We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"The security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"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."
"It can expand easily."
"It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"We use it to ensure that our network is properly protected from viruses and malware."
"All the security features that are built into the product are valuable."
"Initial setup was quite straightforward, as we can simply head to the required sections to apply the planned network."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM is purpose-built as a next-generation firewall, excelling in its performance of this specific function."
"The product is easy to implement."
"The setup is simple."
"Use of this product does not require daily interactions."
"Web filtering and the IPS functionality."
"I have found the DNS Watch feature for intrusion and prevention response and APT Locker most valuable to me."
"The throughput is great. It's perfect. We have no issues whatsoever. The management features are very powerful..."
"[A] valuable feature would be the branch office. We have five offices throughout the United States, and it coordinates the connections of those offices."
"This product offers great protection using the default settings."
"One of my favorite features is the Geolocation service, where you can actually block specific activity or IP addresses registered to certain countries. For example, I don't want any web traffic from Russia or North Korea. I may even lock down certain policies down to 'I only want U.S. IP addresses.' I find that very useful."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the FireWall features. The management side of WatchGuard is quite easy because it supports two ways to manage it - by the web and the other one they call WatchGuard systems manager. I used to be familiar with WSM only, but they improved their GUI in the web browser and now it is much easier to do it within the web browser."
"It has everything we need in terms of functionality."
"WatchGuard Firebox's two-factor authentication feature is particularly useful and provides an added layer of protection."
"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."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"There should be more options to use lower-end models in a high availability configuration."
"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 tech support calls were not the best and could be improved. There have been times when we felt as if we knew more about the device than the support person on the phone."
"It should have the SD-WAN feature. This would increase the number of features that are available in the box."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Technical support could be better."
"The technical support is not very responsive and is an area that needs to be improved."
"With FortiGate, we sometimes encounter bugs in various operating systems."
"Once you start getting into proxy actions and setting up: "Okay, cool. Once this rule gets triggered, what actions have to happen?" I do know a few people who use WatchGuard and they still have to get assistance when they look at that. So I would file that as a con for WatchGuard. Proxy actions can be a little bit complicated."
"Sometimes, the writing rules are a little confusing in how am I doing them."
"The pricing could be improved. It is definitely one of the more expensive products."
"One other shortcoming is that there is no backup for it. We really haven't figured out how we might solve that problem. We may want to put a duplicate in... With WatchGuard, we just have the one box. If that were to fail, we'd probably be really hurting."
"There is a slight learning curve."
"Sometimes I would like to copy a rule set from one box to another box in a direct way. This is a feature that is not present at the moment in WatchGuard."
"What could use some significant improvement in WatchGuard Firebox would be its interface and policy management. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of WatchGuard Firebox is the ability to modify an existing policy instead of having to recreate a policy when changes are necessary. At the moment, there's no possibility to modify the policy. You have to delete the policy and recreate it."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Netgate pfSense, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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