Softwr

Cybersecurity · head to head

Fortinet FortiGate vs Hookdeck

Fortinet FortiGate logo

Fortinet FortiGate

Cybersecurity

Next-generation firewall with AI-powered threat protection

From
$500/year
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Hookdeck has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Fortinet FortiGate security services are sold as separate FortiGuard subscription bundles, so ATP, UTP and ENT determine which protections are actually active; Hookdeck pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • They diverge on capability: Fortinet FortiGate covers Next-generation firewall, Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Fortinet FortiGate and Hookdeck actually diverge.

Attributes where Fortinet FortiGate and Hookdeck differ
AttributeFortinet FortiGateHookdeck
Starting price$500/yearFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionPer month by delivered event count
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsHardware, Virtual, CloudWeb, Linux, macOS, Windows
CategoryCybersecurityDeveloper Tools
Founded2000Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Fortinet FortiGate

  • Next-generation firewall
  • Intrusion prevention
  • SSL/TLS inspection
  • Application control
  • Web filtering
  • SD-WAN
  • Zero-trust network access
  • AI-powered threat detection

Only in Hookdeck

  • Ingest and persist
  • Automatic retries
  • Filters and fan-out
  • Transformations
  • Local development CLI
  • Rate limiting

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Fortinet FortiGate

  • Next-generation firewalling at data centre, campus and branch scalenot Hookdeck
  • Secure SD-WAN across distributed sitesnot Hookdeck
  • Zero trust network access to internal applicationsnot Hookdeck
  • Virtual firewalls in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Oraclenot Hookdeck
  • Ruggedised deployments in industrial environmentsnot Hookdeck

Hookdeck

  • A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Fortinet FortiGate
  • Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Fortinet FortiGate
  • Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Fortinet FortiGate
  • Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Fortinet FortiGate

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Fortinet FortiGate

  • Security services are sold as separate FortiGuard subscription bundles, so ATP, UTP and ENT determine which protections are actually active
  • Throughput is tied to the appliance model, from 500 Mbps on the FortiGate 30G to 520 Gbps on the 7121F, so capacity planning is a hardware purchase
  • Pricing is not published and goes through partners

Hookdeck

  • Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone.
  • It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once.
  • The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead.
  • For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate.

Pricing, plan by plan

Fortinet FortiGate

$500/year
  • FortiGate Entry$500/year
    • Basic firewall
    • VPN support
    • Threat protection
  • FortiGate Enterprise$2500/year
    • Advanced threat protection
    • SSL inspection
    • Application control
  • FortiGate Ultimate$10000/year
    • All Enterprise features
    • Zero-trust access
    • AI-powered analytics

Hookdeck

Free
  • DeveloperFree
    • Up to ten thousand events per month
    • Three-day retention
    • One user
  • Team$39/month
    • Ten thousand events included
    • Unlimited users
    • Pay as you go metering above the included events
  • Growth$499/month
    • Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
    • Thirty-day retention
    • Uptime and latency SLAs
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated event volume
    • Custom retention
    • Dedicated support

Which should you pick?

Choose Fortinet FortiGate if

  • You need next-generation firewall.
  • You work on Hardware, Virtual, Cloud.
  • You also want intrusion prevention.
Fortinet FortiGate review

Choose Hookdeck if

  • You need ingest and persist.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want automatic retries.
Hookdeck review

Questions people ask

Is Fortinet FortiGate or Hookdeck better?
Neither clearly leads. Fortinet FortiGate starts at $500/year and Hookdeck at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Fortinet FortiGate or Hookdeck?
Hookdeck has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $500/year for Fortinet FortiGate and Free for Hookdeck.
Does Fortinet FortiGate or Hookdeck run on more platforms?
Fortinet FortiGate runs on Hardware, Virtual, Cloud. Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Hookdeck for free?
Yes. Hookdeck has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Fortinet FortiGate starts at $500/year.
What is Fortinet FortiGate best used for?
Fortinet FortiGate is most often used for next-generation firewalling at data centre, campus and branch scale, secure sd-wan across distributed sites, zero trust network access to internal applications, virtual firewalls in aws, azure, google cloud and oracle. Of those, next-generation firewalling at data centre, campus and branch scale and secure sd-wan across distributed sites are not what Hookdeck is typically brought in for.
What can Fortinet FortiGate do that Hookdeck cannot?
Fortinet FortiGate covers Next-generation firewall, Intrusion prevention, SSL/TLS inspection, Application control. Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Fortinet FortiGate: What are the FortiGate security bundle options?

Fortinet offers three FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services bundles: ENT Bundle (ultimate security for networks, web, file, SaaS, data, and devices), UTP Bundle (advanced web and network protection), and ATP Bundle (protection against network intrusions and malware with IPS, antivirus, and application control).

Source
Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.

Fortinet FortiGate: How do I get pricing for FortiGate?

Pricing is not published on the product page. To obtain a quote, you can request a free product demo or connect with a security expert through the contact options on the site.

Source
Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.

Fortinet FortiGate: Is there a free trial for FortiGate?

The product page does not mention a free trial. However, Fortinet offers a free product demo that allows you to evaluate the solution before committing to a purchase.

Source
Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.

Share

Related pages

More on Fortinet FortiGate

More on Hookdeck

Keep looking

Other head to heads