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. It is priced more fairly than Fortinet Fortigate VM; it includes more features; its survive and support ratings were much better than Fortinet’s; and PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to have a greater ROI.
"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."
"The base firewall features are quite valuable to us."
"Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"The virtual firewall feature is the most valuable. We have around 1,500 firewalls. We did not buy individual hardware, and the virtual firewalls made sense because we don't have to keep on buying the hardware. FortiGate is easier to use as compared to Checkpoint devices. It is user friendly and has a good UI. You don't need much expertise to work on this firewall. You don't need to worry much about DCLA, commands, and things like that."
"The web filtering feature and the intrusion protection system are the most valuable. It is a resilient appliance. I never had an issue with it in terms of any security breaches."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is stable."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature."
"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats."
"Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive."
"The SIEM that Azure Firewall provides us is very robust."
"The ease of access and user-friendly setup is a valuable feature. Fortinet proves to be particularly straightforward to configure, offering simplicity without complexity. Moreover, visibility is easily attainable due to certain factors. Price, implementation, and budget considerations play a role. When it comes to Cisco implementation, the process tends to be more intricate, which many customers find unfavourable for their business needs."
"An enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured."
"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues at all while using the product."
"It's very easy to set up, even for more junior developers."
"FortiGate integrates well."
"The product is easy to implement."
"Web filtering and the IPS functionality."
"It's a very simple solution to manage."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"For large organizations, a third-party firewall would be an added advantage, because it would have more advanced features, things that are not in Azure Firewall."
"Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"Currently, it only supports IP addresses, so you have to be specific about the IPs that are in your environment."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM should improve its asset identification, wherein the device can identify assets on the network, like computers."
"The key activation is very complicated at times."
"The user interface (UI) and the performance of interface both need improvement."
"There should be more options to use lower-end models in a high availability configuration."
"Now they do have the ability to pop up a command line, which is nice, however, the fact that you can't do everything within the GUI is probably a problem."
"There should be integration with an active directory — with Microsoft."
"It would be better if it could provide you with options before completely blocking anything through the web filter. If you are doing a deep SSL inspection on the site if it says it's expired, it doesn't give you the option to continue at your own risk. I can't say that it's bad, but SSL internally isn't really a requirement. However, its security features can help. Right now, we have people going out and spending on purchasing the SSL certificates for internal sites."
"There is always room for improvement in any solutions, including Fortinet's FortiGate-VM. Although the solution claims to have a superior throughput compared to other OEMs, upon closer examination and comparison, there is potential for significant improvement in this area. In today's rapidly evolving technology world, it is important to continuously strive for enhancement and development, and I believe Fortinet can make significant strides in this direction for the FortiGate-VM."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM 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-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". Azure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Check Point NGFW and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense, Cisco Secure Firewall and Netgate pfSense. See our Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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