Licensing, lifecycle, management, jurisdiction, exploit record and MSP billing, from Fortinet's own documents and public records, each with its source.
| Topic | Fortinet — from their own documents | Zedmos |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing model | Hardware appliance plus an annual FortiGuard bundle per device (ATP, UTP or Enterprise), sold on 1-, 3- or 5-year terms.Sources: fortinet.com — Next-Generation Firewall | Software, licensed per firewall. It installs as a package on the OPNsense or pfSense CE box you already run, or from an image as ZedmOS on x86 hardware you own. |
| Price changes, 2026 | Appliance list prices raised by 5–20 % effective 2 March 2026, per the CFO on the Q4-2025 earnings call. Resellers report deal-registration discounts of 20–25 % shrinking to 10–15 % at renewal.Sources: Q4-2025 earnings call transcript · channelpulse.io | No hardware in the price. The licence is not tied to an appliance list, so a hardware price change does not propagate into a renewal. |
| Hardware lifecycle | End of support is 60 months after end of order. After that, firmware, FortiGuard updates, TAC and RMA stop. Several models reach that date in 2026.Sources: Fortinet product life cycle policy · FortiGate EOL timeline | The support period is the software's: at least five years from placing on the market (CRA Art. 13(8)), published, and independent of any box. The hardware is yours to keep or replace. |
| Management console | FortiManager as an appliance, a VM or FortiManager Cloud; multi-tenant administrative domains are an add-on. FortiGate Cloud is the SaaS option for smaller estates.Sources: fortinet.com — FortiManager | One console, multi-tenant from the first firewall. Run it as a container on your server under your domain, or use ours at console.zedmos.com, operated from Frankfurt. If it is unreachable, every firewall keeps enforcing. |
| Jurisdiction | A US-headquartered company. Its cloud management services are operated by entities within US jurisdiction; 18 U.S.C. § 2713 obliges such providers to disclose customer data regardless of where it is stored.Sources: 18 U.S.C. § 2713 · CJEU C-582/14 Breyer | A German company. A self-hosted console keeps firewall logs, personal data under the GDPR (CJEU C-582/14), in your own controllership. Our licence and threat-intelligence services run in Frankfurt. |
| Exploit record | 30 entries in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue (version 2026.09.11), 14 of them flagged for known ransomware use; 20 name FortiOS or FortiProxy. Seven were added in 2026 alone.Sources: CISA KEV — Fortinet · CISA alert, 28 Jan 2026 | 0 entries. Published, with our CRA class, an SBOM per release, the disclosure path and the support period, on a page that stays up whatever the number becomes. |
| MSP billing | FortiFlex for MSSPs: postpaid, billed monthly, available to MSSP partners only, with a minimum yearly consumption of 50,000 credits (one credit is USD 1.20 at list).Sources: FortiFlex MSSP brochure | MSP tier: multi-tenant, unlimited firewalls, billed monthly in arrears. Your brand on the console and on the box. |
| AI and data loss prevention | FortiAI and FortiDLP, delivered as cloud-assisted services within the Fortinet Security Fabric.Sources: fortinet.com — homepage | DLP and the AI gateway run on the box. 69 content detectors; prompts, uploads and files checked before they leave; the model that decides runs on your hardware. |
| What Fortinet has that Zedmos does not | Over 50 % of global firewall units shipped, a worldwide TAC, FortiGuard Labs, custom ASICs, a Leader position in Gartner's Magic Quadrant, and 700,000+ customers.Sources: fortinet.com — Next-Generation Firewall | None of those. A small German vendor with a published exploit record, a console you own, and a licence that does not care which box it runs on. |
Fortinet is the largest firewall vendor in the world by units shipped, and nothing on this page disputes that. The comparison is about how the two products are licensed, where they are managed from, under whose law, and what the public record says. Every claim on the left carries its source; if one is wrong, write to us and it will be corrected.
Checked: 2026-09-13
All product names, trademarks and logos named here are the property of their respective owners and are used solely for identification and objective comparison. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.
Zedmos is compared with Fortinet above on licensing, management, jurisdiction, exploit record and what each is delivered as. Zedmos is software on hardware you own, managed from a console you host yourself or use hosted from Frankfurt, licensed per firewall, from a German vendor under EU law, with zero entries in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue. The last row of the table is what Fortinet has that Zedmos does not.