Cisco Meraki Go vs. Fortinet FortiGate

One of the better times Meraki Go has proven useful was when the Fresno Grizzlies have baseball games, and many people come to our brewery to watch it on our televisions or stream it on their phones. The quick internet service allows us to attract more patrons and also improves their day. Half of the time, people are coming into our bar just to use the internet and end up buying a few drinks! The business had shot up thanks to our switch from when the pandemic started in 2020.

We reviewed many different vendors product offerings, we found the Fortinet FortiGate to best fit our needs. We upgraded from a previous firewall, the migration was a fairly easy process. We were also able to consolidate multiple firewalls into one unit using vdoms. It's been helpful to have one pain of glass, one support contract and easy to work with support. These firewalls are feature rich which is great, but the support contracts are expensive.

Incentivized

• Cheap and fast hotspot supporting multiple simultaneous clients.
• Guest control through a Captive portal.
• They work with the 802.11ac Wave 2 protocol.
• They direct the WiFi signal directly to the client that is accessing the internet and increase the quality of the signal.
• Managed in the cloud and accessed via the web

Incentivized

• It is the most reliable NGFW that we have ever been touch with it.
• You can easily upgrade the firewall cluster firmware without user attention!!!
• User IDentity based feature is fantastic and intrusion prevention just works with least false-positive possible.
• Very reachfull and intuitive GUI, just love it

Incentivized

• For big companies, use cases may be limited.
• When distance is increased, there may be a slight glitch in connectivity
• Can be a quite expensive for a growing business

Incentivized

• When we switched to Fortinet Fortigate, it took some time getting used to and become familiar with the new interface. Being used to strictly command-line interfaces, a full GUI-based firewall was something brand new. Careful planning had to be done when creating rules to ensure we didn't miss anything. However, once we got used to the new GUI interface, going from one Fortinet product to another was simple, as Fortinet used the same interface for all of its devices.

Incentivized

It's just as easy to use as Meraki but a perfect fit for home and SMB. It's a no-brainer.

Incentivized

Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.

Incentivized

The user interface shared among many simultaneous users is very easy to get around. With shared favorites among users, most tasks are easily bookmarked and can quickly be found and edited. Their strategy for web filter integration is easy to understand and manage as well. With some general direction, setup and maintenance were easy to do and easy to teach others in the organization to do as well.

Incentivized

We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years

Incentivized

Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.

Incentivized

It's good, it can be better, but it's good. We had problems with Outlook 365 disconnecting and their support wasn't able to help us. We spent a few hours on the phone and finally, one of our NOC guys decided to change the MTU. I'm sure their support is good, I just think that this time we didn't find the right person.

Incentivized

We live in Turkey. Fortinet's Turkey office [dealt] constantly with us in our every problem or our experience. In addition, global support teams also supported every ticket we opened in every problem we encountered. They support innovative approaches and evaluate and offer solutions. In this context, they were very supportive of the problems we encountered in previous versions.

I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.

Incentivized

Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version

Incentivized

I would use Cisco Meraki Go for small business needs. I would rather use the full Cisco Meraki system for anything more than five people. Cisco Meraki Go is cheaper but regular Meraki is far more robust.

Incentivized

One of the biggest advantages over competitors that Fortinet FortiGate leverages well is its remote virtual private networks options. Licensing is included with Fortinet FortiGate units at no extra cost. We find that the telemetry is easier to compile and most importantly communicate with non technical members of staff. The Fortinet FortiGate unit is also extremely stable for long periods of time without showing signs of needing a reboot.

Incentivized

The ease of deployment can be moved from one site to another easily. There is no need for any source or managing controller and hence it can be easily moved with the same configuration. This type of solution is best for teams who work together and are on the move from one location to another and who rely on high performance and good security for their wifi network.

Incentivized

My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.

Incentivized

• Meraki has improved our business and our sales by a lot.
• Customers are always happy to enter our brewery and have a drink, even more, when their internet works to near perfection.
• I even catch myself watching an episode or two on netflix during my lunch break, considering the internet can support my 4k streaming.

• SD-WAN : Can't stress it further that we are very happy with this functionality and outcomes in the org. We have multiple WAN and MPLS links and traffic switching becomes an important in order to utilize the best performing line.
• QoS : We use QoS for almost all internet traffic, be it Web browsing by users, IOT segment, Application based traffic policy and VIP and normal user based bandwidth allocation.
• SSL and IPSec VPN, both features are fully used to it absolute capacity. IPSec tunnels with multiple sister companies across globe.