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."This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"The security on offer is very good."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"The connectivity to speed is the valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."
"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."
"Steelhead is stable, and it can even help you avoid service interruption in the event of a power outage. If your hardware fails, technical support will replace your device quickly."
"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."
"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."
"TCP optimization... caches a particular TCP connection and the next time a user uses that connection he will reach the destination easily."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"The web-cache feature which was previously on the FortiGate device, but was deleted with the recent upgrade should be returned. It was a very valuable feature for us."
"NGN, reporting and controls."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"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."
"They should include a network switch in a future release."
"One area for improvement is related to monitoring and visibility."
"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"
"Application response time and network performance could be improved."
"The solution needs to have alert notifications."
"The application response time of the solution can be improved."
"The product should offer more integration capabilities."
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.
See our list of best WAN Edge vendors.
We monitor all WAN Edge 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.