We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Fortinet Fortigate VM 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, Azure Firewall seems to be the more favorable choice. It is priced more fairly than Fortinet Fortigate VM; it includes more features; its survive and support ratings were much better than Fortinet’s; and PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to have a greater ROI.
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"It is easy for me to protect certain ports or even the IP addresses, as well as do whitelisting, blacklisting, and the FQDN when we want virtual machines connected and to protect certain websites."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"It's helped us improve our security posture."
"I can easily configure it."
"Great security and connectivity."
"It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature."
"One of the notable advantages of Azure Firewall is its user-friendly interface, which closely resembles or shares similarities with other Azure components."
"One top feature is the ability to use the appliance as a WLAN controller for up to 10 access points with the new 5.6 firmware."
"It provides an ease of management and configuration as well."
"The most valuable features are locking applications from in and out of my test network and testing malware on different devices. I use malware detection, antivirus, and basic firewall policies to check for different types of security breaches. The UI is really nice and easy to use."
"It's almost perfect. It's very stable. We don't have many hardware issues."
"High network throughput while providing leading edge network security technology for a competitive price."
"This product is affordable and it's a good, high-performance appliance."
"FortiGate-VM's firewall is excellent."
"In spite of the solution being inexpensive, it has everything one would need."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"We would like to see better pricing."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"Currently, it only supports IP addresses, so you have to be specific about the IPs that are in your environment."
"Azure has new versions including a premium firewall. But I would like to see them not put the premium features on Azure Firewall Premium alone because it is quite expensive."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"Azure Firewall should have a free trial version for new users so that they can evaluate it before deploying it."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"We face some issues with the IPsec connection during replication."
"Price-wise, it could be slightly better, however, if you compared it to other makes and models of equal category, it is generally cheaper."
"Web filtering is a feature that needs some improvement. There should be some additional features to allow active users to change their own passwords."
"We haven't attempted to scale the solution just yet. If we want to scale this solution we may have to look at other models. With certain requirements, we probably wouldn't be able to scale it so well as it is right now."
"The log settings and filters could use some improvement."
"New versions are complicated with a big configuration."
"It should have the SD-WAN feature. This would increase the number of features that are available in the box."
"Areas for improvement would be application control and web filtering."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". Azure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Check Point NGFW and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense, Cisco Secure Firewall and Netgate pfSense. See our Azure Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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