Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000) vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000) provides a scalable, flexible foundation so you can quickly integrate leading IT initiatives like SD-WAN and edge compute, while meeting the explosive network performance need driven by cloud-based application adoption.N/A
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
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)Fortinet FortiGate
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)FortiGate
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
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)Fortinet FortiGate
Considered Both Products
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
Chose Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
We have used Cisco models for long time now. When we were selecting new routers to replace our 3900s, we found that new ISR models will meet our needs in terms of bandwidth capacity.
Chose Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
Best capacity and throughput matchbing
FortiGate

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)Fortinet FortiGate
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
-
Ratings
Fortinet FortiGate
9.3
38 Ratings
9% above category average
Identification Technologies00 Ratings9.736 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.836 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings8.937 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings9.638 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings9.237 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings9.738 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.238 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings9.838 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings9.733 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings9.636 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings8.927 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)Fortinet FortiGate
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Routers
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Score 8.4 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Routers
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Score 8.4 out of 10
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Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)Fortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(70 ratings)
9.5
(65 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(4 ratings)
9.9
(4 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(5 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(15 ratings)
8.6
(26 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.4
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.5
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)Fortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Actually if we place it into the internet gateway, we do nothing in front of the firewall. Yes, it's working well also, if we put into the routing, it works well. But we should not use it instead of switch. Because some people tend to use the router instead of layer three suite. So yes, I try to use it.
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Fortinet
For FortiGate Firewall, the basic functionality and requirement is met easily as Fortigate is among market leaders in NGFW. There are some extra points that inclined us to use Fortigate as our main Firewall. [Fortinet]Fortigate has a very well refined and functional SD-WAN solution when it comes to load balancing for normal Internet Traffic. 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 - 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. Though, I think Fortigate is one of the best options for small and mid-sized organizations, there are some areas for improvement. First, the CLI interface is very hard to adapt as the commands and directory hierarchy is very different for common syntax and standards.
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Pros
Cisco
  • The ISR 4000 is an excellent router for our voice services. We purchased CUBE licensing in order to do this.
  • The ISR 4000 is an excellent router for security purposes as well. We purchased the security license with the router and that allowed us to run a Zone-Based Firewall.
  • The ISR 4000 is very simple and straight forward to configure.
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Fortinet
  • It is the most reliable NGFW that we have ever been touch with it.
  • You can easily upgrade the firewall cluster firmware without user attention!!!
  • User IDentity based feature is fantastic and intrusion prevention just works with least false-positive possible.
  • Very reachfull and intuitive GUI, just love it
Read full review
Cons
Cisco
  • A greater number of onboard WAN ports would be an improvement over the model we purchased, which only had two. [This] means we'll have to buy more expensive network cards to get more convenience.
  • The small router was a plus in some branches, but it was a hindrance in others. Its width is about half the size of the rack, so we had to keep it on top of another device.
  • When compared to its competitors, the rack mounting kit is unreliable and expensive to purchase.
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Fortinet
  • When we switched to Fortinet Fortigate, it took some time getting used to and become familiar with the new interface. Being used to strictly command-line interfaces, a full GUI-based firewall was something brand new. Careful planning had to be done when creating rules to ensure we didn't miss anything. However, once we got used to the new GUI interface, going from one Fortinet product to another was simple, as Fortinet used the same interface for all of its devices.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
We renew Cisco end of life devices with current models.
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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
Cisco
Cisco Integrated Services 4000 series routers are very easy to use and manage. With the use of integrated management controllers, you can deploy new sites within minutes
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Fortinet
The user interface shared among many simultaneous users is very easy to get around. With shared favorites among users, most tasks are easily bookmarked and can quickly be found and edited. Their strategy for web filter integration is easy to understand and manage as well. With some general direction, setup and maintenance were easy to do and easy to teach others in the organization to do as well.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
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
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
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Support Rating
Cisco
There is always room for improvement with support, but Cisco support has been good to me over the years. Being able to call or submit online TAC cases makes it so I can get my issues or questions answered faster. They have even added the TAC bot for TAC cases to get to support even faster!
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Fortinet
We live in Turkey. Fortinet's Turkey office [dealt] constantly with us in our every problem or our experience. In addition, global support teams also supported every ticket we opened in every problem we encountered. They support innovative approaches and evaluate and offer solutions. In this context, they were very supportive of the problems we encountered in previous versions.
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In-Person Training
Cisco
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
Cisco
If you planning on upgrading your network to software defined networks, Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers are the best. To successfully implement the project you need to plan and communicate with all your stake holders
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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
Cisco
We did not compare the Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers to other competitors as we used Cisco for a long period of time already. We selected this product as we used a lot of CISCO products in the past and with good support. Other products don't have the protocols that CISCO products have.
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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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Scalability
Cisco
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
Cisco
  • Can be used for ISE, Meraki access point, FTD firewall, works well, no worry about integration with any third party product. As this device can be multipurpose, ROI is faster and usable for longer period of time, as no EOL any time soon
  • This is an integrated modular device so even if my small offices are closed over a period of time, this can be re-purposed for other requirements within organization
  • This device supports WAN optimization within software. This reduces the requirement of that specific optimization device, which reduces my overall cost for a branch network
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Fortinet
  • Fortigates have an interesting bundle model for support and subscription services that make it an attractive option to deploy Firewall, IDS, Ant-virus, anti-SPAM in a single device. The cost of the bundle is pretty much what you pay for the device, not requiring huge expenditures on it's time to renew the hardware.
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