Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

Fortinet FortiGate

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	Score9 out of 10	N/A	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the core OS for the ASA suite. It provides firewall functionality, as well as integration with context-specific Cisco security modules. It is scaled for enterprise-level traffic and connections.	N/A
FortiGate	Score8.2 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 Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

FortiGate

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	FortiGate
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

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FortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.

Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	FortiGate
Considered Both Products	Cisco Verified User Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We specifically switched away from Cisco ASA in the last year. Much happier with the new product. The FortiGate firewalls have options up and down the line and they all work flawlessly together. We've got sites with large and small firewalls, all linked together. If you are … Incentivized Helpful? Jyrki Halonen Lead Service Architect, Connectivity in Information Technology at Tieto (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software For next generation firewall feature sets FortiGate is a bit better and gives better value for the investment. However in the whole Cisco environment I find Cisco ASA to work better when defining end to end use cases with some orchestrator. Over all we have found the place for … Incentivized Helpful? Sergei Chernooki Network and Project engineer, IT. Cisco Certified Trainer in Information Technology at Freelance (Computer Networking, 51-200 employees) Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Cisco does transport-layer inspections, NAT and VPN just great. CheckPoint is more expensive, gives greater network visibility compared to Cisco ASA, next-gen features work faster on CheckPoint (model-dependent). Management Centre for Cisco NGFW is a heavy virtual appliance … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Integration with Cisco Ecosystem, Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software integrates smoothly with other Cisco security products and networking solutions. We have already invested in Cisco networking equipment and infrastructure which is why we chose Cisco Adaptive … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Cisco has made it easy to buy, set up, and manage all of our firewalls with the central FirePower Management Center. All licensing is done via one license portal too. Tech support is standardized for all ASA devices and like support engineers who know the different models to … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software The ASA led the pack for our use case since we were familiar with it and the ASA (and ASAv) was able to integrated with our environment very easily. We were also able to apply MFA to the ASA with very little effort, further improving our posture. In comparison, other tools were … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software I am a CCNP and will always go with Cisco because they are more affordable than Palo Altos and yet they do the same job and easy to deploy. Incentivized Helpful? Mst Rahima Khatun Marketing Product Management in Information Technology at Clopsmith (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees) Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Configuration and management of Cisco's ASA are straightforward. We chose Cisco ASA for many reasons, as well as Cisco's threat response reports. We previously had issues with Sophos UTM due to its poor performance. We no longer have to be concerned about performance issues … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Cisco ASA is doing well, has [a] lot of documents available, [and easy] implementation, however, other vendors are also very easy to deploy. Cisco ASA has [a] great support team. Cisco ASA is truly [a] next-generation product. Now it is cloud-managed, along with zero-touch … Incentivized Helpful? Ankit Singh Network Administrator in Information Technology at GKC Management Services Pvt Ltd (Information Technology & Services, 201-500 employees) Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We were using pfSense before in our environment but we were facing continuous issues in configuration management & policy-based management. After the implementation of Cisco ASA, it has resolved both the previous problems & also provided us a reliable solution with High … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We have been using and deploying different vendor-based firewalls. Our main considerations for selection; use case, functionalities, and the price of the product. When there’s a Vpn or detailed routing scenarios Cisco ASA is the Incentivized Helpful? Steven Van Jaarsveld Security Engineer L3 in Professional Services at Dimension Data Middle East and Africa (Information Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software When comparing Cisco ASA to other vendors' products we needed to bear in mind that most other security vendors offer a next-gen Firewall solution while the ASA is still a legacy firewall. Based on this, Cisco ASA is by no means a loser here. Cisco ASA is an extremely capable … Incentivized Helpful? George Venianakis Director, Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) Platform, Global Engineering in Engineering at Speedcast (Telecommunications, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We feel familiar with Cisco products and the way Cisco is doing business. Incentivized Helpful? Carlos Daniel Casañas Bertolo ஃ Director in Information Technology at Leverage - Advisory & Consultancy (Computer & Network Security, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Above all, the robustness and quality of the components, the support and the rapid resolution of warranty issues. Cisco is a serious company and demonstrates this by making the processes with the client as easy as possible. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Cisco tried to build a new platform by bolting acquired and rebranded SourceFire as a next generation platform but really missed the boat. Cisco should be considered a networking company not security. Firewall technology is changing and Cisco needs to reevaluate their place in … Incentivized Helpful? Larry Chisholm Network Engineer in Information Technology at Würth Industries of North America (WINA) (Logistics and Supply Chain, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Cisco made sense from the standpoint that my engineers already knew it and there was little learning curve. Personally, I prefer a purpose-built hardware solution. Untangle is not ready for the enterprise as a whole but works great to do web/application filtering . … Incentivized Helpful? Brian Taylor Systems Engineer in Information Technology at Synectics for Management Decisions, Inc (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees) Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We evaluated other Cisco security devices and other vendors, but chose the Cisco ASA due to it's price point and compatibility. While Fortinet and Palo Alto are leaders in the field, we found that for the price, the features we needed were fully satisfied by the ASA. We … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Sonicwall firewall, Checkpoint SMB firewall, fortinet Incentivized Helpful?	Fortinet VINAY Mandora Sr Team Leader in Information Technology at Dish TV (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose FortiGate Cisco ASA is [a] good product but you can't say this is providing the security from every points. Lots of features are missing in Cisco ASA but Fortinet [FortiGate] is fully loaded and all the advanced features are available for secure your company. Incentivized Helpful? Vinit Sharma Network Administrator in Information Technology at Infosys (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose FortiGate We are previously using Cisco ASA in our environment & always concerned regarding security because ransomware attacks are increasing day by day. After implementing Fortinet FortiGate we are getting a bucket of security features at almost the same cost with the best technical … Incentivized Helpful? Basant Gupta Executive System Admin in Information Technology at MattsenKumar LLC (Information Technology & Services, 501-1000 employees) Chose FortiGate We have both devices Fortinet FortiGate and ASA with firepower services, but [the] main difference is price. The price is [less for] Fortinet FortiGate and we are getting the all features. Email filtering and DLP is extra features and very advanced which we will get only in … Incentivized Helpful? Amin Mirzakhani Network Administrator in Information Technology at CalSpas - Lloyd's Material Supply (Recreational Facilities & Services, 501-1000 employees) Chose FortiGate [Fortinet] Fortigate saved us with raising our availability a lot. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate Sonic wall as a firewall also gives us its main function as the Fortinet FortiGate. Sonic Wall is best suited when you want to use it to connect your cloud environment to your private on-premise network. But on reputation most vendors prefer or recommend Fortinet Fortigate if … Incentivized Helpful? Tony Dous Senior Network Security Engineer in Information Technology at Wadidegla (Sports, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose FortiGate ASA Firewall PaloAlto Sophos Incentivized Helpful? Andrew Meyer Sr Linux Engineer in Information Technology at Technical Support Group (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose FortiGate Fortinet code configuration is a little bit cleaner, it has sub-modules for different components. One of the nice things about Juniper and pitfalls is that you drop out to the FreeBSD command line if there are any issues. Fortinet and Cisco do not have that capability. … Incentivized Helpful? Michael Singh Network Engineer 3, Enterprise Managed Services in Information Technology at Comcast Business (Telecommunications, 10,001+ employees) Chose FortiGate FortiGates are more professional and offer a robust command line. Incentivized Helpful? Donny McIver Principal Owner; Senior Consultant in Information Technology at TechKnowligence (Computer & Network Security, 1-10 employees) Chose FortiGate Ongoing costs and licensing options - the FortiGate product line comes out a winner every time. We especially like the granularity and licensing options compared to something like Meraki that is mostly "all or nothing" or the SonicWall which is less granular and just not as … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate Feature to feature comparisons, Cisco and Fortinet are on par with each other. Both have great service and support. Both have robust security features that protect your network from various threats and exploits. Both have great logging and reporting capabilities. Both are high … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate FortiGates are cheaper than most alternatives (except solutions like pfSense, of course.). They are also very easy to configure and have affordable security subscription options. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate Fortinet beats Cisco ASA in all firewall categories in my opinion. Incentivized Helpful? Neil Johnson CIO (Chief Information Officer) in Information Technology at UK Flooring Direct Ltd. (Consumer Goods, 501-1000 employees) Chose FortiGate We selected Fortinet FortiGate because it was cheaper compared with another similar appliance. Also, FortiGate is very easy to install and administrate. They have very good resilience and provide very good support. There's good traffic inspection and notification. The VPN is … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate Fortinet was well placed on the Gartner report which lead to my initial investigation into the company. I quickly narrowed my selections down to Palo Alto and Fortinet, due to feature set, reputation and ease of use. Fortinet won out simply because Palo Alto did not offer a … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate FortiGate was more cost-effective and offered more functionality. FortiGate is much easier to use and manage. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate I feel that the Fortigate can do everything the Cisco ASA can do, at a lower cost and without specialized vendor training. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate The solution was selected by our parent company, but the idea of changing platforms is still daunting. Fortigate offers an ability to convert your ASA, Checkpoint, JunOS, etc. configs to Fortigate for a small cost. This product works like a champ and eliminated the reasons why … Incentivized Helpful? Derek Aldridge Information Technology Director in Information Technology at Ed Schmidt Automotive Group, Inc (Automotive, 51-200 employees) Chose FortiGate FortiGate has a strong offering at a very competitive price point. I like that with your subscription you get access to all of the pieces, and that features aren't arbitrarily turned off unless you buy a specific license or bundle. For what you get for the price, it's really … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate UTM comprehensive security is a plus. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose FortiGate The cost was comparable to the SonicWall we were looking at but feature wise, they are in a different league. The Fortigate offered far more next generation firewall features and they were bundled in with the license we chose. The interface is much easier to use and we spend … Incentivized Helpful? Fabrizio Volpe Senior Consultant in Information Technology at Modality Systems (Computer Software, 501-1000 employees) Chose FortiGate When you talk about firewalling, the competitors are the usual big names (Cisco and Check Point). Both of them are (in my opinion) more costly and more complex to manage. If we talk about other security threats, as I said, having one device able to do (almost) everything is a … Incentivized Helpful? Johannes Weber Security Consultant in Professional Services at TÜV Rheinland i-sec GmbH (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees) Chose FortiGate Compared to Palo Alto Networks' firewalls FortiGate has the better price while the worse security design. FortiGate is an all-in-one appliance with many many features that are not completely implemented. In contrast, Palo Alto firewalls have the better concept on how to … Incentivized Helpful? Adithyo Dewangga Wijaya Network Operations Manager in Information Technology at Indosat Singapore Pte Ltd (Indosat Ooredoo Singapore) (Telecommunications, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose FortiGate Fortigate reporting is significantly better than anything you'll pull from an ASA. Incentivized Helpful? Steve Jenovai Systems Architect in Information Technology at Browns Hill Engineering and Controls (Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, 51-200 employees) Chose FortiGate Fortigate provides a more robust feature set than Sonicwall, and at a better price point than either Cisco or Sonicwall. Both Moxa and Cisco provide industrial DIN mounts, but Moxa lacked a data center product. Cisco has both industrial and data center products, but at a much … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

TrustRadius Insights
	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	FortiGate
Highlights	Research Team Insight Published October 8, 2020 Cisco ASA and FortiGate are products that provide security for network applications, including firewall, SSL, web filtering and VPN. Both Cisco ASA and FortiGate are well liked among medium to enterprise sized businesses, but large established businesses tend to choose ASA, especially if their server environment is already Cisco. FortiGate is more popular among medium-sized businesses, which are more likely to be price sensitive. Features Cisco ASA and FortiGate provide many of the same services, but there are standout features of each. Cisco ASA is easy to deploy and works well in most environments. It adapts well to small and medium scale servers, especially servers that use Cisco products already. Users like the VPN for connecting remote users to the network or connecting one site to another, and businesses appreciate the web filtering component. The hardware is reliable, as is Cisco technical support. FortiGate is a newer up-and-comer to the world of network security. It handles traffic spikes and larger server loads with ease, and is more affordable than its comparable competitors. The interface is simple to use, and the firewall is easy to configure. Simplified pricing allows businesses to pay only for the services they use. Limitations Each of these firewall products has its own limitations that may affect which one potential customers will choose. Though many users appreciate Cisco ASA and its reliable system and support, it can become expensive for smaller businesses, especially when factoring in support contracts. The interface is clunky and can be difficult to use. ASA is not as fully-featured as an NGFW (it’s missing the reliable multi-WAN support FortiGate has), and several users reported switching to an NGFW for a more robust solution. The downside of FortiGate’s simplified pricing is that it affects scalability. If a user wants to increase server performance, they must buy additional products. Various versions of the software can be buggy, and frequent patches are released. While the user interface is good, the command line prompt can be confusing to use. Pricing FortiGate pricing is available by quote from Fortinet or 3rd party providers. ASA pricing can be found by contacting Cisco or a certified Cisco Partner.

Features

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

FortiGate

Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Fortinet FortiGate
Feature	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software 7.8 49 Ratings	Fortinet FortiGate 8.9 40 Ratings
Identification Technologies	6.532 Ratings	8.638 Ratings
Visualization Tools	6.530 Ratings	8.538 Ratings
Content Inspection	8.032 Ratings	9.439 Ratings
Policy-based Controls	9.045 Ratings	9.040 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP	7.547 Ratings	9.039 Ratings
Firewall Management Console	7.547 Ratings	8.640 Ratings
Reporting and Logging	5.948 Ratings	7.440 Ratings
VPN	9.048 Ratings	8.640 Ratings
High Availability	9.047 Ratings	9.535 Ratings
Stateful Inspection	9.046 Ratings	9.538 Ratings
Proxy Server	8.031 Ratings	10.028 Ratings

User Ratings
	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	FortiGate
Likelihood to Recommend	9.0 (87 ratings)	9.0 (67 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	7.1 (4 ratings)	9.9 (4 ratings)
Usability	- (0 ratings)	9.0 (8 ratings)
Availability	7.5 (2 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Performance	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (1 ratings)
Support Rating	8.7 (8 ratings)	8.6 (26 ratings)
In-Person Training	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (1 ratings)
Implementation Rating	8.0 (2 ratings)	8.0 (4 ratings)
Configurability	- (0 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)
Ease of integration	6.5 (2 ratings)	7.0 (1 ratings)
Product Scalability	- (0 ratings)	9.8 (2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	- (0 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software vs. Fortinet FortiGate

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

Fortinet FortiGate

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Research Team Insight
Published October 8, 2020

Features

Limitations

Pricing