Fortinet FortiGate vs. SonicWall VPN Clients

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

It is well suited in places or scenarios where a VPN client is needed to be used either by IT staff or other employees. SonicWall's VPN Clients are very similar to VPN clients of other companies. SonicWall VPN Clients are meant to be used with SonicWall firewalls.

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

• Exceptional security
• Relatively easy configuration

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

• Connections could be more stable
• Difficult to use for tech-challenged end-users

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

Does not have a renewal that we pay for by itself. It comes with our firewalls, which we are going to renew.

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

SonicWall VPN Clients work for the most part. The Global VPN client has had its issues over the years. Also, NetExtender VPN client has had its share of issues. It is nice that SonicWall VPN Clients has updated the GUI of the NetExtender client within the last year, which has made it easier for our users to use.

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

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.

Phone support has been very reliable and useful, but there have been times when better support documentation would have made that call unnecessary. I like to tackle problems internally if I can, as it tends to save time and usually money. The SonicWall VPN Clients system seems to be pretty locked down as far as being accessible to self-manage.

Incentivized

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

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

We started the process of vetting Norton VPN, but since it wasn't available from our preferred vendor, we ended up going with SonicWall VPN Clients by default.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• 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.

• ROI is difficult to determine because of the minimal initial cost; that said, now that we've experienced the benefits of having secure VPN access, we couldn't imagine not having it.
• Users have much greater flexibility now that specific legacy systems are accessible from places other than the office.

Incentivized