We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiOS and WatchGuard Firebox 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."The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"It performs very well."
"In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable."
"It has a lot of scalability abilities which makes it easy to scale."
"I have found the most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiOS is the low maintenance."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiOS are the ability to block and make white and black lists. Additionally, the filtering of user access to websites is useful."
"The product is scalable and easily expands."
"This is a user friendly solution and offers comprehensive integrations."
"For ten to 12 years it has been quite secure."
"All networks are security-driven, we get throughputs and security. We feel that the people at Fortinet are easy to deal with from a support standpoint. If they need to jump in and help us, they're very willing to do that. Their email filtering, their data loss prevention, their intrusion prevention, type of products in the newest OSs has been outstanding."
"The technical support on offer has always been quite good."
"The most valuable feature for small and medium businesses is the support for various protocol proxies."
"The set up was quite straightforward and we handled it in-house. It took a few hours to deploy the product."
"From my experience with their customer service team, I would say that they seem quite knowledgeable and fairly quick to respond."
"Intrusion Prevention is my primary focus so that's what I find most useful. The why is straightforward: It's to prevent intrusion."
"I like that this product has very few issues."
"Regarding the reporting, I was in the Dimension server earlier today. It's very powerful. I like it. And the management features are easy to use. I like the fact that I can open up the System Manager client or I can just do it through the web if I'm making a quick change."
"WatchGuard Firebox is the most powerful firewall for Wi-Fi security."
"Firebox's best feature is the access portal."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"Application management can be improved."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."
"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."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"While it is a solid solution, there are some product limitations which exclude it from deployment in some situations."
"I want to see a better integration or a better integration with the endpoint protection or with EDR with the security life cycle."
"There is some room for improvement in the support."
"The reporting and monitoring could improve, they have a lot of limitations. The monitoring is not easy compared to the other firewall."
"FortiOS doesn't work well with all browsers. I think they need to do a better job of making it compatible with the various browsers that are out there."
"The reporting for this solution could be improved. It could also be more stable and offer better pricing."
"Fortinet FortiOS can improve the GUI and remove the command line interface. All the functionality should be available from the GUI. Day-to-day management can be tough for IT administrators. Additionally, the reporting is not very good."
"The additional features I would like to see included in the next release is better troubleshooting and reporting."
"The next release should have better software and configuration systems that can also be used on Linux."
"The only downside is that it is missing an API, that you can use to easily collect information from it."
"We use WatchGuard to manage our failover for internet. If a primary internet goes down, it does a failover to the secondary the internet. However, what it doesn't do so well is that if the primary internet has a lot of latency but it's not completely down, it doesn't do a failover to the backup in a timely manner."
"One area for improvement could be making the interface even more user-friendly."
"I haven’t dug deeply into the reporting features yet or if they are working well. However, I have generated several reports and there was too much unnecessary information, in comparison with the reporting features in the Sophos firewall. Sophos' reporting is more readable and easier to configure."
"The UI and web view aren't nice."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
"The drawbacks are just sometimes not having the technical information that we need in order to easily make connections with all of our Internet-based clients."
Fortinet FortiOS is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 73 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Fortinet FortiOS is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiOS writes "Provides effective filtering features, good stability but initial setup is moderately challenging". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Fortinet FortiOS is most compared with Fortinet FortiManager, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Fortinet FortiWeb and Darktrace, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX. See our Fortinet FortiOS vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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