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.
"From my observations, Cisco has been rolling out new features every other day, so I would say their speed of innovation is one of the most valuable aspects for me."
"The solution sufficiently provides ISPs."
"Configuration interfaces are quite easy and intuitive. Being a part of the Cisco environment, Cisco SD-WAN is quite straightforward."
"The solution has great scalability."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"With other routing protocols, we have had to send team members to perform installations and configurations. There is a lot of work involved. However with SD-WAN, once it is installed it is fully automated, and we can do all other tasks remotely. We don't have to send staff out to the client's location. It's very independent, and we can establish SD-WAN connectivity easily. It is secure as well."
"It has a very good GUI."
"The regular net routing is a good feature."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"The security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"The solution is stable."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"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."
"The product's application delivery feature needs improvement."
"We have found that their SD-WAN has a lot of scope for improvement."
"The product should improve its prices."
"Since most user-data is going through the solution, we are concerned about security, as all the information is in the cloud and not on-premises. The user data authentification should be higher to better prevent malicious attacks."
"All of the configurations are based on templates, and we need to spend a lot of time doing the templates. It's good because that means that all of the configurations will be equal in the network. However, we need to spend a lot of time implementing the templates and doing the customizations."
"We had some issues with Cisco SD-WAN but somehow we troubleshot it and things are going well. The issues have not been a large problem."
"The initial setup is really complex."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"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."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
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.