We performed a comparison between Fortinet Fortigate and Cisco SD-WAN based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate seems to be the superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Cisco SD-WAN rather expensive to purchase, not as secure as it should be, and somewhat difficult to deploy.
"The product's brand recognition is one of the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"The most valuable features are manageability, scalability, and simplicity."
"Cisco SD-WAN is a stable solution."
"I have found the performance and the Zero-Touch provisioning helpful which makes it easier for us to develop."
"The first part that we like is that we can reuse certain hardware, which is a valuable asset. You can use hardware SKUs that already exist in the network. The second part that we like is the integration with the cloud and the measurement of the cloud's quality. These are the two values that this solution gives as compared to other implementations that we have seen."
"The cloud environment, including cloud security integration, is very valuable because of the many API integrations with the SD-WAN."
"The solution sufficiently provides ISPs."
"You can easily scale the product."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"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 most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"There should be more security features in the hybrid and on-premise deployments of Cisco SD-WAN. The cloud has most of the security features."
"We recently found some bugs."
"The technical support is a bit slow."
"An area for improvement lies in enhancing the integration with the security functions of the SD-WAN."
"The process of onboarding the vSmart, vBond, and vManage should be improved to make it easier to manage in general."
"The whole solution needs to be re-imagined. It's quite complex right now and really needs to be simplified to make it easier for those of us using it. It should offer more simplified management as well."
"In the next release, Cisco should focus on simplifying the configuration of SD-WAN. SD-WAN has a lot of room to grow."
"Cisco SD-WAN's clustering mechanism needs to be improved. If there are more than five milliseconds of latency time between installations of the VM manager, the cluster automatically breaks down."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
Cisco SD-WAN is ranked 1st in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 86 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 306 reviews. Cisco SD-WAN is rated 8.0, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco SD-WAN writes "A solution for integrating services to enhance up-time, performance and lower costs". 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 ". Cisco SD-WAN is most compared with Meraki SD-WAN, VMware SD-WAN, Juniper Session Smart Router, Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform and Cato SASE Cloud Platform, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and OPNsense. See our Cisco SD-WAN vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
See our list of best Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions vendors and best WAN Edge vendors.
We monitor all Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions 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.
