We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Fortinet Fortigate VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Azure Firewall seems to be the more favorable choice. Fortinet Fortigate VM is more expensive; it includes fewer features; and its support team is less efficient. Users also have yet to see an ROI.
"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"I can easily configure it."
"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."
"Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"Its performance in fulfilling our requirements has been satisfactory."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"Azure Firewall should have a free trial version for new users so that they can evaluate it before deploying it."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"It is a cloud service, but the lending speed for each region is not always the same. For example, in China, the speed is slow. They need to think about how to make sure that the service pace or speed is always the same in all regions. It would be a great improvement if they can provide the same pace worldwide."
"The threat intelligence aspect of this particular firewall is not at par with other providers."
"Azure should be able to work better as a balancer also, instead of just being a firewall. It should have a wider mandate."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"Compared to some other products, the DLP is not at par for the moment."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Check Point NGFW, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
