinet FortiGate-VM a ten.

Internally, I've been using this solution to front our servers.

I found the Antivirus and Anti-spam features most valuable in this solution. I'm happy with FortiGate-VM because it's good for our servers. It stopped many attacks, including spam, over our networks.

It's been a year since I started using FortiGate-VM.

I find this solution really stable.

The scalability of this solution is an eight or a nine to me. It's good.

I don't have experience with Fortinet's technical support. When I face any problem or issue, I call the company that came here to implement the device.

I hired a consultant to implement the solution. I had a good experience. It was good for my work and my networks.

FortiGate-VM is more expensive than Sophos. We have two appliances: a main appliance, then a backup, e.g. FortiGate-VM, and this make it so expensive, even more than the costs from Sophos.

We pay the standard three-year licensing fees.

I evaluated Sophos.

I spent many years using Cyber and Sophos. Mainly, I use Sophos, while I use FortiGate-VM in the network background.

I see that Fortinet is a big company. I can't compare the Sophos and Fortinet solutions I'm using, because I'm using Sophos at the front, and behind Sophos, I'm using FortiGate-VM, so I can't give a good comparison or opinion. I've only used FortiGate-VM for one year.

It took nearly one month to complete the FortiGate-VM deployment because the decision came from upper management.

No other users use FortiGate-VM in our organization, because it's a device or appliance that only stands in front of our servers.

We don't have a need for maintenance yet. We've only been using it for one year and it currently needs no maintenance.

I don't know if our organization has plans to increase the usage of FortiGate-VM because this decision will come from upper management.

I'm a good observer and I'm still learning some feature metrics of this solution.

What I'd like to advice people looking into implementing FortiGate-VM is to study the FAQs of other users. You should know the tricks and what exactly is needed in this appliance. This is a very good appliance, but I have less experience with it compared to Sophos which I've used for many years.

I'm rating FortiGate-VM an eight out of ten.

Maybe others rate the vendor a 10 out of 10, but I'm sticking with eight.

The solution is primarily used for security. When a company has a hybrid solution and the client is looking for a next-generation firewall with all the bells and whistles inside, we recommend FortiGate.

The intrusion prevention systems are great.  

The anti-spam capabilities are really great.

The solution has a lot of very useful security features. 

The solution is stable.

The scalability potential is there.

The previous version, which was 7.1 or 7.2, was a little bit easier to use. It's kind of a little bit tricky to find the options from the firewall configurations now, in the latest version. Previously, it was easier to deal with. The whole dashboard that you get can be improved. They could organize the whole dashboard a bit more to put stuff under each other in a way that makes sense and makes everything easy to reach.

The costs could be lowered.

I've used the solution for a while. I've used it over the last 12 months.

We have found the stability to be good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The product is scalable. It is a little bit expensive on Azure when you use it on the cloud, however. If a company plans to expand it, they need to keep this in mind. However, even those on-premises can be highly scalable. 

The initial setup needs to be handled by a person knowledgeable in Fortinet products. 

We are implementors. We can handle the setup process for our clients.

The product does have the capabilities of providing an ROI to companies. 

The product could be cheaper. When a company scales it, it can get pricey.

The pricing, in fact, is the one aspect that could potentially make clients change their minds. In terms of features, it has almost everything - whatever someone would need. However, the price sometimes is the obstacle. It could force the client to go with a cheaper product. Especially on the cloud, a solution such as this can get costly as you are paying for the cloud stuff on top of the license, and you have to pay per hour.

We are implementors. 

We have both virtual and physical servers.

I would advise new users first to ensure they have strong knowledge before attempting an implementation. It has everything a company might need and it is scalable. However, the person doing the implementation itself needs to be skilled. There might be a lot of things going on during implementation that need to be dealt with properly.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

We are using FortiGate-VM for the protection of our internal network and also for VPN services. Right now, there are about 200 end users in our main office and in other business units we have an additional 100-200 end users. We have about five different firewalls, yet almost all of our units are using FortiGate-VM. So, in total, we have about 500-600 users. 

The best part about FortiGate-VM is its strong security. Besides that, it's nice that there are different models for different sizes of businesses. For example, there are models tailored to enterprise companies and small organizations, and the model that we are using is perfectly suitable for our usage.

One thing that can be better is added automation. And, on top of that, enhanced security when it comes to the automation itself.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for five years.

I think it is stable. 

I am impressed by its scalability, given that we are already using it for over 500 users. And, in future, we plan to increase usage even more. 

We have used Palo Alto before, but we switched because at that time Fortinet was more scalable and there were more options available.

I also use Sophos Firewall, though not within the organization, but rather just for small business or personal use.

Currently, we only require the services of three engineers and administrators on our technical team when it comes to deployment and maintenance.

The license we pay is a yearly fee. I can't say it's very expensive; it is a good price and is highly suitable for our usage.

FortiGate-VM is a good solution, and I would say one of the best solutions on the market.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

My primary use case of this solution is for advanced security in the cloud, as well as SD-WAN and branch connectivity. We use version 6.4 and are just now moving to 7.0. 

FortiGate-VM has many valuable features: it's easy to use, it's intuitive, it's got very good traffic inspection features, it's got comprehensive filtering categories, and it has an extensive threat database, using FortiGuard. 

FortiGate-VM could be improved by making it cloud-based. I'd like it to be a cloud-based management solution instead of just a dedicated management orchestration tool. 

I have been using FortiGate-VM for five years. 

Personally, I like Fortinet support. I know other colleagues and people think it's slow, but I don't.

I used FortiGate for 10 years. I also have experience with Azure Firewall Premium, Cisco ASA, and Cisco Firepower. 

The installation is really easy. There's HA deployment in the marketplace involving Azure and AWS. I handle the installation myself. 

I implement this solution myself for customers. 

There are yearly or monthly licenses which you can choose from. 

I rate FortiGate-VM an eight out of ten. I recommend this solution to others. There's a use case, like any cloud-based firewall. 

We're an MSP, so we sell, configure, and manage these solutions for customers. 

My primary use case is for controlling the internet in our organization, as well as for our VPN for those working from home. I also use it for routing the connection to stores so we can access them.

This solution allows us to easily access the stores from where we are. It also blocks a lot of websites that we don't want to allow access to during working hours. It has also made our network more secure, and it's now much harder for people to intrude into our network.

The most valuable feature is that its IPsec works perfectly. The work filter also works perfectly - it's able to detect anything coming in that is not supposed to be on the network.

We have had some issues with connecting to the VPN from home after firmware updates, which could be an area for improvement.

I have been using this solution for about five years.

I think the product's stability is very good.

The scalability depends on what you want to use it for - previously, we were using 60D, and it wasn't accommodating some features we wanted, so we had to go to 100D.

The technical support is very helpful.

I previously used pfSense but found it was a bit complicated in terms of configuration and didn't give periodic updates. I switched to FortiGate because they were very consistent in giving updates on outbreaks and what they were doing to resolve them.

The setup was straightforward because of the integrator's help. Deployment took about two days, and only my assistant and I were required for deployment and maintenance.

I implemented through an integrator.

Our main ROI has been the extra stability on our network - since we implemented this solution, we haven't had any major attacks.

The cost of this product is too high on a yearly license. The license can be renewed on a monthly or yearly basis. There are additional costs for extra features.

To me, this is one of the best firewalls I've ever used. I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.