Fortinet FortiGate vs. NetScaler ADC

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
NetScaler ADC
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
NetScaler ADC is an application delivery controller.N/A
Pricing
Fortinet FortiGateNetScaler ADC
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FortiGateNetScaler ADC
Free Trial
YesNo
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
Fortinet FortiGateNetScaler ADC
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Fortinet FortiGateNetScaler ADC
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Fortinet FortiGate
9.3
38 Ratings
9% above category average
NetScaler ADC
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies9.736 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools8.736 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection8.937 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls9.638 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP9.237 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console9.638 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging8.238 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN9.838 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability9.733 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection9.636 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server8.927 Ratings00 Ratings
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Fortinet FortiGateNetScaler ADC
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User Ratings
Fortinet FortiGateNetScaler ADC
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(65 ratings)
8.6
(21 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(6 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(26 ratings)
7.3
(4 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.8
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Fortinet FortiGateNetScaler ADC
Likelihood to Recommend
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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NetScaler
Citrix Netscaler can be a powerful network appliance for environments that are fully committed and open to utilizing a network appliance that isn't made by a traditional network vendor. Administrator user experience has improved over the years and will continue to improve with the flexibility of virtual and physical appliances available for medium and large enterprises.
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Pros
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
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NetScaler
  • Flexibility. NetScaler assumes its admins know a bit about networking and in-depth details surrounding the applications they are configuring access for/to. This being so, the range of configuration options is very broad allowing various versions' combinations of protocol patterns, expressions, rules etc., all to the benefit of the admin.
  • Granularity. Having such a broad range of configuration options available, while still allowing simple options to be configured simply. The GUI is well-stylized and navigation has a good flow.
  • Ease of control. For load-balancing of simple services right out of the box, NetScaler makes it pretty easy, compared to the range of options available in the surrounding GUI and under the hood.
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Cons
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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NetScaler
  • The documentation could use an overhaul with specific examples related to the command line as well as GUI. Explanations in the documentation would also be helpful.
  • Being able to have more than just one routing table would allow the ability to leverage security.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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NetScaler
No answers on this topic
Usability
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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NetScaler
Improve on the specifics I mentioned previously and could be a 10/10 product. It is also a confusingly branded product that I have supported in two large enterprises where IT departments are unsure if the product belongs to the Citrix remote access support team or the Network infrastructure support team (it should be the later) and typically under utilized.
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Reliability and Availability
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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NetScaler
No answers on this topic
Performance
Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
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NetScaler
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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NetScaler
Overall, our organization's experience with Citrix support is that support can be hit or miss. Oftentimes it takes multiple attempts and much longer than desirable to obtain a viable solution for issues experienced with their products. It would be great to see Citrix invest time, effort, and almighty dollars into improving their support and bug fix process across the board.
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In-Person Training
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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NetScaler
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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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NetScaler
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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NetScaler
We chose Citrix ADC over Kemp and F5 due to additional integrations with various products such as Citrix/Horizon/Monitoring tools. We additionally chose ADC due to better ease of use and ability to have the appliances be virtual or physical, with the configuration being a simple migration of code which provided flexibility to be able to do a hybrid environment with ease.
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Scalability
Fortinet
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
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NetScaler
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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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NetScaler
  • It has saved a tremendous amount of money and manpower by allowing for broad support without the need for a VPN.
  • The security functions within Netscaler enabled our business to pass additional IT-based audits.
  • Having a full Citrix stack from front to back makes our business look more professional both to our users and outsiders.
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