We performed a comparison between Fortinet Fortigate and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls 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 a slightly superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be one of the most expensive products on the market. Some also felt that the user interface and the documentation could be improved.
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"In my opinion, Palo Alto has consistently been one of the best firewalls for enterprise security."
"The solution does a great job of identifying malicious items and vulnerabilities with URL filtering."
"I typically get involved with it when it comes to audit and compliance and having to gather evidence of those firewalls, routers, and rule sets. The evidence that I typically need is there."
"I like that they are more stable than the previous ones, and they allow a lot of other features."
"Decryption is one of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' best features because we can decrypt by category. For instance, we can decrypt everything except for bank traffic so that we don't interfere with the passwords and two-factor authentication of those checking their bank accounts at work. We can still monitor for malware and other threats that come through a secure channel. It's seamless for users. The URL filtering and IPS are both great as well."
"I like the navigation of the general Panorama solution. I can easily navigate around and get to the thing I need. I'm not wasting time trying to find something."
"A feature introduced by Palo Alto with the version 10-OS is embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. Machine learning analyzes the network traffic and detects if there is any usual traffic coming from outside to inside. Because of Palo Alto, organizations detect around 91% of malicious attacks using machine learning. The machine learning helps customers by implementing firewalls in critical and air gap areas so there is no need to integrate with the cloud sandbox."
"We have found the SSL decryption within this solution to be great; you can enable this feature and have the ability to see more of what is happening across your network."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"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."
"The price could be more friendly, which would be good for Palo Alto and us. If the price were a little lower, then it would be a viable option for mid-level businesses, who may not be able to deploy at the current price point."
"I'm thinking about a new feature. They have decryption. It's a good idea to use decryption on Palo Alto. It would be good if they had offloading of the traffic, and if they could decrypt the traffic and offload it. Like, for example, ASM on our site. We have an SSL decryption to offload the traffic. We could use that on Palo Alto."
"Once in a while, they have new features being released that can be buggy. My criticism is more general to all sorts of network or security devices. In general, everybody is releasing less-tested software. Then, it usually ends up that the first few customers who get a new release need to end up troubleshooting it."
"This solution cannot be implemented on-premises; it's only a cloud solution. The price is high as well."
"They can improve the handling and management of User-ID. They should also improve its price. Their technical support can also be improved."
"The customer-facing side needs to be improved in terms of the engagement and involvement of support staff."
"The scalability compared to other products is not good. You need to change the box whenever you want your number of connection sessions to increase."
"As part of our internet filtering, we integrate heavily with Active Directory, and we use security groups to separate staff into two groups: those who should have full access to the internet and those who should have limited access. It may be just the way the topology is for our domain controllers and that infrastructure, but at peak usage, there seems to be a delay in reading back against the security group to find out what group the user is in."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. 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 NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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