$500+ per year for a Firewall

[David J Anderson]

Is it typical to pay over $500 USD a year for support on a firewall?

 

3 years ago, our church got a new firewall (Fortinet FortiGate 60E). The purchase price also included 3 years of support from the manufacturer to keep the firmware up to date. Now we're being asked to pay $550 a year or $1680 for a 3 years of support. I was not aware that firewalls are using a subscription model. 

 

Some context:

Our church runs ~350 a week.

We don't have any servers, NAS. Just typical consumer devices (phones, computers, smart TV's.) on a basic network with a main and guest Wifi and some VLAN's for our phone system.

Our IT is managed by a 3rd party (Powernet) who is sending us the bill to pay.

 

Is this a typical price or are there better alternatives I should look into? 
Thanks very much!

 

-David

[Lurick]

$500/year is on the cheap end for a firewall for maintenance and updates. This isn't just for updates it's for upkeep/hardware failures/etc. and support when those things go wrong.

[manikyath]

sounds like you just bought into a platform that's a bit above your scale.

 

once you get into business grade stuff the hardware cost compared to the support contracts get silly. i know of one firewall company (not gonna name them - no, you dont know them.) where the firewall hardware itself is basicly tossed in for free with a support contract... and that hardware isnt trivial, it's powerful stuff.

 

having that said.. if it all works, and you're happy with your IT partner, i'd just keep it as it is.

when it comes time to upgrade stuff, it might be worth mentioning you're looking for something more budget-friendly.

 

if you're not happy with your IT partner.. could test the waters, but take in mind that migrating to the setup of a different partner *will* cost enough that it'll take some years to pay off the cost difference.

 

all that said.. if that $550/yr includes (all) the firewall support the IT partner does for you, that's not too bad, a place i worked at charged around €80/mo for supporting 'critical network devices'.

[David J Anderson]

16 hours ago, manikyath said:

sounds like you just bought into a platform that's a bit above your scale.

 

once you get into business grade stuff the hardware cost compared to the support contracts get silly. i know of one firewall company (not gonna name them - no, you dont know them.) where the firewall hardware itself is basicly tossed in for free with a support contract... and that hardware isnt trivial, it's powerful stuff.

 

having that said.. if it all works, and you're happy with your IT partner, i'd just keep it as it is.

when it comes time to upgrade stuff, it might be worth mentioning you're looking for something more budget-friendly.

 

if you're not happy with your IT partner.. could test the waters, but take in mind that migrating to the setup of a different partner *will* cost enough that it'll take some years to pay off the cost difference.

 

all that said.. if that $550/yr includes (all) the firewall support the IT partner does for you, that's not too bad, a place i worked at charged around €80/mo for supporting 'critical network devices'.

Thanks for the insight! I wanted to hear from people in the industry who would be able to contextualize this. That's why forums like this are so great. I appreciate it!

[David J Anderson]

16 hours ago, Lurick said:

$500/year is on the cheap end for a firewall for maintenance and updates. This isn't just for updates it's for upkeep/hardware failures/etc. and support when those things go wrong.

Good to know. Thanks!