We performed a comparison between Fortinet Fortigate and Palo Alto Networks Wildfire 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, Fortinet Fortigate is the more popular solution because of its ease of deployment combined with its solid set of features, excellent service and support ratings, and the fact that it is more affordable than Palo Alto Networks Wildfire.
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"My primary use case for this solution is for a secure gateway."
"Stability is never a concern."
"With this product, we receive the best monitoring and reports."
"The solution is completely integrated with all the other Palo Alto products. I think that it is the best part for endpoint protection. The firewall features include URL and DNS filtering, threat protection, and antivirus."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten since we never faced any issues."
"Installing this product as a datacenter firewall for segregation and segmentation, and also configuring policies between zones has improved my organization."
"The reporting feature helps our performance."
"The scalability is acceptable."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"The GUI is better in 8.0, but I still feel it lacks the fast response most of us desire. Logs are much quicker."
"They can keep on doing more updates. As new malware and viruses are coming out, they can make sure that WildFire is up to date."
"I don't think it needs to improve anything, except maybe the speed to deploy the changes."
"Many years back an update caused an issue with the firewall. However, Palo Alto not only informed us of said issue, they also sent an update that fixed the issue before I even had time to log in to determine if the issue affected our services."
"The free version does not have real-time updates. It is slow."
"Other vendors have some sort of bandwidth management built into the firewall itself and Palo Alto is missing that."
"The price could be better."
"They should make their user interface a little more user-friendly."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 58 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is rated 8.4. 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 Palo Alto Networks WildFire writes "Good technical support and provides automatic analysis that saves us time in filtering email". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Meraki MX, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection, Fortinet FortiSandbox and Check Point SandBlast Network.
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FortiGate has a lot going for it and I consider it to be the best, most user-friendly firewall out there. What I like the most about it is that it has an attractive web dashboard with very easy navigation tabs; It can be managed and controlled using layer two wireless access points; When compared with other firewalls, building IPsec VPN and SSL VPN is much easier; I can configure virtual networks within the same firewall; And, configuration of NAT and static routes are straightforward. I would recommend it to any organization that needs to provide VPN access for their employees.
FortiGate also has many security functions, such as application control, web filtering, IPS, antivirus, etc., that help companies protect their users. The FortiGate solution also helps optimize traffic from user to application via the hybrid WAN environment. I think what I like most about this solution is that I can combine security functions and SD-WAN, which allows me to scan traffic flow but also to protect the local application server or the user.
For me, the downsides of FortiGate are that it happens to include many bugs, and sometimes it can be a challenge to block content from a website with web filtering since web pages contain websites that consume other resources. Moreover, mobile device administration is complicated, and it does not seem to adapt to smartphone or tablet screens very well.
While it isn’t my favorite, WildFire provides the ability to block threats as they travers your network infrastructure both in retro-time and real-time. WildFire also has zero-trust and actively works to inspect traffic for malicious capabilities by forwarding a file to the WildFire cloud, even in the case that it doesn’t recognize what the file is doing. The reason why WildFire is not my first choice is because I feel that it is lacking many features and that they could improve by adding more functionality. But there doesn’t seem like there is a way to either tune or tweak the solution. If implemented correctly, though, it can be a good, robust solution to achieving great endpoint security.
Conclusion:
In my opinion, FortiGate is better than Wildfire because FortiGate meets my business needs better and has more appealing feature updates and roadmaps as well as great technical support, all of which are important to me.
What type of network is? how many users?
Fortinet products are unique in that they have specific chips to work on hardware rather than overcharging a CPU to 90%, as happens with some Sophos boxes and others.
Things in the cloud... the cloud is a name, it is software running on someone else's computer system and could be only for you or multi-tenancy. Delays and other dramas may occur.
The question as I was invited to comment :| Which is better, does not tell anything, somehow.