We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Meraki MX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"The product offers very good security."
"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."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"In terms of the reporting, it's beautiful. It integrates with Azure monitoring and with Azure policies. That piece is a big help. You can set governing policies and you can use the application firewall, as well as the Azure Firewall, to enforce those policies."
"The solution can autoscale."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is the control over the network permissions and the network."
"I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference."
"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."
"Since it has an integrated dashboard for all the products, customers can get complete network analytics regarding what the user is doing, monitoring, and observing."
"It prevents us from being hacked and delivers information about who and where the attack came from."
"Deployment takes no more than one working day."
"They have very good technical support and I have relied heavily on them."
"It has a helpful feature for database troubleshooting issues."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"Site to Site VPN: The device can establish a VPN connection to multiple sites in a mesh environment in seconds, and without complex VPN knowledge."
"The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility."
"Its customer service could be better."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"FortiLink is the interface on the firewall that allows you to extend switch management across all of your switches in the network. The problem with it is that you can't use multiple interfaces unless you set them up in a lag. Only then you can run them. So, it forces you to use a core type of switch to propagate that management out to the rest of the switches, and then it is running the case at 200. It leaves you with 18 ports on the firewall because it is also a layer-three router that could also be used as a switch, but as soon as you do that, you can't really use them. They could do a little bit more clean up in the way the stacking interface works. Some use cases and the documentation on the FortiLink checking interface are a little outdated. I can find stuff on version 5 or more, but it is hard to find information on some of the newer firmware. The biggest thing I would like to see is some improvement in the switch management feature. I would like to be able to relegate some of the ports, which are on the firewall itself, to act as a switch to take advantage of those ports. Some of these firewalls have clarity ports on them. If I can use those, it would mean that I need to buy two less switches, which saves time. I get why they don't, but I would still like to see it because it would save a little bit of space in the server rack."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"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."
"It would be much easier if the on-premises, firewall rules, had some kind of export-import possibility in place, which is not the case right now."
"The solution should incorporate features similar to competitors like split tunneling."
"Azure has new versions including a premium firewall. But I would like to see them not put the premium features on Azure Firewall Premium alone because it is quite expensive."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"An Azure firewall is not a real firewall."
"The threat intelligence part could be better. I don't see why our customers have to get an additional solution with Azure Firewall. It would be great if they made it on par with Palo Alto."
"Expensive licensing and firewall stops immediately working if the license is not renewed at expiration date."
"FortiGate is cheaper than Meraki. Even the license renewal is less than Meraki."
"As far as what needs to be improved — nothing really comes to mind. It does what we need it to do."
"We had minor issues with Meraki MX. We had a couple of RMAs, so that could be an area for improvement, but in terms of how the RMAs went, the turnaround time and getting those back into redeployment were quick. Another area for improvement in Meraki MX is that when you're scaling for multiple locations, you need to use the same model, but the model you'd need is only available for a short time. The specific model you require could be out of stock, or Meraki isn't making that model anymore, so Meraki should improve that."
"The current lead time is longer for Meraki MX, and it needs to be improved."
"We could have more reporting options and the ability to send alarms to the administrator."
"From the improvement perspective, we need more monitoring capabilities. We want to have full-based access visibility, such as, what is happening when something is trying to reach and it is denying. We cannot see some parts of it. The integration of active directory with this product is not very fruitful. It has some bugs or lacks in the functionality of active directory integration. We are unable to identify where exactly and whether it has really applied our policy."
"They're very complacent and I find the rule set to be a little arcane."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 58 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Meraki MX is rated 8.2. 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 Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". 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 Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Zyxel Unified Security Gateway. See our Azure Firewall vs. Meraki MX report.
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