We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Steelhead based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two WAN Edge solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Good load balancing feature."
"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."
"The connectivity to speed is the valuable feature."
"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."
"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."
"Scalable data referencing is a great feature."
"SteelHead works from the application. I use it to optimize traffic from Amazon. It is mainly used for customers who need to increase the traffic to 33K. For other users, it has been more of an operation."
"TCP optimization... caches a particular TCP connection and the next time a user uses that connection he will reach the destination easily."
"It is very easy to install the solution."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"Steelhead's handling of encrypted traffic could be improved because it requires some complex configuration to optimize encrypted traffic, especially when working with Microsoft protocols for mail servers and VPN services"
"One area for improvement is related to monitoring and visibility."
"The solution needs to have alert notifications."
"Application response time and network performance could be improved."
"The product should offer more integration capabilities."
"If we load a primary firewall, the secondary firewall usually handles all the active connections, but in Riverbed, this isn't the case. We lose all the active connections at the moment of failure."
"The application response time of the solution can be improved."
"They should include a network switch in a future release."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in WAN Edge with 306 reviews while Steelhead is ranked 15th in WAN Edge with 22 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Steelhead is rated 8.2. 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 Steelhead writes "Exceptionally stable and reliable but costly". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and Check Point NGFW, whereas Steelhead is most compared with Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform, WAAS, Citrix SD-WAN, Noction IRP and Cisco SD-WAN. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Steelhead report.
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