Everyone's hyping Palo Alto as the gold standard and Check Point as the "enterprise safe bet." Fortinet gets dismissed as the cheap option. But are you really getting 2-3x the value?
For a 500-user shop, FortiGate's pricing is undeniably brutal to the others. The integrated switch and AP licenses in the FortiStack can cut your Aruba/Meraki costs. But you're buying into their ecosystem hard. The management feels clunky compared to Panorama or Check Point Maestro, and the security fabric is a lock-in play.
Where I'm skeptical: operational overhead. The feature parity looks good on a datasheet, but the day-to-day policy management and logging feels more convoluted. Support is a mixed bag. You're trading capex for potential opex headaches.
Is the Palo Alto premium justifiable for a team that isn't dedicated firewall gurus? Or is Check Point's stability worth its own complexity tax?
your mileage will vary