AWS WAF vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS WAF
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Web Services offers AWS WAF (web application firewall) to protect web applications from malicious behavior that might impede the applications functioning and performance, with customizable rules to prevent known harmful behaviors and an API for creating and deploying web security rules.
$0.60
per 1 million requests
FortiGate
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
FortiNet FortiGate is a firewall option with high integrability. It offers a variety of deployment options and next-gen firewall capabilities, including integration with IaaS cloud platforms and public cloud environments.N/A
Pricing
AWS WAFFortinet FortiGate
Editions & Modules
Resource Type - Request
$0.60
per 1 million requests
Resource Type - Rule
$1.00
per month (prorated hourly)
Resource Type - Web ACL
$5.00
per month (prorated hourly)
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS WAFFortiGate
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS WAFFortinet FortiGate
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
AWS WAFFortinet FortiGate
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
AWS WAF
-
Ratings
Fortinet FortiGate
8.7
51 Ratings
1% above category average
Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.949 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.249 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings8.950 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.851 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings8.748 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings7.750 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.151 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings9.150 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings9.446 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings9.349 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings8.737 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AWS WAFFortinet FortiGate
Small Businesses
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.5 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.5 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
F5 Advanced WAF
F5 Advanced WAF
Score 9.3 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS WAFFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(9 ratings)
9.1
(78 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(5 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
8.6
(19 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(5 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS WAFFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Well Suited: 1. To prevent DDOS attacks: AWS WAF has a lot of managed rules to prevent DDOS attacks based on traffic origination from a particular IP or IP reputation etc. 2. To rate-limit requests: Well it sounds familiar like preventing DDOS attacks, but it can also be used to rate-limit requests originating from the same IP address. We have used this feature so that we can test multiple failure scenarios for our application. 3. To prevent Data crawling: The BOT control feature allows us to prevent BOTs from crawling data on our websites. Not Suited: 1. To integrate applications outside of AWS Cloud: As I mentioned in my previous comments, this type of integration requires a custom implementation of another AWS resource.
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Fortinet
Fortinet FortiGate addressed an immediate security issue we had a few years ago. The device gave us a much clearer picture of the activities on our network and also more importantly, increased our awareness of threats from the internet as a whole. Fortinet FortiGate helps us to mitigate these threats with regular signature updates from Fortiguard labs, identifying certain characteristics which, once recognised by Fortinet FortiGate, can be harnessed to deploy powerful 'playbooks'.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Protect any application against the most common attacks.
  • Provides better visibility of web traffic.
  • It allows us to control the traffic in different ways in which it is enabled or blocked through the implementation of security rules developed personally according to our needs.
  • It is able to block common attacks such as SQL code injection.
  • It allows defining specific rules for applications, thus increasing web security as they are developed.
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Fortinet
  • SD-WAN - Load balancing of Internet traffic is a USP of Fortigate and makes it stand tall in the competition. Be it 3 or more Internet Links, multiple Subnets/segments of users to distribute and bandwidth load balancing for links and users. SLA based monitoring of Internet Links / MPLS links, makes it even better to choose the links on the basis of performance (Latency, packet loss, Jitter etc).
  • SSL VPN configuration - As we all have WFH force (to some extend or all employee) during Covid-19, it is impossible to plan BCP without having a SSL VPN. In Fortigate, the SSL VPN configuration is very easy with the help of wizard. The deep CLI-level debugging is also very helpful in troubleshooting. Type of tunnel can be easily configured - Full Tunnel or Split Tunnel for SSL.
  • Explicit Proxy - This is also a great feature to shape and re-route the traffic, configuring the Proxy on the Firewall itself. We are using this feature in Pilot for now, and planned to rollout in few weeks looking at the success rate of the POC.
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • AWS WAF is a bit costly if used for single applications.
  • they should provide attack-wise protection, like if my certain type of application is vulnerable to DDOS then I should be able to buy WAF, especially for that attack.
  • CLI tool to test in offline mode if possible.
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Fortinet
  • Documentation is missing a great deal of detail and assumes the customer and just guess and fill in the blanks themselves
  • Fortinet has lots and lots of video guides on topics that only a small percentage of customers would ever need
  • The documentation and video guides do not get updated so most is only relevant to older software versions
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
We have been using AWS WAF for the past 3 years in front of our websites. We find it useful in preventing data crawling, DDOS attacks, etc on our websites, and hence we are going to use it in the future as well. AWS WAF is one of the best Firewalls in business.
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Fortinet
Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
The product is highly scalable. It is easy to configure the rules and thereby helps us to mitigate many vulnerabilities. The interface and programming of the firewall provisions were easy to setup. Amazon clearly spent a lot of time figuring this out and perfecting it. It allows users to do customized configurations based on their needs. It provides protection against a number of security issues like XSS, SQL injection, etc. I would definitely recommend this for protecting your infra as you scale, since this basically protects and filters all requests hitting your application server.
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Fortinet
The firewall runs very well, firmware updates are fairly quick but you must follow the upgrade path. Neglecting this step will cause a lot of pain. If you decide to go with Fortinet FortiGate switches and/or access points, they can be managed within the firewall which is great. We're also using the FortiAnalyzer which easily plugs into the firewall for any reporting you may require.
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years
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Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
If you're intending to use AWS WAF, I would say that you absolutely should sign up for support. AWS Support is excellent and they can help you in a really good way to solve your issues.
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Fortinet
The Support team at Fortinet is excellent. They can not only help you configure the device for what you are trying to do, they offer suggestions on improving rules, and troubleshooting issues. Their response time is fast, ensuring you are up and running immediately with no questions asked. We had a hard drive failure in one of our Fortinet Fortigate appliances. The tech answered immediately, and started rebuilding the drive after some preliminary investigations. After rebuilding, there were still errors and issues, so they dispatched a brand new Fortinet Fortigate appliance. The tech then backed up the configurations for when the new device came in, which showed up in a few hours. A restore of the configuration took less than a minute, and there were no more errors or issues.
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In-Person Training
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.
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Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Easy of use. Setup and configuration is fairly quick. There are the usual advantages of it being a cloud solution where you can buy into the solution, configure it and set it up and get it up and running. If you are already a subscriber to AWS, having a native service has its advantages.
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Fortinet
[Fortinet] FortiGate is not only cost effective but it gives the comprehensive security against the APT attacks and gives the complete traffic visibility and granular control. You can easily create the VDOMs (Virtual firewall) within a Fortigate firewall and customize the dashboard as per your requirement if you have multiple VDOMs within a single firewall.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
No changes needed to terms and conditions.
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Scalability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Implementing this AWS service has been really favorable because when creating custom rules we give more specific protection to our applications against vulnerabilities that cause them to be consuming other resources or running with errors.
  • It allows us to control the traffic of our business applications, which is really favorable, given that in this way we can decide that you can access them and not.
  • It is extremely advantageous that we can establish rules in a centralized way since it saves time, as well as it allows us to protect several applications at the same time by reusing the rules established above.
  • It allows you to save time and money because we only pay for what is used.
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Fortinet
  • The pricing given to us for our firewall was well within what we were already spending for other vendors solutions and had the added value of eliminating a separate expense for a dedicated web filtering appliance.
  • We have also adopted Fortinet's security fabric approach and thus changed vendors for our switch and AP devices. These devices have come at reduced prices as compared to another previous vendor we were using, particularly in relation to ongoing annual maintenance costs.
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