Fortinet FortiOS Reviews

We are consultant architects so our role is to set up firewalls for our customers, who are usually small and medium-sized companies. 

I like that the firewall gives me a lot of control in terms of outgoing and inbound traffic, and it scores better in deep packet inspections when compared with the Azure Firewall.

The support could be improved, Fortinet's response time is very slow. 

Setting up the VPN could be made much easier, especially when deployed with Azure.

I have been using the solution for a year now.

The product is pretty stable.

The solution is scalable.

The initial setup of this solution is relatively easy.

The pricing could always be lower.

If I'm going with Azure data center, my first recommendation would always be Azure Firewall with the newly launched premium services. Otherwise, Fortinet is pretty good.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. I advise users to go through the documentation very thoroughly as it's not the same as your on-premises Fortinet Power. It's slightly different. Setting up the VPN is a bit tricky in Azure, deploying the Fortinet firewall and Azure is somewhat tricky.

Fortinet FortiOS is the operating system(OS) for the appliance to work.

The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiOS are the granular control and their interoperability is good.

Fortinet FortiOS can improve the GUI and remove the command line interface. All the functionality should be available from the GUI. Day-to-day management can be tough for IT administrators. Additionally, the reporting is not very good.

I have been using Fortinet FortiOS for approximately 10 years.

I have not used support very often. I have been able to figure out the problems myself.

I have used other solutions, such as SonicWall. I have found SonicWall's GUI to be less complicated than Fortinet FortiOS.

If I have to implement through the Fortinet FortiOS I have to go through multiple screens. For example, if I need to configure a simple VPN, and a site-to-site Sec VPN channel, in Fortinet FortiOS, I may have to go through multiple GUI pages or screens. Whereas, in SonicWall, everything can be done on one page.

When comparing the ease of configuration and management, with SonicWall, I find Fortigate needs some improvement. If it was improved it would make it a lot easier for implementers.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate Fortinet FortiOS an eight out of ten because the reporting, configuration, and management for the IT administrators could improve.

For me, personally within our company, I am using this for business administration, but the company as a whole uses the product as a general firewall solution.

This product has improved our organization by providing an easy and simple means of filtering of traffic and establishing VPN connections and authentication.

The high-availability feature is the most valuable feature for our company. It is faster and more secure by creating a situation where there are more paths and less opportunity for failure and data loss.

While the product is good and does provide services we need for authenticating and establishing VPN connections, some time ago we had issues with logins. The login event and the performance for this feature were very poor but have improved.

Excluding the login performance — which we would have issues with in the past that made us have to turn off the feature in order to examine the infrastructure — every other feature and functionality has proven to be stable. We have also experienced some issues with performance with filtering traffic but it was on the appliance and because it was just a basic setup.  The real problem was the configuration and had we been more familiar at the time, we would have done a better job with it. So it was not the product that was unstable, it was our application of it.

The solution is scalable, but we really have not had too much of a reason to put the scalability to the test. I cannot imagine an issue where we would have to scale more right now as we use two hardware installations and the high-availability feature manages the traffic. Two appliances for us seems like more than enough.

I think the technical support is not really very good. When we had some issues in the past and sent them to support, we waited a few weeks and in that time we managed to figure out the solution ourselves.

The one issue I am talking about was a very tricky issue, but they should know more about the product than we do even if we are doing the installations. Meanwhile, we had to wait and it was very inconvenient. So I think the process of the way they handle the management of issues could be improved. We managed to get some of the easier issues resolved in part through the support team initially, but when we reached the next level of difficulty, it lasted too long to get a resolution.

We had been using our own solution and wanted to go with a dedicated, packaged product. It was a business decision and would allow us to refocus our internal resources.

Because we have been doing installations of this product for five years, the installation is fairly easy. It was not very easy the first time but now we have a lot of experience in doing installations so, for us, it is easy to set up.

We do not use integrators or resellers as that is what we do and it is our responsibility.

As far as choosing the best licensing solution for your organization, do not buy the cheapest solution. Instead, buy the one that fits the traffic for your company with some room for expansion or headroom. Next year, if the business grows — which is usually what you want to do — you could reach a point where there is more traffic and the performance could become an issue.

We have lots of experience in using and installing FortiOS, and because of the experience has mostly been positive, I recommend FortiOS as a solution for firewalling. Besides the few issues we have experienced in the past, this is a stable solution and the high-availability feature is very, very good. 

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would you rate Fortinet FortiOS as a nine. Despite the few problems we had in the past it is a very good solution which does what it is designed to do.

FortiOS' most valuable features are management, security, and easy updates with no downtime.

FortiOS's bandwidth and interface could be improved. In the next release, Fortinet should include an option to disable users.

I've been working with Fortinet FortiOS for five years.

We've been using FortiOS for five years and have had no problems with stability during that time.

FortiOS is scalable.

Fortinet's technical support is good and provides good solutions for us.

Positive

Previously, I used Cisco ASA Firewall.

The initial setup was very simple and was completed within a week.

The implementation was done by a reseller and a technical team from our side. 

On the technical side, we have received a good ROI from FortiOS as its scalability and management are good.

The licensing for FortiOS is good, with a security license included when we update the main license.

I would rate FortiOS eight out of ten.

We are system integrators and we deploy firewalls for our customers. I'm the CTO and we are partners with Fortinet. 

Fortinet is a feature-rich firewall. The ease of use is one of the primary advantages of this product. It has a very simple OS and things are pretty easy to do. Fortinet has a good price point which is one of the reasons it's so popular. It's also a good security product. With Fortinet, the link balancing features are easier to use compared to other firewalls. 

We have had some performance issues, but that seems to be improving. I'd like to see better integrations and more flexibility for different scenario configurations. In comparison to Cisco, the CLI is quite difficult to use. Finally, I believe that the reporting could be enhanced to provide better visibility into the traffic. 

As an additional feature, Fortinet could have XDR embedded into it which would mean more visibility from the reporting side because right now we have to separately install FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer for driver analysis.

We've been using this solution for over five years. 

Fortinet is a pretty stable product. 

Fortinet still has to prove themselves when it comes to higher throughput cases, because there are many places where other brands are placed with higher throughput than Fortinet. When we enable all the features, sometimes the performance migration is more significant compared to Fortinet's claims of what it should be, so that needs to be better matched. 

I think Fortinet needs to improve their support. They are not one of the gold star rating support companies. There are a few big vendors like Cisco, EMC, VMware with gold star support rating. The support is sometimes not up to the mark. 

The initial setup is quite straightforward. 

We generally deploy Fortinet, Cisco and occasionally Palo Alto which is an expensive firewall so less companies use it. We deploy Cisco and Fortinet frequently. When it comes to performance and price, Palo Alto is at the top on both counts. 

I rate the solution seven out of 10. 

We use different types of deployment models of this solution besides for the public cloud. Our primary use case is to install it for many clients on their on-prem site. Our job is client-based. We are resellers of this solution. 

The most valuable feature of this solution would be the caching feature. 

Their technical support needs improvement. 

All products have pluses and minuses. It will depend on a client's use case.

The stability is good. 

Scalability is good. 

Sometimes it is difficult to get support. It can take time to get an answer to our problems. They don't always know what the solution is. 

They also offer online support. 

The initial setup is complex. The deployment takes eight to nine months. 

The pricing will depend. It can depend on your partner. Sometimes your partner can get you a better price. 

I wouldn't specifically recommend one product of this type over another. We provide a plethora of products and it depends on the client's needs. 

I would rate this solution a six or seven out of ten. We deal with a lot of products, this one is okay. It really depends on the client. 

We use it as Fortinet as a edge firewall Fortinet protection and SSL VPN FortiOS Vivo SS.

The SSL VPN is fee for use is most attractive.

A switch should be introduced. 

I have been working with Fortinet FortiOS for 2023. 

The solution is moderately stable. I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. 

The clients are primarily small businesses. 

The initial setup was straightforward. I would date the setup a six out of ten. The deployment takes few minutes time. 

The solution is cost effective. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. 

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We typically use the Fortinet hardware firewall, and the FortiOS runs inside of that. We're usually working in a small or medium-sized business environment. So we use it for remote access, access from the LAN to the WAN, and site-to-site VPN. 

I personally think the site-to-site VPN is the most useful feature. A lot of firewalls have that, but to me, that's one of the features that's essential. Either you want to just do some basic routing or use one of these kinds of practices.

FortiOS doesn't work well with all browsers. I think they need to do a better job of making it compatible with the various browsers that are out there. I see weird stuff happen sometimes.

It doesn't crash the router bin itself, but it typically takes some time. Sometimes I'll have to reboot the router to get it working with a browser again. This is maybe just a problem with older versions. I can't say anything about the recent versions of the FortiOS, but over the years, I've seen weird stuff.  This is mainly just a problem with the browser interface. I've never had a problem with the command line.

I think FortiOS is scalable. It's not a Cisco product, but it's a solution that's easy to deploy and manage at scale. You can build as your business would grow. You could go to a higher unit without much effort. Migration is clean in terms of going from small to big units. You typically have to just configure again, but it's not difficult to do. There isn't a whole different set of OS commands between different models.

I find Fortinet to be on the higher end of the scale in terms of technical support. I don't know if I'll give them an A-plus, but I'd probably give them an A. Relative to other companies out there, like Microsoft, Intuit, and some of the other support agencies or ISPs that we deal with, their support is better than most.

I would rate FortiOS a seven or an eight.