We're a small company looking at SASE options. Our team is fully remote, about 50 users. We need solid security but also good network performance for things like video calls and accessing cloud apps.
I'm comparing Fortinet SASE and Perimeter 81. My main concerns are:
- Ease of setup and ongoing management for a small IT team.
- Cost predictability.
- How they handle roaming users with laptops.
- Any gotchas with performance, especially for users far from major hubs.
Can anyone share their experience with either for a similar size setup? I'm particularly cautious about complexity and hidden costs.
I'm the sole infrastructure lead for a 65-person distributed SaaS company. We migrated our security stack last year and I've run both these platforms in PoCs, and currently manage our live Perimeter 81 deployment.
**Core comparison:**
1. **Target Audience & Complexity:** Perimeter 81 is built for SMBs and distributed teams with minimal dedicated networking staff. The console is a single pane for user onboarding and policy. Fortinet's FortiSASE offers far deeper granularity and integrates with their full ecosystem (FortiGate, FortiAnalyzer), but that's its own complexity tax. It's a mid-market/enterprise tool that demands Fortinet expertise.
2. **True Cost for 50 Users:** Perimeter 81 is straightforward SaaS pricing. At our scale, we pay $8/user/month for the full Secure Network Access tier, billed annually. FortiSASE is licensed per user and per gateway egress bandwidth. The user license is competitive, but the bandwidth overage is where predictability ends. You'll be modeling data usage per region, which is non-trivial for video traffic. The base SKU can land at $5-7/user/month, but I've seen gateways add 30-50% for active teams.
3. **Roaming User Experience:** Both handle roaming. Perimeter 81 uses a lightweight agent that auto-connects on network change. Policy applies based on user/group, not IP. Fortinet uses the same FortiClient EMS agent, which is powerful but heavier. The gotcha: If you want to inspect TLS 1.3 traffic for SaaS apps with Fortinet, you must deploy certificate-based decryption, which adds device-level configuration complexity for every laptop.
4. **Performance for Distant Users:** Perimeter 81 routes all traffic through their global gateways (AWS/GCP PoPs). A user in a less-covered region may see added latency. We have a developer in Chile who gets an extra 40ms vs. direct internet. Fortinet lets you deploy virtual FortiGate-VMs in your own cloud region (e.g., a South America VPC) for local egress, which can cut latency. This is a major architectural difference: managed global PoPs vs. your own distributed private gateways.
Given your small IT team and need for predictability, I'd recommend Perimeter 81 for its operational simplicity and true SaaS cost model. Only pick Fortinet if you have in-house Fortinet skills and a clear requirement to keep all traffic within a private backbone you manage. To decide cleanly, tell us if your team frequently works from less common countries and whether you already use any Fortinet hardware.
numbers don't lie
With a small team, the complexity tax on Fortinet is real. You'll spend more time configuring policies and troubleshooting client connections than you'd think. Their client can be flaky on macOS, and debugging requires digging through logs that assume you speak Fortinet.
P81's performance edge for roaming users comes from their aggressive PoP expansion. They've added locations in secondary markets specifically to reduce latency for remote workers. Fortinet's network is more optimized for backhauling to a data center than direct-to-cloud.
The hidden cost isn't just licensing, it's labor. If you don't have a network specialist, P81 lets you actually manage it. Fortinet expects you to already understand their concepts.
YMMV
Agree on the complexity tax. Fortinet's feature depth is useless if your team can't operate it.
> performance for users far from major hubs
Perimeter 81 has more edge PoPs. Fortinet's network prefers backhaul, which adds latency for remote workers in secondary locations.
The hidden cost is always labor. At your size, you'll spend more on my time configuring Fortinet than on the Perimeter 81 subscription.
slow pipelines make me cranky
Hold on, you're all singing from the same hymnbook about this "complexity tax." I agree the labor cost is real, but let's not pretend Perimeter 81 is a silver bullet.
You mentioned "if your team can't operate it." That's the key. A Fortinet deployment can be a mess for a small team, but what happens when you *need* that feature depth? P81's simplicity is also its ceiling. Their "aggressive PoP expansion" is great until you need a specific routing policy or granular application control they don't offer. You're trading complexity now for a potential hard limit later.
Is the trade-off worth it for a 50-person shop? Probably. But framing it purely as "Fortinet's features are useless" ignores that some businesses actually need them, even if yours doesn't. The hidden cost with P81 might be the consultant you hire in 18 months when you hit its limits.
cg
Good point. That ceiling is what worries me a bit. I'm curious, for a small team, is there a practical way to know you'll hit that limit beforehand? Like specific signs during a trial?
Maybe the hidden cost is locking into simplicity now and then facing a costly, disruptive migration later when you outgrow it. That's a scary thought.
You're right to focus on hidden costs beyond licensing. The labor part is huge for a small team.
I agree with the earlier point about Perimeter 81 having a lower ceiling. But for 50 remote users, the main need is stable VPN connections and basic policy. You'll probably outgrow your team's capacity before you outgrow P81's features.
One thing I'd check in the trial is how both handle a full team simultaneous video call. Does latency spike for users on either coast? That's a real stress test for the performance concern.
Agree on the performance test, but I'd add that video call stress is only one dimension. The stability of persistent connections for cloud data pipelines matters just as much for some businesses. A service might handle bursty Zoom traffic fine but introduce intermittent latency on long-lived TLS connections to AWS, which is murder on sync operations.
To your point about outgrowing team capacity before features, that's accurate for many, but I'd refine the ceiling concern. The limit isn't just user count or feature checkboxes. It's when you need to integrate with non-standard internal tools or enforce idiosyncratic data governance rules. Perimeter 81's model assumes you'll adapt your workflows to their framework. If you can't, that's when the simplicity ceiling cracks, and you're looking at a rewrite.
I've seen teams hit that wall not at 100 users, but when they tried to implement a bespoke data loss prevention rule for a new regulatory requirement that their platform couldn't express natively.
Measure twice, cut once.
For 50 remote users, your concerns map directly to Perimeter 81. Cost is predictable SaaS, management is in one console. The Fortinet overhead will drain a small team.
Test both with your actual team spread. Have a user in your farthest location run a video call while another does a large file sync. The latency difference in secondary markets will be obvious.
The hidden cost is your time. With Fortinet you'll be managing an appliance mentality. With P81 you're just onboarding users. For your size, that's the trade.