What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiOS?

Pricing for the tool can vary. Sometimes, aggressive pricing is offered at the start, but later, as subscriptions and expansions are needed, the costs can increase, and customers may have to pay whatever is required.

Regarding the cost, the initial purchase is relatively cheap because it comes bundled. However, the subscription renewals can be quite expensive. The renewal costs are high, even though the initial purchase might include discounts.

When we purchase a FortiGate, it comes with FortiOS. Overall, the pricing for the device and related components is better than average. In comparison, FortiGate offers more competitive pricing than Palo Alto and Cisco.

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

It is not cheap. I would rate the price of this solution a seven out of ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive. You have to purchase the license at least. So it's an additional cost. For smaller businesses, there are smaller operators available, which are cheaper comparatively. But for a large enterprise, it is a costly solution.

The pricing is competitive for the medium and high markets but for the small markets it can be expensive.

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.

FortiOS is affordable, but its price could be lower.

I cannot comment on licensing costs as a different department handles that.

We started with a three-year license and have since renewed it. For three years, we paid about 2,800 KD, which is about $9,000. The product is pretty affordable overall.

There are different types of licensing. It depends on what kind of licensing you decide to take, if it's on an annual basis or if it's a three-year basis. It also depends on what modules you have selected in your firewall. If you have the next business day on-site warranty, and if you have the actual hardware replacement, the normal RMA on devices like Cisco and those devices where the device fails, the company comes out and swaps the device out for you free of charge, that comes at a price. It greatly depends on what options you take with their warranties and guarantees and stuff. It's very difficult to say what the licensing is until you break down which module you will take. You need to buy the modules or the add-ons based on your needs. Licensing then will be directly connected to that. It’s like purchasing Windows. You can just buy Windows. However, you won't get Office working necessarily. It's the same with the FortiOS licensing. You buy the OS; then you buy everything you want to run on it. You can just buy the operating system, the FortiOS. However, it won't give you IPS or any other advanced firewall rules. That will be an additional cost on your licensing. They are slightly on the pricey side. They are affordable. However, they are not cheap. I’d rate them a two out of five in terms of affordability.

A medium 100 or 200 Series box costs around $3000, and the software cost is around 55% of the hardware cost.

The price of Fortinet FortiOS is comparable to other similar solutions on the market. We are on an annual license to use the solution.

We had a three-year license to use Fortinet FortiOS and we are going to renew it this year.

The price of Fortinet FortiOS is reasonable and it is paid annually. You are able to select the features that you want.

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.

I am on a two-year contract and I pay annually for Fortinet FortiOS.

The Fortinet solutions can be a bit expensive.

The solution is fairly expensive. The cost is around $40,000. It would be ideal if they offered more licensing options.

The solution could have a better licensing model. It's a bit more expensive than other solutions. The annual subscription is very pricy in Fortinet. The cost could be reduced.

FortiOS has a UTM feature, for which you have to buy an annual subscription. Most brands of firewalls will also have such a subscription.

The price of Fortinet FortiOS has been reasonable.

I work on the configuration and not really involved in the pricing. It was already in place when the company decided to switch back to Fortinet. I concentrate more on security.

The costs for the maintenance and subscription for Fortinet FortiOS software alone is actually half of the cost of the hardware. For example, if your hardware costs were about $40,000, your yearly subscription to FortiOS is about $20,000. That is kind of the drawback to using Fortinet. By comparison, that $60,000 is already three years of maintenance or support with Check Point for the same scale setup. It is a significant cost difference.

The solution is too expensive. If they could push down their prices, that would be great. However, I'm not in charge of purchasing. I wouldn't know about the exact costs.

The pricing is good. They are especially fair when compared with other companies, like Palo Alto, for example, which can get quite expensive.

I'm not sure of the pricing, but my understanding, after looking into Sophos, is that Fortinet is less expensive than Sophos.

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.

We pay $100,000. That covers the cost of the hardware that we run the VN's on. That also includes any SGNA costs for the internal support tech.

I think the cost of the product categorizes FortiOS because it is a bit more expensive than small businesses will usually want to spend. It is not really practical for SMB or for small businesses. It is mostly for mid-range or higher SMBs because of the pricing. It is not expensive compared to some products, but a small business may not justify the cost. The cost ends up being dependent on the solution you choose and if you want individual or package licensing.

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

We pay an annual license fee. It is rather expensive so I would like to perhaps see a drop in price in the future.

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.

Licensing is renewed on a yearly basis.