Cisco Firepower 1000 Series vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
The Cisco Firepower® 1000 Series for small to medium-size businesses and branch offices is a family of four threat-focused Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) security platforms designed to deliver business resiliency through superior threat defense. The vendor provides that they offers exceptional sustained performance when advanced threat functions are enabled. The 1000 Series’ throughput range addresses use cases from the small office, home office, remote branch office to the Internet edge. The…N/A
FortiGate
Score 8.6 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 Firepower 1000 SeriesFortinet FortiGate
Editions & Modules
Firepower 1000
1,000-5,000
per appliance
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFortiGate
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 Firepower 1000 SeriesFortinet FortiGate
Considered Both Products
Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
FortiGate NGFW, is also an excellent product with good processing power and traffic handling. But our client was previously familiar with Cisco Firepower, and we had resources to support it well. The trust and support facility of Cisco helped our client to choose Firepower over …
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
Not at the host level, but at network-level, Firepower is a great product for small scale businesses and the logging capability is excellent. The resource's accessibility for understanding the event type and support is well. Firepower is not a competitor for FortiGate. …
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
Cisco is preferable because, Fortinet FortiGate does not have the lowest cost in terms of initial purchase or maintenance. Some companies bundle their hardware, license, and support better. Cisco has a more modular approach that allows for choice but also complicates the buying …
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
Cisco Firepower 1000 Series is a challenger; it still needs improvement to become a leader like Checkpoint or Palo Alto. I installed Palo Alto firewalls, Checkopoint firewalls, and FortiGate, which are much more efficient for now than Cisco Firepower 1000 Series. I also had to …
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
we have chosen Cisco in order to complete the Cisco full stack.
The price is higher than the competitors devices
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
We use both devices for different purposes. Both have their benefits, which we try to bring to best use in our environment.
This makes it hard to compare them. All I can say for sure is, that they work quite well as a team, each leveling out the others flaws.
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
Fortinet's GUI is much better to work in over FTD hardware comparable to FTD.
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
[We've used] checkpoint 2200 and 3200 models. Based on the compromises we had to make by not applying the "Optimised" IPS profile and High CPU problems, I would suggest Firepower 1000 but Meraki MX series can take away the spot light from Firepower 1000.
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
The Cisco Firepower 1140 hit the sweet spot between performance and price. Also, I am more familiar with Cisco products so I wanted to stay on that side. We looked at the Firepower 2110, but thought the 1140 was a better fit for our needs.
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
In terms of cost-effectiveness, Cisco gives the same or better service at a lower cost compared to Palo Alto devices. There are other products in the market with similar protection services and even lower cost but customer service is not as good as Cisco. So, it is a combined …
Chose Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
Cisco is up there, not the lowest cost in terms of initial purchase or maintenance. Also not quite the best in terms of reputation yet but getting better. Some companies bundle their hardware, license, and support better. Cisco has a more modular approach that allows for choice …
FortiGate
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
Integrated security features multiple security in one platform, cost effective, centralized management, saclability like its models are availble from small to large enterprise for provide proper throughput according to size we can select model.documentation of all features are …
Features
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFortinet FortiGate
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
8.3
33 Ratings
4% below category average
Fortinet FortiGate
8.7
53 Ratings
0% above category average
Identification Technologies8.031 Ratings8.951 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.230 Ratings8.351 Ratings
Content Inspection8.330 Ratings8.852 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.733 Ratings8.953 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.429 Ratings8.750 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.232 Ratings7.752 Ratings
Reporting and Logging8.333 Ratings8.253 Ratings
VPN9.128 Ratings9.052 Ratings
High Availability9.232 Ratings9.348 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.828 Ratings9.251 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings8.539 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFortinet FortiGate
Small Businesses
pfSense
pfSense
Score 8.8 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.2 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(34 ratings)
8.8
(79 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(2 ratings)
7.0
(5 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(5 ratings)
8.7
(21 ratings)
Availability
8.1
(2 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
8.3
(29 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(34 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 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
8.1
(2 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
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
I think it is well suited for smaller companies or (as in our case) extension to a central system with higher performance. My personal guess is, that it can be quite annoying with those delays in bigger environments, when 20 or more devices needed to be managed. From the point of security, support and updates it works quite good and seem to have no downsides.
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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
Cisco
  • My organization is all Cisco and wants to stay in the Cisco life cycle, Firepower 1000 series is great for small to medium-size office.
  • Very robust enterprise-grade security solution with updated threat features to handle any current and upcoming threats. The solution is backed by Cisco to ensure constant security updates. Integrated AnyConnect remote client VPN is a big plus to allow for secure remote workers access. Easier to set up a site to site VPN due to the large user base and case studies published on integrating to other manufacturer solutions.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Cons
Cisco
  • ACLS in gui are PIA cant see object details
  • Objects in ACLs dont show IP addresses
  • Have to renames every object to name+ip to make acl GUI useable
  • Speed to data can use improvement.
  • Health warnings should allow you to resolve you have to dig n search in some cases.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
It is quite good, robust and reliable but not always so easy to manage and configure. The tools could be improved and the price is not low for an entry level firewall
Read full review
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
Firepowers are secure, reliable, central management and configuration is easy and they fit in well with our existing Cisco infrastructure. Good feature set and support. Good management and control with chassis manager and central control with additional Firepower Management Centre.
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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.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Cisco
Has not let me down yet.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Performance
Cisco
Great performance even on the lower end model of the series. You can push a lot of traffic through these devices without much performance impact. If you decide you want to inspect encrypted traffic however, you may take a big hit on the cpu and memory of the box, but they still manage to keep up even with all the bells and whistles turned on.
Read full review
Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
Read full review
Support Rating
Cisco
I have had troubles with Firepower Management Center and the FTD's in the past. Sticking to a Gold Star image and upgrading when the "bugs" are fixed is great. That still doesn't mean you are left vulnerable though. The extra features are just not enabled yet. Great product and calling support is readily available for any issue.
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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
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
Utilize the new FMC cloud which is available in Cisco Defense Orchestrator.
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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
Cisco Meraki MX is much more simple to configure it if you compare to Cisco Firepower 1000, but it is more limited to pur some complex configurations. The Cisco Firepower 1000 Series is typically deployed as a physical appliance, while the Meraki MX can be deployed as a physical or virtual appliance.The Firepower 1000 Series has a more complex user interface, with a steeper learning curve, but offers more customization and configuration options. The Meraki MX has a simpler, more intuitive interface,
Read full review
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
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
No changes needed to terms and conditions.
Read full review
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
  • We have seen improved throughput on our internet.
  • It took several attempts with Cisco engineers to configure the device; it requires a deep set of knowledge to set up in a more complicated environment.
  • This will allow us to move forward with a more stable and configurable environment with security available we didn't have before.
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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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