New FortiGate User Impressed With Hardware Appliances
March 24, 2025

New FortiGate User Impressed With Hardware Appliances

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Fortinet FortiGate

We recently purchased a pair of FortiGate 120G appliances to serve as highly available edge firewalls with next generation technology that we did not have before like web content filtering and zero trust remote access. The appliances replaced a pair of SonicWall devices that were old and lacking the same features. Along with the new FortiGate hardware we also got 3 years of licensing and support.

Pros

  • Technical support is physically located in the same city and country
  • Hardware seems to be robust
  • Pre-sales was very helpful right up to the point of purchase

Cons

  • 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
  • The web content filter is very much needed to cut down on users going to bad web sites
  • The VPN software might be better compared to SonicWall but we transitioned most staff away from using the VPN to conditional access for Office365 and InTune which reduced the burden on the FortiGate devices
  • The DNS and file filter will also cut down on bad websites and resources that staff may wonder into by not paying attention to what they are doing, which is everyday
For a network non-super-expert, the devices are a little too complex and some of the vocabulary on the devices and the user interface does not make sense so much use of the local technical support is needed. I do believe that once it is configured to pass traffic correctly, it will be of huge benefit to our organization
The FortiGate is a next generation firewall and has more features and more flexibility compared to the Sophos UTM devices and the older SonicWall devices. Technical support from Fortinet is far superior to SonicWall and Sophos.

Do you think Fortinet FortiGate delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Fortinet FortiGate's feature set?

Yes

Did Fortinet FortiGate live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Fortinet FortiGate go as expected?

No

Would you buy Fortinet FortiGate again?

Yes

FortiGate is well suited to medium sized organizations because it has the enterprise features at a lower cost compared to Palo Alto. Those enterprise features actually work where as on something like Sophos or SonicWall, they don't or are just not available. FortiGate may be too unreliable for very large organizations as I do not think the products are mature enough. Software development appears to be hit and miss at Fortinet.

FortiGate Feature Ratings

Firewall
7.7
Identification Technologies
8
Visualization Tools
8
Content Inspection
8
Policy-based Controls
8
Active Directory and LDAP
8
Firewall Management Console
5
Reporting and Logging
7
VPN
7
High Availability
9
Stateful Inspection
9
Proxy Server
8

Using Fortinet FortiGate

3 - IT staff and management
2 - Network or security professionals in an IT department or a generalist with support from the vendor.
  • Firewall to separate the trusted internal network from the external internet
  • Web content filter to prevent users from goofing off all day long
  • Does have the ability to do IDS/IPS
  • Better VPN client software
  • Allows us to use conditional access for Office365 apps and data
  • Has allowed us to retire VMware Horizon View
  • We could transition from our DarkTrace appliance to IDS/IPS on the FortiGate
  • We could implement ZTNA for all users
  • We could do more internal network segregation if needed
We are still a new customer at the start of a 3 year license and support contract

Evaluating Fortinet FortiGate and Competitors

Yes - SonicWall firewall appliances were replaced at 2 locations in our organization because the SonicWalls were lacking in features and the technical support was super bad and we needed the new features of a next generation firewall like the FortiGates
  • Cloud Solutions
  • Scalability
  • Ease of Use
The FortiGate appliances had the right set of features at an affordable cost.
We should have got 1 or 2 days worth of professional services which would have saved a bunch of time

Fortinet FortiGate Implementation

We should have got 1 or 2 days worth of professional services which would have saved a lot of time for setup
  • Implemented in-house
Yes - The different phases of implementation were grouped into how critical the functions were.
Change management was minimal
  • Confusing vocabulary in the FortiGate user interface
  • Video guides that do not show any of the basic setup tasks
  • Documentation that has little detail and is referencing much older versions of the software and hardware

Fortinet FortiGate Training

  • No Training
The learning curve was moderate due to some of the different vocabulary that Fortinet uses like virtual IPs instead of NAT, but figuring it out was mostly doable if you have had prior experience with similar equipment.

Configuring Fortinet FortiGate

Learning curve is moderate for folks that have prior experience with the hardware
Start slowly, don't rush, do one task at a time and document what is being configured so others can understand how the design works
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - Yes easy to customize the screens for when users go to blocked or malicious websites or services
No - we have not done any custom code
We were also able to add our company logos to a few things so that users can be more confident about error messages of communication that they have gone to a bad website or service.

Fortinet FortiGate Support

The support is local to city and country so I can understand what the support engineers are saying and gosh it actually sounds like they care about my needs as a customer. Outsourced support in India will always be a giant waste of time because it very clearly shows the vendor does not care about the support outcomes for its customers.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
I do not believe we paid for premium support, the level we did get is effective and providing good ROI
Most support cases have been handled well and been resolved. Everybody speaks normal English and appears to have good training on the products they are supporting. This should be the bare minimum but since most tech vendors do not provide adequate support, the minimum seems to be fantastic in comparison

Using Fortinet FortiGate

ProsCons
Like to use
Easy to use
Unnecessarily complex
Requires technical support
Inconsistent
Slow to learn
Lots to learn
  • Configuring the web content filter was easy
  • Making a support case is easier than other vendors
  • High availability was also easy to setup
  • NAT and some of the firewall rules are very differently designed to other firewalls
  • Site to site VPNs should be easy to setup with a wizard but not on the FortiGate
  • The logging functions appear to be a bit hidden which is not a good look

Fortinet FortiGate Reliability

Integrating Fortinet FortiGate

Integration was satisfactory but not entirely obvious. Some of the aspects of the integration process needed questions answered by support, which was ok because they gave the correct answers and knew the product so no harm no foul there.
  • Active Directory
  • InTune
  • Windows 11
We are getting identity information from local AD and O365 Entra so users onsite and offsite can authenticate properly. InTune also plays in for some of the software that client machines need to provide security and that authentication bit.
  • O365 Defender
It would be nice if the Fortinet Cloud EMS client could talk back and forth with Defender so that we can get a big picture of which users and user devices need attention.
  • Single Signon
Go slow and do one task at a time. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Relationship with Fortinet

Good pre-sales discussions and demonstrations. Yes a little pushy on the "let's do lunch" but everyone has a different level of tolerance for that. Generally no complaints about the pre-sales process and getting quotes and finally making the purchase. We understood what we needed and what was not needed at the purchase stage.
Technical support is local so that was certainly better than average with folks that know the product well and can communicate properly during a support session.
Terms were net 30 days
No changes needed to terms and conditions.
If the onsite technical folks have not delt with Fortinet or its hardware before, the option of using pro services is something to consider as it might reduce the amount of time it takes to put the hardware into production.

Upgrading Fortinet FortiGate

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