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.
"The most valuable feature is the application-level routing."
"It is very stable with very good firmware."
"The solution has great scalability."
"The orchestration on the VPN connection between remote locations is a fantastic feature. I used it some time ago."
"I have found the performance and the Zero-Touch provisioning helpful which makes it easier for us to develop."
"The solution is good to use and easy to handle and manage from the centralized location or from the cloud."
"The first part that we like is that we can reuse certain hardware, which is a valuable asset. You can use hardware SKUs that already exist in the network. The second part that we like is the integration with the cloud and the measurement of the cloud's quality. These are the two values that this solution gives as compared to other implementations that we have seen."
"There have been no issues with stability."
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"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."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"The solution is stable."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"The SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"It would be better if it provided more visibility. At present, we can't troubleshoot in real time."
"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 licensing model needs to be improved."
"The user interface needs improvement. Users should be able to find various features faster without much tweaking."
"I would like to see features related to security compliance, including a view of compliance with standards. With this, I should be able to do an audit of my network with SDWAN."
"The initial setup is complex and can be improved."
"The main issue is that not in the technology, but it comes back comparison. When we do a comparison with other SD WAN solutions, they are priced better."
"The initial setup was not very straightforward, but it gets easier the more deployments you complete."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"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."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"Its filtering is sometimes too precise or strict. We sometimes have to bypass and authorize some of the sites, but they get blocked. We know that they are trusted sites, but they are blocked, and we don't know why."
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 Juniper SRX Series Firewall. 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.