We performed a comparison between Fortinet Fortigate 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: Fortinet Fortigate is the winner in this comparison. According to reviews, it has better support than Fortinet Fortigate VM.
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"The solution can scale well."
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the integration within the environment, with centralized reporting."
"All the security features that are built into the product are valuable."
"It's very easy to set up, even for more junior developers."
"It handles our current load with ease, and I think it can handle a bit more. It definitely can handle a lot more capacity than we currently use."
"I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten."
"It gives all the features of a full-fledged firewall with great performance."
"The solution is very easy to set up. It doesn't take a lot of time and offers a quick deployment, so you can start using it almost right away."
"Its interface is good. It comes with a lot of features, and its performance is also very good."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"Application management can be improved."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"The GUI could be improved."
"Areas for improvement would be application control and web filtering."
"The log settings and filters could use some improvement."
"Data backup functionality could be included in the product."
"The tool does not have a good name in the market, consisting of enterprise-class businesses, making it an area where the product lacks and needs to improve."
"The key activation is very complicated at times."
"Customization needs improvement."
"The product needs to focus on cloud-nativeness and pricing."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4. 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 Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and SonicWall NSa, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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We monitor all Firewalls 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.
Purpose-built appliances offer tested performance measures and provide proven results for the specified traffic and service configuration.
VM can only provide vCPUs, RAM, and hard disk resources. However, in some cloud environments, you only have the VM option, no appliances accepted.
We have several Fortigate VM firewalls operating for 3 years now in the cloud and appliances in our centers that handle the traffic just fine. We have not had to increase the resources above the recommendations and they work just fine.
FortiGate VM
Virtual machines are less efficient than real machines because they access the hardware indirectly.
FortiGate Hardware
Fortigate appliance is purpose built with NPU and SPUs designed to increase throughput while maximizing the ability to decrypt packets in search of malware.
VM deployments are software only and do not include the NPU and SPUs.