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 pricing is great and very reasonable."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"The technical support is great."
"The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network."
"Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform."
"Azure Firewall's feature that I have found most valuable is its scalability."
"Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive."
"The solution is stable."
"Great security and connectivity."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its ability to deploy it on live physical hardware. Specifically, when providing firewall services for clients, we can leverage such hardware appliances to support multiple customers on the same hardware."
"It is very versatile."
"An enhanced security solution for any kind of alert that we have configured."
"The product can scale."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very easy to create the user of VPN, allowing them to use it quickly. Additionally, the integration and interface are good."
"FortiGate is a nice and very good product."
"Technical support has been super responsive and dedicated to getting any challenges resolved."
"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"Backup can be improved."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"Compatibility and integration with other products or vendors such as Cisco SD-WAN products need improvement."
"It is difficult to size the VM in terms of machine resources, and for this reason, clients prefer the appliance."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM should improve its asset identification, wherein the device can identify assets on the network, like computers."
"It would be useful to have integration with different reporting tools. This is something we are sorely missing. It would be a plus to have reporting integrations. It would be good to have more integration with the identity suites, such as Office 365 and Azure Active Directory, of different providers that we use. Integrations are already available, but it would be nice to have some more advanced options."
"The one thing that could be improved is the integration with the exchange. The gateway level controls can be enhanced a bit more. For example, it's still little here and there. You do get malicious attacks and suspicious emails like spam. It's not like Sophos where we got a lot of spam email, and yet, it's still relatively vulnerable. It can be upgraded, maybe with a fifth-generation firmware that it is ready for unknown threats."
"VM should be more optimized."
"We'd like to have more customization and easier customization of policies."
"Improvements are needed for the responsive UI and JIT traffic reporting."
Azure Firewall is ranked 16th 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, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Check Point NGFW and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense, Netgate pfSense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Azure Firewall 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.
