Fortinet FortiGate vs. Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series

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
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
The VM-Series is a virtualized form of Palo Alto next-generation firewall that can be deployed in a range of cloud environments. The VM-Series natively analyzes all traffic in a single pass to determine the application identity, the content within, and the user identity.N/A
Pricing
Fortinet FortiGatePalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FortiGatePalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
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 FortiGatePalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Considered Both Products
FortiGate
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
Fortigate is cheaper than other vendors and includes basically the same features. The performance is very good and the configuration is really very easy, you don´t need a lot of training to understand the configuration. The VPN connection works very well and the application …
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
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 …
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
FortiGate has a strong offering at a very competitive price point. I like that with your subscription you get access to all of the pieces, and that features aren't arbitrarily turned off unless you buy a specific license or bundle. For what you get for the price, it's really …
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
Fortigate is a lot easier to configure and manage than a Cisco ASA Firewall. Fortinet feels a lot more intuitive and easier to configure than Cisco. Fortinet is a lot more innovative and have easier to use products.
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Chose Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
palo alto firewalls are application-oriented systems. They can beat other product which are based on layer 3/4 inspection. Vm series are also quickly available and could be useful in urgent deployment needs . other vendors like Fortinet and cisco could take much more time to …
Chose Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
The above firewalls are great but the Palo Alto is the king. The Palo Alto does everything from layer 3 to layer 7. It gives visibility to the network, unlike other firewalls. When configured properly it will monitor and report on each and every packet that enters and leaves …
Chose Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto VM series firewalls were the only product available on public cloud. As of today, Fortinet has also hosted its VM series firewalls on the public cloud. Palo Alto's seamless integration with our existing environment gave us the edge.
Chose Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
We did a shootout between the SonicWall / Fortinet / Barracuda / Cisco ASA + Firepower / Palo Alto, both hardware and (when applicable) VM appliances.

The Barracuda / Sonicwall / Fortinet technology is interesting, but nowhere near as robust as the PA technology. Using the …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Fortinet FortiGatePalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Fortinet FortiGate
9.1
40 Ratings
8% above category average
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
9.5
6 Ratings
12% above category average
Identification Technologies9.038 Ratings9.76 Ratings
Visualization Tools8.738 Ratings9.56 Ratings
Content Inspection9.339 Ratings10.06 Ratings
Policy-based Controls9.340 Ratings9.56 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP9.039 Ratings9.56 Ratings
Firewall Management Console9.040 Ratings9.46 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.740 Ratings9.36 Ratings
VPN9.040 Ratings9.26 Ratings
High Availability9.735 Ratings8.85 Ratings
Stateful Inspection9.638 Ratings10.06 Ratings
Proxy Server9.928 Ratings9.44 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Fortinet FortiGatePalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Small Businesses
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.6 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.6 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Fortinet FortiGatePalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(67 ratings)
9.5
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(26 ratings)
10.0
(1 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 FortiGatePalo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
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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Palo Alto Networks
PaloAlto VM-200 is a virtualized firewall with high processing power and network edge protection. The great advantage is being able to implement in a VMware environment without worrying about hardware, rack space, physical network connections and others. It can be easily managed via the web and remotely to create protection, access and reporting rules. The VM-200 firewall can be used by any company, small or large because it has several models available according to the real needs of each one.
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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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Palo Alto Networks
  • Decrypt internet traffic
  • daily reporting of top internet users
  • classify internet traffic in real-time to allow us to understand the organization needs.
  • Strong AI capabilities
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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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Palo Alto Networks
  • High Availability can be improved to allow active-active deployment
  • All command line documentation to provide and support automation
  • It will be nice to have link aggregation just like in the hardware firewall models.
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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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Palo Alto Networks
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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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
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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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Performance
Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
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Palo Alto Networks
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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Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto VM series are best selling and industry's top-selling security product which customers prefer while securing their public cloud environment
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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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Palo Alto Networks
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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Palo Alto Networks
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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Palo Alto Networks
palo alto firewalls are application-oriented systems. They can beat other product which are based on layer 3/4 inspection. Vm series are also quickly available and could be useful in urgent deployment needs . other vendors like Fortinet and cisco could take much more time to provide the VM and in some cases installation and license validation are complicated
Read full review
Scalability
Fortinet
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
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Palo Alto Networks
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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Palo Alto Networks
  • ROI has been achieved quickly through lack of security incidents.
  • Inline filtering happens at line rate, unline Sourcefire from Cisco.
  • Great incentives from PAN to switch made a difference in the choice to change.
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