We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Steelhead based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two WAN Edge solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"Steelhead is stable, and it can even help you avoid service interruption in the event of a power outage. If your hardware fails, technical support will replace your device quickly."
"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."
"SteelHead works from the application. I use it to optimize traffic from Amazon. It is mainly used for customers who need to increase the traffic to 33K. For other users, it has been more of an operation."
"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."
"Scalable data referencing is a great feature."
"It is very easy to install the solution."
"TCP optimization... caches a particular TCP connection and the next time a user uses that connection he will reach the destination easily."
"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"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."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"Steelhead's handling of encrypted traffic could be improved because it requires some complex configuration to optimize encrypted traffic, especially when working with Microsoft protocols for mail servers and VPN services"
"They should include a network switch in a future release."
"One area for improvement is related to monitoring and visibility."
"Application response time and network performance could be improved."
"The product should offer more integration capabilities."
"I would like to see improvement in the solution’s configuration and protocol aspects. We have got some configurations that are not set. I would also like to simplify the call detection of some protocols."
"The application response time of the solution can be improved."
"The product needs improvement in its integration with SDN."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in WAN Edge with 306 reviews while Steelhead is ranked 15th in WAN Edge with 23 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Steelhead is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Steelhead writes "Exceptionally stable and reliable but costly". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Steelhead is most compared with Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform, Noction IRP, WAAS, Citrix SD-WAN and Cisco SD-WAN. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Steelhead report.
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