Fortinet FortiManager Reviews

I primarily use FortiManager for network automation and central management.

FortiManager's most valuable feature is central management.

In the next release, FortiManager should include more protection features.

I've been working with FortiManager for about a year.

FortiManager's stability is excellent - I would rate it ten out of ten.

FortiManager is easy to scale up and down.

Fortinet's technical support is hands-on and provides a good service.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward.

FortiManager is a bit expensive - I would rate its pricing three out of ten.

FortiManager is most suitable for the enterprise level. I would recommend FortiManager and give it a rating of ten out of ten.

We are one of the partners, so we are using it for customer testing for managers, owners, and others at head office. We are looking at FortiManager in terms of quality deployment and ability to manage everything. We're using it for management.

We are using a VM version and can scale it as we need. It depends on our license, however, we find we can scale.

The general policy, its integration, and deployment are all easy. We don't have a lot of devices, however, it creates a center where we can manage everything. The initial setup is very simple. 

The solution is stable. 

It's a scalable product.

The GUI is not ideal. It needs to be improved. It should be more user-friendly.

I've been using the solution for around two years. 

The product is a stable one. From time to time, we may see bugs, however, overall, it's a stable one. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

The support has been good. They are helpful and responsive. We're pleased with the level of service we get.

Positive

I don't have much experience with the other products compared to this product. The main reason that it's been chosen for clients is it's very well integrated with the rest of the Fortinet environment. For example, if somebody has an environment in SuccessFactors, FortiManager is good.

It's very simple to set up the solution. It's not overly complex or difficult. The documentation helps with any complexity.

I'd rate the solution four out of five in terms of ease of deployment. 

You just need a single engineer, a software engineer, to set up and maintain the solution. Someone who has Fortigate knowledge should have no problem handling the solution. 

When you are going for a massive FortiGate environment, the costs compared to your investment would be fine. However, if you're going for below ten devices, the cost will be a little bit high. You would have to justify the expense. 

I'd rate it a three out of five in terms of availability.

We are a Fortinet partner. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

Our use case is for management and back up configuration. I work in the IT security division. 

This is a good product if you're looking for a central management solution. FortiManager provides good log management and more details than other solutions for logs.

I'd like to see the improvement of wizards when it comes to pushing policies and copying, VPNs, etc. Sometimes Fortinet changes its subscriptions. A few years ago Fortinet Firewall had capabilities for use in the cloud environment; they then changed the subscription and it was no longer part of the subscription, forcing the customer to buy an additional license. The technical support needs to improve. They moved their call center to India and although I have a special PIN code for the support team, they hang up after a minute or so and I need to redial. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is stable but it does require regular upgrades. 

We can scale but it requires the purchase of additional licenses.

We deploy this solution for our clients. It's a pretty straightforward process for us. 

The price is reasonable, especially when compared to Cisco or Palo Alto. It also has a free version for smaller organizations. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

It is used to manage several firewalls, primarily for setting policies and as a central management point for all the firewalls.

The central management feature is the most valuable to me.

We find that several vulnerabilities are showing up every week, so we have to check every time with the customer to make sure everything is okay and to apply patches when needed. The frequency is a little disarming. So, the product is not very stable. 

I have been working with Fortinet FortiManager for a year. We are currently using the latest release, version 7.

I would rate the stability a four out of ten. 

There is not an issue with the technical team. It's more about the product itself.

The pricing model is affordable. Largely, customers opt for this solution because it has a low price. 

Overall, I would rate the product a five out of ten, mainly because of its stability and also because the technology is not as advanced as some of its competitors, such as Palo Alto and Check Point.

FortiManager is a virtual appliance, you can have it in a cloud, buy your own license, or pay for the solution as a service. It's very helpful because you can manage many products from other customers, just from the cloud, which is where you administrate domains for all the customers you might have. You only have one point of deployment of the new FortiGates, for example, FortiSwitches, FortiAPs with a single click that you do not need to deploy the configuration on a unit itself. So it means, for example, you can just send the new boxes to new offices and from the cloud FortiManager, you just let some technical guy send it to the internet. It gets the serial number of the FortiManager. It can be paired and the configuration can be directly downloaded. You don't even need to touch the box physically. So that's an amazing feature. 

For the whole security fabric from Fortinet, with a simple click you can see if some workstations or services are affected by an attack. You can really easily quarantine it, check the solution, and fix it. It's very good from a security perspective. 

Fortinet is releasing quite a lot of new versions and I would say that most of the versions are not well tested before they're pushed out. Even the new versions sometimes are a bit buggy before it's all correct.

I have been using FortiManager for six to seven years. 

We don't have any issues with stability. 

Scalability is good. 

Our support was often sent to a foreign country and they didn't speak good English. But the second level of support was all perfect.

Checkpoint has a kind of manager that is similar. I think Palo Alto and Cisco have something similar as well.

The initial setup was straightforward and so simple. You don't need to know the functionality that much and it guides you on how to deploy it correctly. It's quite simple to set up as a solution.

The deployment takes a few days. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

It does not make much sense if you only have one FortiGate. If you have multiple devices and you can share some kind of templates or configuration template for security rules then this is a product you should use.

In the next release, there should be a little bit better of a deployment for applications that should also be relevant for mobile phones.

We work with the FortiManager tool to configure several solutions for our customers. Generally, our customers already have the product installed on their network. We work as independent consultants. 

The product could be improved by making it a little easier to configure. Sometimes it's a  bit complicated to find the right way to configure. For example, if you want to have a link between a FortiGate to a FortiSwitch, sometimes it's not so clear. Sometimes there is a problem because U.S. FortiGate has one version and FortiSwitch has another version of the operating system and it's difficult to create, to have a link between two devices, and we have to do an upgrade before using it.

I would like the configuration to be easier. If that is solved then the product is perfect. 

It's a stable product. 

I have no experience with scalability. 

The technical support for us is great. We get our support from Fortinet in Belgium, so we can communicate directly with a technician in Belgium. It's perfect. 

We also train in Cisco and are certified and support Cisco, so we know that solution very well. The difference between the two is that Cisco is always more complicated than Fortinet. 

I think the initial setup is too complicated because there are several versions of the operating systems, so you don't have directly connections between two devices. In the study guide it's easier but on site it's not so easy. 

I think the pricing is reasonable, it's cheaper than Cisco. 

It's a good solution if the customer has all Fortinet products. The advantage of Fortinet is that if you have all their products - FortiGate or FortiSwitch or FortiController, FortiWeb, FortiClient, it's an integrated solution but if you have only Fortinet Switch, it's no more interesting than Cisco.

I would rate this product an eight out of 10. 

One site we worked on had something like 10 firewalls in different branches, and the security admin there needed to monitor the firewalls from a centralized place, so we deployed FortiManager and configured it so he could monitor things from one place. 

At another site, we use it in backup mode for automatic backup.

The product is a combination of management and monitoring from the same interface.

The areas that need improvement are implementation and support. In terms of implementation, it mainly needs clear documentation. There are many features that are not mentioned in the documentation.

We've been using FortiManager for almost one year. On some sites we use the latest version, and for other sites we use version 6.4.

We have done implementations of a number of Fortinet products such as Email and FortiWeb firewalls. We have implemented the portfolio of Fortinet products.

For FortiManager, technical support is good, but it's not excellent. It's not perfect because there are times when it takes longer for them to reply to cases. And, as I mentioned, sometimes we can't find a feature in the documentation.

It's easy to install and it takes about two days.

I recommend FortiManager if you have more than FortiGate firewalls or more Fortinet products.

In terms of users of the solution, our clients are between medium and enterprise in scope.

It is used for the standardized configuration of all the firewalls that we have installed for our customers.

The capability of centralized management is valuable. We can configure all firewall boxes with the same configuration.

The compatibility with legacy products should be better. It would also be nice if the software could manage other devices from Fortinet and third parties.

We have been using it for a short period. It has been almost six months. We are a reseller, and currently, we have six to eight technicians who are using it.

It is fine for us. I would rate it a ten out of ten.