FortiGate vs NGINX | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.9 out of 10

Based on 243 reviews and ratings

Score 9.3 out of 10

Based on 92 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

FortiGate

NGINX

Identification Technologies

Visualization Tools

Content Inspection

Policy-based Controls

Active Directory and LDAP

Firewall Management Console

Reporting and Logging

VPN

High Availability

Stateful Inspection

Proxy Server

FortiGate

NGINX

IDE support

Security management

Administration and management

Application server performance

Installation

Open-source standards compliance

Pros

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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Amin Mirzakhani

Network Administrator

CalSpas - Lloyd's Material SupplyRecreational Facilities & Services, 501-1000 employees

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Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
Great at serving static content.
Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
Open-Source (no cost)!

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Gabriel Samaroo

Senior Software Engineer

RocketripComputer Software, 11-50 employees

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Cons

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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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 51-200 employees

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Being relatively newer than alternatives such as Apache, NGINX has room to mature in some areas
While very well supported by most OS and cloud vendors, NGINX still requires some additional setup configurations to get going, it is still viewed as a secondary (although better in many cases) option

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Engineering

Information Technology & Services Company, 1-10 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

FortiGate 9.9

Based on 4 answers

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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Adrian Cumberbatch

Manager, IT Operations

Cidel Bank & Trust IncFinancial Services, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

FortiGate 10.0

Based on 6 answers

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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IS Director

City of Hot SpringsGovernment Administration, 501-1000 employees

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NGINX 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Front end proxy and reverse proxy of Nginx is always useful. I always prefer to Nginx in overall usability when you have application server and database or multiple application servers and single database i.e. clustered application. Nginx provides really good features and flexibility which helps the system administrator in case of troubleshooting and also from the administration perspective. Also, Nginx doesn't delay any request because of internal performance issues.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Reliability and Availability

FortiGate 10.0

Based on 2 answers

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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Adrian Cumberbatch

Manager, IT Operations

Cidel Bank & Trust IncFinancial Services, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Performance

FortiGate 10.0

Based on 1 answer

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

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Supervisor IT Operations

Laureate International UniversitiesEducation Management, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

FortiGate 8.9

Based on 33 answers

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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Senior Security Supervisor

N11.comRetail, 201-500 employees

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NGINX 7.8

Based on 10 answers

I'm explicitly rating the open-source version of NGINX here. The open-source version has good documentation and useful examples. As one of the most web servers in the world, there is a wide range of tutorials and examples to learn from. This does have the drawback of potentially using older documentation, but NGINX has excellent default behavior, and the official documentation is easy to use. Their paid support seems excellent as well, though we haven't taken advantage of it yet.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Human Resources Company, 51-200 employees

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In-Person Training

FortiGate 10.0

Based on 1 answer

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

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Supervisor IT Operations

Laureate International UniversitiesEducation Management, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Implementation Rating

FortiGate 8.0

Based on 4 answers

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

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Systems Architect

Browns Hill Engineering and ControlsMechanical or Industrial Engineering, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

Fortinet was well placed on the Gartner report which lead to my initial investigation into the company. I quickly narrowed my selections down to Palo Alto and Fortinet, due to feature set, reputation and ease of use. Fortinet won out simply because Palo Alto did not offer a small branch style firewall at the time I was looking. I'm very glad they did. I have enjoyed working with their products from the moment they were first racked.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Hospitality Company, 501-1000 employees

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NetApp, f1, etc., [I've] used them all. I find using commodity hardware across diverse endpoints running software solutions is cheaper while being more available than individual hardware solutions. and I find Nginx to be the best proxy solution that can do everything we need.

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L Matthew Blancett

Senior DevOps Engineer

Conversant Inc. (formerly Dotomi)Marketing and Advertising, 5001-10,000 employees

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Scalability

FortiGate 9.8

Based on 2 answers

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

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Adrian Cumberbatch

Manager, IT Operations

Cidel Bank & Trust IncFinancial Services, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

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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Artur Bittencourt

Information Technology Manager

Corporation of the Township of EsquimaltGovernment Administration, 51-200 employees

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By using Nginx, we can host multiple web services on a single server, keeping our infrastructure costs lower.
Nginx maintains our HTTPS connections, allowing us to keep our promise to our customers that their data is safe in transit.
Due to Nginx's extremely low failure rate, our web addresses always return something meaningful, even when individual services go down. In sense, this means we are "always online" and allows us to maintain brand and support our customers even in the face of catastrophe.

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Senior Software Architect

Beneath The InkComputer Software, 1-10 employees

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Screenshots

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See All (3) NGINX Screenshots

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

Rating Summary

FortiGate

NGINX

FortiGate

NGINX

FortiGate

NGINX

FortiGate

NGINX

FortiGate

NGINX

FortiGate

NGINX

FortiGate

NGINX

FortiGate

NGINX

FortiGate

NGINX

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