Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

We can control application filtering and UTM with Fortinet FortiGate-VM. We rely on it for configuring IP address filters, VPN settings, and point-to-site connections. We haven't encountered any issues with its use cases as a firewall.

The tool ensures inbound traffic, specifically on a specific port. We have Fortinet FortiGate-VM as well as F5 for application support.

It gives us an enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured.

The price and licensing of the solution can be better.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for 3 to 4 years. We are using the V7.4 of the solution.

I rate the solution’s stability a six out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

We have used Sophos and Palo Alto before. Palo Alto is expensive. Fortinet’s UI is more user-friendly. You can easily understand the source and destination requests.

We have not faced any difficulty. We recently migrated our data center from on-prem to the cloud and then established the firewall.

The solution is more reliable for firewalls.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of 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.

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. 

We provide Fortinet services to our clients, sometimes on-prem and sometimes on cloud. 
We are a system integrator which makes us a partner of Fortinet. I am an information technology solutions manager.

I like the web filtering and I like the IPS functionality.

Data reporting could be improved and also in terms of performance, some improvement should be made on VM, it should be more optimized. Scalability of the solution could also be improved. 

For an additional feature, Fortinet should add more SD-WAN with caching as a special functionality. It should be integrated with Fortinet. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

Stability is good enough. It's not that problematic for now.

Scalability is a problem because the solution is VM. As a VM, you cannot have much scalability.

The Fortinet technical support is generally good. There are times when we don't get an immediate response and it requires escalation but that's all. 

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment time depends on the case but can normally be done anytime from two hours to two days for it to be functional.

FortiGate-VM would be for more like a cloud or on-premise SMB environment. And for anyone wanting to scale-up and get big performance, it should be used as a physical appliance.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution simply for its firewall functionality. It's the main reason we use it.

For myself, the UI is pretty much perfect. It's much easier to work with than Cisco's FirePOWER, for example. I prefer the way it is designed above everything else, even though Cisco may be better for a different reason. Fortigate is just hands down more intuitive and therefore users need less training. While a non-tech person may need a bit of training in terms of configuration, it's still easier than Cisco.

In terms of general features, I find Fortigate and Cisco very comparable. They technically do the same things. Both can drill down by IP or region, so, application-wise, they're very much the same. 

The stability could be improved. I find Cisco to be more stable than Fortigate, which is I major differentiator between the two.

I haven't really explored the cloud too much, as we deal mostly with an on-premises system. However, now with everyone working from home due to COVID-19, it's something I'm beginning to explore and something I think Fortigate needs to invest in and expand on. If they could do something that integrates the cloud effectively, maybe with a cloud provider like Azure, that would be helpful.

Fortigate could speed up its level of customer service in our region.

I've been using the solution for quite a few years now. It's been perhaps five or six years in total.

While the stability maybe isn't quite to the level of Cisco, it is a very cost-effective solution. It's cheap compared to Cisco. Licensing is very, very easy. It's much, much easier than Cisco where licensing is a pain. The Cisco licensing is very difficult to configure, which makes Fortigate a more attractive alternative even with less stability. 

That said, after working with Fortigate for many years, I haven't really encountered a lot of crashes or glitches. The hardware is very, very good. Once a power adapter failed on us and we just replaced it on the device and it was able to recover. With ASA, I can say so far so good. The hardware's really good. They've improved a lot of the hardware specs.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. If a company needs to build it out or expand, they really shouldn't have any issues.

The customer support for Fortigate is fine. Compared to Cisco, however, I would say Cisco's response might be a bit faster. If a device fails, they'll be onsite to replace it themselves. In my region, in terms of Fortigate's response to a similar event, users would have to go through the distributor and not directly to Fortigate. That's why it takes longer. It could be a bit easier, and if they did it a bit more like Cisco, I think it would be better. However, Fortigate's response isn't bad.

The initial setup was straightforward. A company just needs to get requirements from its customers and then they can just deploy. It's not complex at all.

Deployment takes about two weeks. The setup itself is very fast and you will have limited downtime. However, there will be fine-tuning that will be required and this may take weeks. If a customer gives new requirements at any time, you'll need to make some tweaks.

With Cisco, licensing is quite complex, but with Fortigate, you simply need to buy a bundle and they give you everything you'll require.

Right now, I'm also interested in learning more about Cisco, and how it compares to Fortigate. I know Cisco quite well, but I've never directly compared Cisco and Fortigate together before. Of course, I still believe I know Fortigate better.

We're resellers of both Cisco and Fortigate solutions.

I'd advise other companies or users to give a try. The Virtual Appliance is very easy to set up. In terms of scalability, it's easy enough to expand out, especially if you compare it to the hardware. For the virtual solution, it's easily upgraded. For the physical, you need to do a POC.

It really depends on what kind of distributor a company is working with. Some provide you all the resources. Others don't. I'm not sure how it works with the Cisco Virtual Appliance. For Cisco, I only know about the cloud. 

Normally, I provide my customer with Meraki. I won't provide a Cisco solution, even though Meraki is part of Cisco.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. There's still room for improvement. There could be a bit better support and not all solution providers offer this kind of Virtual Appliance in my region. Once more people use it, they may begin to improve on it even more.

We are primarily using the solution on the VPN box as a perimeter firewall. We use it to secure internal networks and a few servers. Our network is solely on Fortigate.

The standard features, including the filtering, are quite good. All the basic features are pretty useful for us. 

It's very simple for us to use. 

It's very similar to SonicWall.

There isn't anything in terms of features that we find are lacking. We don't see any places on the solution that don't cater to our requirements.

I would like to see VNX security and WildFire. Those features I would like to see on the solution in the future in order to be able to evaluate it further.

I've been using the solution for two years.

The solution is pretty stable. 

We haven't attempted to scale the solution just yet. If we want to scale this solution we may have to look at other models. With certain requirements, we probably wouldn't be able to scale it so well as it is right now.

We have about 2,000 people using the solution. Most of the people using it are software developers.

The technical support has been very helpful. We've been satisfied with the level of the support we get.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is straightforward. We didn't find it complex at all.

We had partners that assisted with the implementation.

I'm not aware of the specific costs involved in the licensing of the solution. I don't know that prices are competitive enough compared to other vendors.

We did evaluate other options, including Cisco.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it eight out of ten.

I work for a telecommunication company. We are a service provider, and we use it for our internal network and for providing services to our customers.

The firewalling feature is used the most, but we also have a particular use case for the SD-WAN service. 

Its interface is good. It comes with a lot of features, and its performance is also very good. 

It is a very good product, and it is good at standing by itself. It can maybe have a little bit of integration with other products, but it is not that important for most use cases.

I am quite new to this product.

Its stability is very good.

For the SD-WAN use case that I am researching, it seems more suitable for medium-sized customers. It is a little bit difficult to use for a big customer.

Their technical support is good.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM a 10 out of 10. It tops others in terms of performance.

We work in the archiving domain where a secure environment is very important. We have some special requirements regarding the security of infrastructure.

The product has issues with integration. I would like to see better integration in future releases of the product. 

I have using the product for five years. 

I would rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten. 

I would rate the product's scalability a ten out of ten. My company's four administrators have access to the solution. 

We required a solution that offered maintenance and support. Hence, we chose this product. 

The product's setup is not complex. The tool's deployment gets completed in a couple of hours. 

The solution's deployment was done in-house. 

We have seen ROI with the product's use.