Cisco Meraki MX vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Small office, small business, medium business even larger enterprise can work on Cisco Meraki MX if they can sacrifice some of the functionality that Cisco Meraki MX can not provide. To enhance security, I would advise combining with cloud delivered firewall.

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.

• The management is the best. I'm an old-fashioned networking guy, so I'm used to going to the site itself and connecting. For example, a console cable and start and start configuring. Now since the management is so easy on Meraki I can configure everything from the headquarters from where I sit in Israel and then just go to the site and connect and basically, it's plug and play. After I configure everything from my office in Israel, I can just go to the site for a few hours, and connect everything. Just the magic happens.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Map and floor plan area is clunky.
• The way you need to segment devices by network causes you to need to go to different dropdowns to see everything at a single site. They have improved this and now allow you to add firewall, switches and wireless to create a single site, but still a bit clunky.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

As we have it in place now, we will continue to keep it at our remote sites. Future expansion is something we are reviewing, and may well start with some of the larger switches as they seem to offer good performance and management at a reasonable price. Wireless is also something we're investing in and their devices are great for that.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The Cisco Meraki MX series is very easy to use. Setting up user VPN access, site to site VPN to tie multiple locations together and managing all your devices. You can even download the latest firmware and install without ever leaving the dashboard. Meraki is the very definition of easy to use

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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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Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.

Incentivized

I haven't ever had a bad experience with Meraki support. On the few occasions where I wasn't understanding the UI or needed some clarification about what a setting actually would do, I contacted them and they were very quickly able to provide help. Returns are simple and fast, too. We had to return a defective device one time and they shipped the replacement before we had even un-racked the one that was faulty. Unlike many other vendors, they didn't ask use to a do long list of scripted diagnostics, they just took my word for it that the device was broken and sent out a replacement immediately

Incentivized

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.

I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.

Incentivized

Good product and simple to use.

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Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version

Incentivized

Overall, for a new network admin or a non-IT person, the Cisco Meraki MX is much easier to configure for a single site than the Cisco ASA Firewalls. ASA can be quicker for those with a background in Cisco command line OS.

Incentivized

[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.

Incentivized

The Cisco Meraki MX is basically a good product, but not perfect. If you compare the Cisco Meraki MX with a Fortigate or Cisco Firepower, you quickly realize that this system can do less than the reference product. The Cisco Meraki MX can be used in small environments, but in large environments you have to check carefully whether it really makes sense to use it.

Incentivized

My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.

Incentivized

• VPN tunnel between locations has been up 99% of the time in the 7 years that I have used the Cisco Meraki MXs in my current position. That does not include ISP issues because, in my mind, that shouldn't dictate the performance of the Cisco Meraki MXs.
• Sometimes we get phishing emails with malicious links in them. We are able to block the URLs on our network using the Cisco Meraki MXs, and the appliance configuration sets in less than a minute. Blocking that link for anyone over VPN or on the LAN.
• The interface is really simple and configuration is a breeze, which makes deploying a new Cisco Meraki MX really fast and easy. Replacing an Cisco Meraki MX is even easier, Just remove the old and add the new and all the configuration stays for the new appliance to use. Saves so much time and money.
• The biggest thing is we have not had really any issues with any of our Cisco Meraki MXs going down in the past 7 years. The reliability with these devices are amazing.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized