Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review It is a great fit for small to medium enterprises who are low on budget. The pricing is very competitive when compared with other major players like Palo Alto and the features match any NGFW Firewall in the market. However, in my opinion when it comes to massive performance requirements, I would say the Sophos SG Firewall Appliances lacks the sheer power that other devices in the market have.
Read full review 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 Read full review Sophos' support is actually pretty decent compared to Fortinet. We as a customer who uses both have first-hand experience in that. Sophos' way of support is much more hands-on. For instance, if you raise a ticket, they will contact you via chat, email, or phone in a timely manner and based on your SLA. Sophos antivirus can speak with your firewall natively so that when a threat happens it can be blocked on a network level. We had first-hand experience of this where there was a potential outbreak on the network but the machines were getting isolated and prevented the spreading of malware. Sophos comes with a whole suite of products like Intercept X, MDM, Antivirus, On-premise, and a virtual firewall. So they are like a one shop stop for all your security needs. We liked Sophos compared to our other firewall, which only had on-premise and virtual firewall boxes. Read full review 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. Read full review The user interface could use a refresh. It's been a few years. Not having the ability to use an Open VPN configuration is a little disappointing. Home license is too restrictive with only 50 IPs. Matthew James Junior Systems Administrator | POS Programming Specialist
Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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
Read full review Performance Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review The biggest selling point for sophos is their vendor support. Those guys put a smile on our faces. There are multiple ways you can contact their support like chat, or telephone or email. They are very responsive and they do have very knowledgable and patient support staff. We have raised tickets at all odd hours and they have been addressed correctly
Read full review In-Person Training I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.
Read full review Implementation Rating Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
Read full review Alternatives Considered [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.
Read full review Both are equally good when comparing the features,
FortiGate has a better dashboard while Sophos SG Firewall Appliances has good vpn texhniques.Overall price was better for Sophos SG Firewall Appliances,So we considered this for our Remote Branch Location .
Read full review Scalability My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
Read full review 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. Read full review Positive ROI due to the competitiveness of the product. Positive impact as the device is fully functional and easy to operate. Negative impact when it comes to log integration as it does not support industry logging standards. Read full review ScreenShots