FortiGate Next Generation Firewall can be described as the most complete solution.

When considering the policy of the vendors, they do not offer much of a discount policy, making the licensing model an area that needs improvement.

I have experience with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall for many years. My company is a reseller of the solution.

It is a stable product.

I recommend FortiGate Next Generation Firewall for small, medium, and enterprise-sized companies.

It is a scalable solution since Fortinet offers many other products.

My customers are satisfied with the technical support provided by Fortinet.

In my opinion, the pricing of the product is reasonable.

FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is a good product.

I rate the overall product between eight to ten out of ten.

The most valuable feature of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is its SD-WAN. The way it has been structured makes life easier. We have used it for remote access, especially at the height of COVID. It works very well.

There are times when we would want to set an IP address on a physical interface and then attach secondary IPs or sub-interfaces on that. I'd like to have as many as possible. There's a limitation wherein you can only have about 30 virtual or secondary IPs on a particular interface. I would like that to be expanded to 254 or 256 secondary IPs.

I have been using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) for five years.

I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall ten out of ten for stability.

The good part of the solution is that you can have Virtual Domains (VDOMs) that allow you to use it for multiple use cases. Around 20,000 users are using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall in our organization.

I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall an eight out of ten for scalability.

Whenever I have a problem and have to call their technical support team, I can email them. In the next few minutes, we'll get on a Zoom or Teams call and exchange notes.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup was easy. I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall an eight out of ten for the ease of its initial setup.

The solution's deployment does not take long. If everything goes fine, you will complete the initial configuration in an hour and test afterward. The testing phase is where you face issues. If you are migrating from another device to FortiGate, you would want everything that was running previously to run even on the newer one.

Three people were required for the solution's deployment, including an external person, myself, and a colleague.

I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall a five out of ten for pricing.

I learned from some reviews that FortiGate ranks quite highly compared to Palo Alto and Check Point. Considering our budget, we thought we could manage with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall.

I would strongly recommend FortiGate Next Generation Firewall to others because it's a brilliant next-generation device.

Overall, I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for multiple firewalls like edge and data center firewalls.

The solution’s interface is pretty user-friendly. It's easy to come up with policies and basic configurations. It is pretty straightforward.

Once in a few months, there is a vulnerability in the OS. The product has to be upgraded every few weeks.

I have been using the solution for three years.

I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

Our customers range from small to medium businesses. I rate the tool’s scalability a ten out of ten.

Support is amazing.

Positive

I rate the ease of setup a nine and a half out of ten.

On average, deployment takes two or three days. Usually, a person from the customer’s side and I deploy the solution.

The product is a good choice. It will not be a headache for the IT team. It is very common on the market. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I use FortiGate Next Generation Firewall for network protection using its DMZ network.

The solution has helped our network security.

There are multiple features I have found to be valuable, such as encryption and integrated security features.

The management consoles can be improved. I have used them before, and they are not so good.

I have been using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall for over two years.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten points for stability.

I rate the solution eight out of ten points for scalability. Over 200 people use it, some of whom are in IT.

I used Palo Alto more than a year ago at my previous job.

The initial setup was easy, I rate it a nine out of ten. Deployment took several days, involving one or two people. The steps involved in the process are design, configuration and implementation, testing and implementation, and also some fine-tuning.

I would rate pricing to be about four or five out of ten, it is reasonable.

I recommend this solution because the price is reasonable and the performance is quite good. Overall I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The main use case of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is that it is used to search for a firewall whenever we need to connect multiple sites to a VPN. At times, the solution needs a web filter or a particular filter. With the IPS and the cloud protection on the gateway, we are also looking for a firewall that can act as zero-depth protection.

The solution's most important feature is that it will work on the app whenever we block the application order, making it a plus point for the NGFW firewall. The solution also works with all the other web protection aspects, because of which we get everything in a single box.

There are multiple firewalls, and I mainly worked with Sophos and FortiGate. To weigh the pros and cons, different types and aspects should be considered in different firewalls.

The support for FortiGate in the Indian region can be improved along with the scalability. The pricing of the solution is expensive, so it could be cheaper.

I have worked as a system integrator with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) for five years.

We can say that the solution's scalability is moderate. It is not that easy, nor too hard. If the technician is sound, then he can understand the solution easily.

Our customers include small, medium, and enterprise businesses.

In India, support takes some time. If the call gets connected outside India, then it is very good. SonicWall has the best support, and Sophos also offers good support. For FortiGate, the support in the Indian region can be improved. 

As for the rating, I would say that FortiGate offers very good support. Once we get the support, it is very good. However, the support team is not connecting as easily as we require. If the issue is too critical, the process becomes more complicated for us. I rate the support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I mainly worked with Sophos and FortiGate. I have used different solutions depending on the customer's requirements. We can suggest a particular solution to a customer based on their needs. Every firewall solution has its own pros and cons, which we just bifurcate as per the customer's requirement.

The initial setup is easy if I am going to talk about Sophos' and FortiGate's installation. It is easy to install. There is not much complexity involved.

As for deployment, it depends on the customer's requirements. But the average time is 3 to 4 hours. At times, deployment takes 12 to 13 hours, but it depends on the model and the configuration.

It takes two engineers to deploy the product. One of them is the deployment engineer, and one is an architect.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

The solution is more expensive than Sophos. It could be cheaper. The licensing is on a yearly basis. We have had it for about three years. We must only pay extra for the license, additional requirements, and the hardware box.

I am fine with the solution's interface. The solution is easy to use. FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is a base product, and anyone can use it. I recommend it to those planning to use it.

There is not much maintenance for FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW). OEM provides the support. Whenever it becomes complicated or any issues come up, we can call OEM directly, and they are always available to help.

Overall, I would rate it ten out of ten.

FortiGate NGF is used to protect customer networks. 

FortiGate NGF is simple compared to other firewalls. It is easy to use and you don't need any training. Any person with basic firewall knowledge can use it. 

The solution needs to integrate VPN features. 

I have been working with the product for two years. 

The product is stable. 

FortiGate NGF is scalable. The number of users depends on the project and can be around three users. 

FortiGate NGF's support responds fast. 

I use Palo Alto and Check Point as well. 

The tool's setup is easy. We used one resource to handle the deployment. The tool's deployment can take around one to two days to complete and depends on customer requirements. 

I would rate the product a nine out of ten. 

The solution is being used as a firewall. 

The GUI configuration is its most valuable feature. 

The licensing model and pricing need improvement.

I have been using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall for the last four years. 

FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is a stable solution. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Fifty users are using the solution. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

The technical support team is good, but we haven't reached out to them on our own. 

FortiGate's initial setup is easy. The solution's deployment depends on the projects and the way clients use it. It takes approximately five days to deploy the solution. I rate the setup an eight out of ten.

It is an expensive solution.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

The use cases of the solution depend on what the customer wants from the tool. If a customer is looking for a core firewall, I provide them with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW). Suppose a customer is looking for a tool from a patch connectivity perspective with multiple branches and wants those branches to be connected to the data center. In that case, we can suggest FortiGate Next Generation Firewall's features to them.

Routing and reporting are two areas where the product has an added advantage compared to any other product.

Vulnerabilities owing to viruses in the OS need to be reduced in FortiGate Next Generation Firewall from an improvement perspective.

Some vulnerabilities get added to the system every two months, which may be code execution or backend and backdoor issues.

In the future, the product should be able to tackle vulnerabilities. Research and development to increase the product's security capabilities is needed.

I have been using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall for a year now. My company has a partnership with Fortinet.

From a stability perspective considering OS and if the vulnerabilities are present, I rate the stability a seven out of ten since it creates a lot of issues in general.

We suggest FortiGate Next Generation Firewall to small and medium businesses.

When it comes to enterprise-level businesses, and considering the need for two-layer security, consider a perimeter firewall, while I can suggest FortiGate only at a level of a core firewall. Suppose an enterprise customer has multiple branches and more branch networks. In that case, they need SD-WAN connectivity with security, for which I suggest they go for FortiGate's SD-WAN feature.

In general, it will not be enough for enterprise companies to have only Next Generation Firewall alone.

I am not familiar with the technical support team because my support team works with them. The solution's technical support is good. We do not face many issues when dealing with the solution's technical support team.

Previously, we were using Check Point in our company.

Compared to Check Point, FortiGate Next Generation Firewall needs to look at how to improve the way it deals with the vulnerabilities which are not there at Check Point and the security effectiveness provided by Check Point.

It is easy to use and implement since anyone can do its configuration part, but there is some requirement for someone with proper technical skills to implement it properly. I can implement anything in any way, but that doesn't mean I can implement any product properly. The implementation requires certain technical expertise.

The implementation of the solution can take two days.

One person is required for the implementation phase.

The solution's pricing is competitive.

The usefulness of the product is an aspect that depends on the customers using the tool. We cannot even compare two products and say one is good for the customer and the other is bad. If a customer asks me to be an architect for their data center, I would say that for a perimeter firewall, they need to go for Check Point. Coming to a core firewall, if a customer says that they need two layers of security and two different vendors, it should be Check Point on the perimeter level. At the core level, a customer can go for Fortinet. Certain customers prefer the SD-WAN feature from Fortinet if they have branch firewalls and want an SD-WAN feature too. FortiGate has an added advantage because they have an SD-WAN feature with security that we can provide to their branch devices.

I don't have any suggestions for those planning to use the solution since we are pretty new to the solution, and we need to devote time to be able to comment on the solution.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

FortiGate Next Generation Firewall's design is good. Technically, I haven't used many of its features. The primary purpose we use the solution in our organization is for its SNAT and DNAT functionalities. The solution is also used for its vulnerability patching mechanism.

The solution's GUI is not very appealing. When using a tool from another vendor, we found the GUI of that tool to be quite appealing. FortiGate Next Generation Firewall uses a very old type of GUI, which is not very appealing. The GUI can be improved.

I have been using FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) for six months. My company is just a customer of the product.

I am very impressed with the product's stability. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

My company has 2,000 users of the product.

I didn't need any support. The support is good. I wouldn't say the support is bad. I rate the support a seven and a half out of ten.

Neutral

My company seeks the help of vendors to do the initial setup of the product. After that, we just work on policies, SNAT, DNAT, and virtual IPs.

The setup phase was neither difficult nor easy. I rate the setup phase as three or four out of ten on a scale where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

The solution's deployment took two to three weeks.

Two people were required for the deployment of the product.

The solution's vendor executed the setup phase.

The solution's pricing is quite high when compared to other vendors. I rate the pricing an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high.

I highly recommend the solution to those planning to use it.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I work for an integrator in Nigeria, and we implement all these solutions for our clients. I've done a lot of deployments on Fortinet, deploying all from FortiAP to FortiSwitch. I integrated it with FortiGate, FortiManager, SD-WAN, deployment, security, and the like.

I found the upgrades valuable. Normally, when you want to upgrade an enterprise firewall, the customer always requests a box swap, whereby we look at the new firmware and compare it to know if there will be any configuration changes. These are the parts where we have to bring in the OEM to do it. But with the new FortiGate firmware, it helps do that by providing reporting and helps you to give the customer the comfort of saying you can upgrade the firewall and describe what changes and issues you would expect. Basically, out-of-the-box management.

One area for improvement is the IPS engine, which is something that needs to be improved on. I've had so many issues whereby I have high CPU usage, and when I check, I see it's being consumed by the IPS engine. I have to upgrade the IPS engine firmware and all that. That has been the main pain point with FortiGate. Likewise, customer support could improve.

I've been working on FortiGate for about five years now, and I'm working with the latest version.

The solution is stable apart from the IPS engine issue, so I rate stability a seven out of ten. Stability depends on the operational team. If you have a good operational team that knows what you are doing, you always gain stability with most of your solutions. But if you have an operational team that is not so strong, you will always have issues with that solution because they will keep making human errors that will keep disrupting the services you offer. For example, in 2021, I was working as the cyber delivery manager for MTN, and I was managing the FortiGate infrastructure. In that one year, I never had any incident on FortiGate. But after I left, they started having frequent issues because of human errors. From a management perspective, if I were the CTO during that period, I would assume that FortiGate Firewall is not a good firewall. But that is not the case. It is the person who handles it that determines the stability. If you know how to do your health check properly and how to output the firewall properly, I'm sure FortiGate will be stable. I'm rating the stability as seven just to be in the middle. If it's being handled by a less experienced operational team, I'm sure you will have issues because they always perform changes, they don't know when to perform the kind of change they are performing, and that might disrupt the services. But if I rate FortiGate based on myself, I give it a nine out of ten.

I rate FortiGate's scalability a nine out of ten. Out of every ten enterprises in Africa, six currently use FortiGate. MTN is one of our major customers, and we helped them migrate from Cisco and Juniper to FortiGate.

The ease with the initial setup depends on the deployment. I've deployed FortiGate for different use cases. I've deployed it using internal segmentation. I've deployed it using it as a data center firewall, doing east and west. I've deployed FortiGate on the perimeter edge, whereby we have the SSL VPN and site-to-site VPN. But overall, I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten because it's always been very easy.

There are timelines with projects, so the time taken to deploy the solution depends on the scale of the project. If it's just a perimeter firewall where I have to migrate from one firewall, like the Cisco firewall, to the Fortinet firewall, it takes me nothing less than a week. It takes a day using the FortiConverter to convert the configuration from Cisco to Fortinet and maybe another two days to look at the configuration properly on my FortiGate before I'm confident enough to tell the customer to schedule maintenance for us to migrate the services. It depends on the customer, so in a nutshell, from kickoff to the close date is not always an exact amount, but generally no more than a month.

The deployment time taken depends on the customer's availability and their response because it's not totally dependent on me being the technical engineer. It depends on how fast they provide me with all the information I need to complete the deployments and determines how fast I can close the project. If the customer is very responsive, it takes us about three weeks to close the project.

FortiGate is much cheaper than other OEMs such as Cisco, Palo Alto, and Check Point. I'll rate FortiGate's pricing a five out of ten since it is moderately priced.

Currently, we are pushing all our clients to adopt the Fortinet cloud firewall instead of using the native solutions found on the different cloud environments they use, like Azure and Google, because they are not really effective.

FortiGate is a very good firewall that has a lot of features, and it's a firewall that gives the same stability as enterprise ones, and it gives you scalability in terms of deployment and operational management. I rate FortiGate NGFW a nine out of ten.