Fortinet FortiOS Reviews

We are using it for security purposes. 

The security on offer is good.

It's quite stable.

The scalability has been great.

We found the initial setup to be straightforward. 

Technical support has been good overall. 

The UI could be a bit better. The coming generation will not be from the Sierra, and therefore they have a chance to make it much better and more user-friendly. Right now, we have to contend with CLI. We'd like it to be easier. We need the features to be in a UI.

I've been using the solution for more than five years. 

The solution has proven to be stable and reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We find the solution to be quite scalable. If you need to expand it, you can do so.

We have more than 5,000 people on the solution right now. 

Technical support has been good in general. They are helpful and responsive. I have no complaints in regard to their level of service. 

Positive

It offers a pretty simple and straightforward setup. I'd rate it four out of five in terms of ease of implementation. It's not something that's too complex or difficult. 

I don't have many details surrounding the licensing. It's not an aspect I directly deal with. My understanding is the solution is moderately priced.

We are Fortinet partners. 

If a company is looking for a local security enhancement, we tend to recommend or select this kind of solution.

I'd rate the product nine out of ten overall. 

Our company is a partner with Fortinet and uses the VDOM to deploy and service virtual firewalls for our customers. 

The solution provides good firewall and antivirus protection via IPX and its security profile.

The solution needs improvement with DDoS protection. 

I have been using the solution for nine years. 

The solution is stable and I rate it an eight out of ten. 

The solution is scalable and I rate it an eight out of ten.

The technical support is excellent. 

Positive

The initial setup was not very easy but the solution does integrate without much complexity. 

Our internal team of two engineers deploys the solution in about three days. 

The licensing costs are paid by our customers on a monthly basis and include maintenance and technical support provided by three of our engineers. 

The solution is quite affordable and I rate the cost a four out of ten. 

The solution is a leader in security according to the Gartner Report and I recommend its use. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

The most important feature of Fortinet FortiOS is the IPS.

Fortinet FortiOS need to manage its memory and CPU utilization better. It peaks at times, which sometimes can be challenging.

In a feature release, if Fortinet FortiOS could have better cloud functionality would be a benefit.

I have been using Fortinet FortiOS for approximately seven years.

The stability of Fortinet FortiOS is good.

Fortinet FortiOS is scalable.

I rate the support from Fortinet FortiOS a five out of five.

Positive

The initial setup of Fortinet FortiOS is simple.

We evaluated Checkpoint and Cisco before choosing Fortinet FortiOS.

The manageability suit is better in Fortinet in terms of device manageability and  OS upgrades. It has the capability of terminating a leased line, RF, and a USB dongle. When we evaluated Fortinet FortiOS, back in 2015, Cisco and Checkpoint did not have a 4G termination feature. Today if my MPLS goes down, the lease line goes down, I can connect a 4G dongle. In Cisco, you need to have a SIM  embedded in a device and you need to open the device, put it on, and then you need to connect it and extend the cable. It is very complex. In Fortinet it is easy.

I rate Fortinet FortiOS a nine out of ten.

It's a security device. We use it to keep the bad guys away.

A firewall is a security appliance. FortiGate also does email filtering and does data loss prevention.

All networks are security-driven, we get throughputs and security. We feel that the people at Fortinet are easy to deal with from a support standpoint. If they need to jump in and help us, they're very willing to do that. Their email filtering, their data loss prevention, their intrusion prevention, type of products in the newest OSs has been outstanding.

I have been using Fortinet FortiOS for ten years. 

The stability is excellent. 

Scalability is wonderful. Affordability is really good.

Everybody's being protected by the firewall. The firewall device is using the operating system. And so, in that sense, you could say everybody is using it. The people that are actually technically working with the Fortinet devices are a handful, six to eight technicians.

We feel that the people at Fortinet are easy to deal with from a support standpoint. If they need to jump in and help us, they're very willing to do that. Their email filtering, their data loss prevention, their intrusion prevention, type of products in the newest OSs has been outstanding.

We've used other solutions in the past. But we've settled into FortiGate for around 10 years. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It's pretty much just plug and play. It takes hours. 

They're very competitive and easy to work with in terms of pricing. I can't say, that's why we chose them, that's why we've stuck with them. It's a very well-respected name in the industry.

Everybody wants to go to Cisco for different things and everybody loves to hate Cisco. Cisco is a great product for large companies. They're low income, they're low-end products and their support for their low-end products leaves a lot to be desired. That's hence why SonicWall, Extreme Networks, and Fortinet are in business. There are these other smaller companies that are getting involved with the smaller companies, taking market shares away from Cisco because Cisco's support for their product is bad.

The support contracts are usually about $100 - $200 a device. The support contract usually includes software upgrades, hardware maintenance, and hardware break-fix. And they very seldom break.

I am looking at replacing some SonicWalls for a customer. I think SonicWall is its competition. SonicWall is got a good product, but I still believe that FortiGate is the best product for the people that we deal with.

My advice to someone implementing this solution is not to take shortcuts. Shortcuts aren't good. Don't hesitate to use FortiGate's technical support.

Always buy support. Always buy FortiCare. You can buy it for one year, two years, or three years with the initial purchase. We always buy it and sell it to our customers for three years. And the product will last more than three years.

Fortinet competes in the big companies as well. We just don't. Our marketplace is the smaller users two or three, maybe four locations, 150 to 300 endpoints. So we're not dealing in the 10,000s of users trying to get into 100 of servers. We're dealing with tens and fifties and a hundred, trying to get into a few servers.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. It could more scalable for the lower end users. 

Our company is a partner and we install the solution for our customers as a firewall for remote VPN use. 

We also use the solution to protect our own company that includes more than 1,000 users. 

The solution constantly adds features that are useful and user-friendly such as the ability to tweak firewalls through the CLI. 

The solution's graphic interface could be a bit more responsive and include notations when changes are made

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

The solution is stable. In seven years of use, I've only encountered two or three occasions where a bug affected the firewall's behavior. 

I rate stability an eight out of ten. 

The solution is very scalable and it is quite easy to add users. 

I rate scalability a ten out of ten. 

Technical support has issues with knowledge base at the first tier. It sometimes takes hours of explanation before support fully understands and can troubleshoot or escalate problems. 

Response time could also be improved. 

I rate support a six out of ten. 

Neutral

Our company has always used the solution and is not interested in other products. 

The initial setup is easy, it only requires one engineer, and the main interface is self-explanatory. 

Users who are familiar with the solution can always dig further in the CLI to change the properties. 

We deploy the solution for our company and our customers. 

One engineer spends about two days configuring, testing, and deploying. 

The solution is easy to configure and has good performance. 

Anytime I have thought of a possible feature I'd like added to the solution, it seems the developers are on the same page and it is available within a few months. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

The solution is great for data protection in our company, including site too site and SSH.

The stability of Fortinet FortiOS is great.

The product needs a feature that allows users to create another site on a VPN.

We have used this solution with our clients for two years and are currently using version 11. Additionally, we deploy this solution on-premises.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We have a large number of clients using this solution with their users.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. They are very fast.

The initial setup was very easy to configure.

We implemented it through our in-house technical team.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. The solution is very good but needs a feature that allows users to create another site on a VPN.

The solution is basically an OS for Fortinet.

Security and authentication are the most valuable aspects of the product. The classification of the websites is helpful.

The solution is stable and reliable.

We have several access points on FortiGate, which were procured long ago. Those are not supporting the present firmware update we make on the UTM. Therefore, we cannot get the latest firmware updated on the UTMs. I was thinking that if we need to get rid of these physical devices, we should move to some cloud-based system.

The only problem that we are facing at the moment is that all the devices of FortiGate, whether it is for FortiGate's access points or authenticator or controllers or UTM, is in the FortiOS. They are interrelated and interdependent. It means if I buy a FortiGate car, I have to run FortiGate OS, I have to fill in FortiGate fuel, and I have to run it on a Fortinet road. I can’t mix and match it with different solutions. There is no flexibility.

The initial setup is a bit complex.

We would like to have NMS built into the solution.

We’ve been using the solution for the last ten years.

The solution is stable. We’ve never had any issues with the product. It’s reliable. There are no bugs or glitches.

If I need to scale it up, then again, I have to change the entire family of it.

The amount of users connected at any given point is something around 6,000, including the students and the people on move.

We never use tech support from Fortinet. We get support from a local supplier.

We are tied to Fortinet and therefore did not use any other product.

Initially, the solution can be a bit complex to set up. It’s not simple. There’s a learning curve. You need to train on it a bit first.

We have ten to 12 people on hand who are specialized in FortiOS and can handle deployment and maintenance tasks. We have a total of 20 people working on maintenance.

The pricing is pretty high. I’d rate it at a two or three out of five in terms of affordability.

Since the pandemic, a lot of things have gotten exponentially higher. Also, for us, the final price is dependent on the dollar conversion rate. You can get a license for one or up to five years.

Since we are tied to Fortinet and could not use anything else, we did not compare it to other solutions.

We are customers and end-users.

I’d rate the solution seven out of ten.

I’d recommend the solution for an enterprise user. However, it may be a bit much for a small or medium-sized organization.

We use Fortinet FortiOS to protect our office, and we have another deployment in production. We have the PCI DSS environment on which we have deployed the Fortinet Firewall.

I am satisfied with Fortinet FortiOS. It's a cool product and has a lot of UTM features. It has application control, web filtering, antivirus, IPS/IDS, DNS filtering, and many things in that firewall. It also has a web application firewall WAF feature. On the feature side, it's a good firewall.

It would be better if AWS instances were available. If I want to upgrade from T2.small to T2.medium, it should be available rather than having a big instance and paying a lot of money for that.

The issue is that we had deployed in AWS Cloud, and we were using a very small instance. Recently we wanted to move in-house and deploy it on the big instance because it was struggling with the RAM. If we use T2.small, we cannot upgrade it to the T2.medium. It has predefined instances in the marketplace with a lot of cost differences.

If I can increase the RAM, I have to choose the T3.large instance. If I'm paying $270 for the small instance, I have to pay more than double the cost for T3.large. It is about $850, and this is not good. So, it would be better if it was cheaper.

I think both AWS and Fortinet should think about that. They should provide it on lower instances as well. If I want to upgrade it from T2.small to T2.medium, it should be available, but it's a problem.

I have been using Fortinet FortiOS since 2019, so more than three years.

Fortinet FortiOS is a stable product.

Fortinet FortiOS is scalable. 

Technical support is good. When I create the ticket, they respond to me, engage the engineer, and support is good. No issue at all.

The initial setup is not too complex; it's simple.

It would be better if it were cheaper. We have the firewall in our office, and the license is expiring in 20 to 25 days. We got a quote for almost 80,000 Pakistani Rupees, which is a little costly.

If I compare Fortinet FortiOS with Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA), it's a cool product. The deployment of ASA is a little bit complex because it's GUI-based, and ASA also has a graphical user interface. But I still think Fortinet is a good firewall compared to ASA because if you want to use the IPS/IDS feature in the ASA, you have to deploy the management center and integrate it with the firewall, which is a little complex.

I recommend this solution to potential users because it has many features, and it's a stable product.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Fortinet FortiOS an eight.