Fortigate -great product, great price
December 28, 2015

Fortigate -great product, great price

Steve Jenovai | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Fortinet FortiGate

We use a variety of Fortigate models across our and our customer organizations. We use it as a firewall/security/VPN appliance and also as a high availability gateway at several locations. We needed to find a product that was quick to setup, easy to manage, and provided advanced security features. Netflow/S-flow are built into Foritgate, which met another one of our requirements for traffic monitoring. We also needed a company that had a product line that could tolerate environmental extremes in an industrial environment. Fortigate has such a product line.

The Fortigate GUI is intuitive and provides easy visibility into multiple network activities. When we are trouble-shooting for our customers, this interface has often proven invaluable in quickly getting to the heart of network or security issues.
  • Forigate's FortiOS is feature rich, giving good value for the money spent. The GUI is intuitive and makes configuration easy and fast.
  • Documentation is well written and easy to read. Diagrams and illustrations clearly illustrate principles and concepts, making it easier to make configuration decisions
  • The consistency of features and GUI across the product line has made Fortigate implementation very easy.
  • The form factor on the industrial units such as the 60D is not idea for DIN Rails, taking up more space than is needed. There needs to be an option for 24V power in the industrial units.
  • Configuration ease has allowed us to rapidly deploy installations, reducing implementation hours, and increasing project profitability
  • Customer service has been enhanced through the ability to rapidly troubleshoot through detailed information provided through the GUI
  • Pricepoint of the Fortigate product line has made it a high value product for us. We are able to deliver more features to our customers at lower prices, and with improved service levels.
Fortigate provides a more robust feature set than Sonicwall, and at a better price point than either Cisco or Sonicwall. Both Moxa and Cisco provide industrial DIN mounts, but Moxa lacked a data center product. Cisco has both industrial and data center products, but at a much higher price. Fortigate won out by providing good pricing, a consistent, feature rich OS across the product line, and by having offerings in both industrial and traditional IT.
Foritgate has products that are well suited for harsh industrial environments and can provide a secured peripheral network outside the conventional data center. Because of the ease of manageability, it allows us to easily manage and secure remote sites without the need to travel to locations that are often a challenge to get to.

Evaluating Fortinet FortiGate and Competitors

Yes - We replaced Dell Sonicwall with Fortigate. For a long while, the Sonicwall was the security appliance of choice for our customers, but the pricepoint, enhanced security and additional features of Fortigate gave it a clear edge. In addition, because Fortigate offered an industrial hardened unit, it made it a superior choice for our customer base.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Third-party Reviews
Of any of the listed factors, Usability was probably the most important factor. We needed a manufacturer that had a product line sufficient for our needs, that was easy to use and implement, and could survive the rigors of an industrial environment as well as conventional IT. Price was vey important too, but a low price without the usability that we needed wouldn't have worked.
I wouldn't change it. The switch to Fortigate was the result of a new evaluation and selection process. We listed our needs, the needs of our customers, and tried to list out what might be important over the next five years.

Fortinet FortiGate Implementation

Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version.
Change management was minimal - As always, clear communication of what changes are taking place, what the impact will be, and expected outage windows played a key role in successful deployment for our customers.
  • Most significant encountered issue was a few of the Fortigates had older versions of FortiOS. This version had some incompatibility issues that caused us to burn several hours until the version issue was discovered.

Fortinet FortiGate Support

Support staff is knowledgeable and answers questions quickly. I have not run into an issue to date that was not quickly resolved by the support staff.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
No - To this point, we have not needed premium support. The basic level of support has met all of our needs to date.
We have had to ask Fortinet for custom modifications to one of their industrial models. Foritnet went above and beyond in understanding our needs, and working on a satisfactory resolution that allowed us to deploy almost 100 fortigates for a customer.

Using Fortinet FortiGate

Ease of configuration, rich feature set and robust monitoring have made this product almost fun to use. I still consult the manual, but the intuitive design of the GUI makes most configuration tasks self explanatory. We deploy several different models, but the management is nearly identical across all of them, making it easy to keep on top of hundreds of devices
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Implementing redundant internet connections and a high availability gateway was astoundingly easy. Got it right the first time with only about 20 minutes of research and effort.
  • Firmware upgrades are almost effortless. Very easy to perform through the GUI.