Cisco Meraki SD-WAN vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN is a cloud-managed solution that simplifies and secures wide area networking across branch, campus, and remote locations. Built on Meraki’s dashboard, it delivers centralized visibility, automation, and traffic optimization without the complexity of traditional WAN deployments. The solution improves application performance by dynamically routing traffic based on real-time conditions, integrating advanced security, and providing seamless multicloud connectivity. With support…N/A
FortiGate
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
FortiNet FortiGate is a firewall option with high integrability. It offers a variety of deployment options and next-gen firewall capabilities, including integration with IaaS cloud platforms and public cloud environments.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Meraki SD-WANFortinet FortiGate
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Meraki SD-WANFortiGate
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Meraki SD-WANFortinet FortiGate
Features
Cisco Meraki SD-WANFortinet FortiGate
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
-
Ratings
Fortinet FortiGate
8.9
Ratings
3% above category average
Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
User Ratings
Cisco Meraki SD-WANFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.7
(0 ratings)
9.8
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Meraki SD-WANFortinet FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend
At our level, we had to optimize our 3 internet links (MPLS and LTE) with applications like O365, SAP, Microsoft CRM Dynamics and our collaborative work tools like Teams. We also had to ensure that both client workstations and servers could communicate with minimal latency with our Microsoft Intune infrastructure.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Pros
  • Give insights in ALL what is happening on the network
  • Trouble shoot in case of a problem
  • Once in the Meraki family, you can expand with for example Cisco Spaces / Thousandeyes / Umbrella, and all that within one dashboard
  • API possibilities are huge
Read full review
  • 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
Read full review
Cons
  • AutoVPN sites to site firewall rules needs to be improved
  • there is no logging or any insights which would be able to tell you what are the hit counts or actual usage for site to site firewall rules
  • SD-WAN plus license includes Smart breakout which has only few applications and those do not work properly, so it is quite useless
  • VPN exclusions (local internet breakout) for TCP/UDP type of traffic can not be specified with port ranges
  • VPN exclusions (local internet breakout) can be defined only for destinations, but not the sources. It is policy based routing which should support also Source definition
Read full review
  • 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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
We implemented Meraki in most of our organization sites, so we are always looking for ways of improving its usage, add more features and discover characteristics that we do not know we already have. As it is an easy to use tool and we are growing, hiring new employees, it is really simple to onboard the new joiners.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Usability
Its usable very well
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
Performance
No answers on this topic
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
Read full review
Support Rating
Fast and efficient. The only issue currently is that the support is only overseas support and not in South Africa, which causes delays in resolution for some cases. Escalating issues is quite simple and the opening of new cases from the dashboard is easy. I have never had a support issue that could not be resolved.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
We did a very stringent valuation a few years ago. And we evaluated probably about a dozen suppliers on paper that we evaluate just by capabilities. And, we of some other business criteria, and we whittled that down to a list of five. And out of those five, we brought four of those into our lab environment where we ran approximately 350 different test cases on, we really beat on it pretty heavily. And some of those other suppliers would've been companies like Fortinet Versa Networks Silver Peak, which is now owned by Hewlett Packard.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Scalability
Being a cloud-first solution, Meraki Dashboard will scale as needed without any effort for the client. The Meraki cloud will provision (upscale and downscale) the resources as you grow or shrink in size. You only have to physically install the MX on your site, all the management is one through the Internet via Meraki Dashboard. Worth noting that you can fully-configure the MX prior to the physical installation on site.
Read full review
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • It was mostly around logs. I mean I understand because the aim is to provide the simplified solution to the people as an end user, be it an IT manager or the oil team. So I understand where you don't have lots of tools assigned where you can actually take help from the track. But in terms of having that logging information, I think that's where it's been a bit of a kind of journey where struggling, we have been struggling there.
Read full review
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots