Fortinet FortiGate vs. GFI KerioControl

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
GFI KerioControl
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Kerio Control is a next-gen firewall for SMBs, from Aurea SMB Solutions (formerly GFI Software).N/A
Pricing
Fortinet FortiGateGFI KerioControl
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FortiGateGFI KerioControl
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 FortiGateGFI KerioControl
Features
Fortinet FortiGateGFI KerioControl
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Fortinet FortiGate
8.7
51 Ratings
1% above category average
GFI KerioControl
8.6
1 Ratings
0% below category average
Identification Technologies8.949 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Visualization Tools8.249 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Content Inspection8.950 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.851 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.748 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.650 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Reporting and Logging8.151 Ratings7.01 Ratings
VPN9.150 Ratings9.01 Ratings
High Availability9.446 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Stateful Inspection9.349 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Proxy Server8.737 Ratings9.01 Ratings
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Fortinet FortiGateGFI KerioControl
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Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 9.6 out of 10
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Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.6 out of 10
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User Ratings
Fortinet FortiGateGFI KerioControl
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(78 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(19 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(27 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Fortinet FortiGateGFI KerioControl
Likelihood to Recommend
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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GFI Software
IT works very well in the non-profit and small business space when there is a need for remote access or connecting several sites in a point to point VPN, user management and rule creation are very easy. The use of the MyKerio website for remote management also makes it easy to troubleshoot problems and make changes if technical staff are not onsite.
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Pros
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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GFI Software
  • VPN for Remote Employees
  • Point to point VPNs
  • Scanning of traffic
  • Ease of management
  • Website filtering by both sites and key words
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Cons
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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GFI Software
  • Support can take longer to respond that it should
  • Could work better with resellers
  • Spend more effort on adding new features
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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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GFI Software
No answers on this topic
Usability
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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GFI Software
Very easy to use and manage, user training takes less then 10 minutes. Technicians can perform basic tasks with less then an hour of training and can master it in under a year.
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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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GFI Software
No answers on this topic
Performance
Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
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GFI Software
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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GFI Software
Support is very slow to respond and it takes a long time to convince level 1 techs that you need to be moved up to someone more senior. I believe support is outsourced and they are graded on how few tickets they need to escalate to higher tiers so they will try to figure out a solution even if it is detrimental to the overall support experience.
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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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GFI Software
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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GFI Software
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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GFI Software
We found Kerio Control to provide the most features and easiest management of all the solutions we looked at, while cost was not the lowest the value was by far the best when you considered all the factors, costs, and manhours involved in deployment and management.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Fortinet
No changes needed to terms and conditions.
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GFI Software
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Fortinet
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
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GFI Software
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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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GFI Software
  • Easy to use makes it easy to train, reducing employee time and IT staff costs.
  • Statefull inspection and web filtering greatly reduce malware incursions.
  • Fact it can run on standard PC hardware greatly reduces cost to implement and makes scaling much less expensive.
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