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FortiGate and UniFi or Meter for a small office and lab?

November 15, 2026 4 answers
Asked by 9n!fuseclip_241

We're setting up networking for a roughly 20-person office and lab with inherited cabling, but no firewall, switches, or access points. We need VLANs for instrument PCs and central logging for SOC 2. Microscopes write multiple TB per day to a NAS over a separate 10G fabric, while NAS backups go out over a 1G WAN connection.

I'm comparing a FortiGate 70G with UniFi switches and APs, estimated at $4,500 to $5,000 in hardware, against Meter at about $1,000 per month plus the circuit on a three-year term. I won't be the long-term admin. How much ongoing work should I expect, and what should I compare?

Hardware small office networking Fortigate Unifi network management

Answers

3q~hinge_846

Choose the support arrangement before you settle on the hardware. A good managed service provider can design the network, supply the gear, monitor it, and handle changes and break-fix. Some will prefer their own stack, so ask before buying a FortiGate and UniFi setup for someone else to maintain.

Get a few quotes that separate setup, monitoring, updates, incident response, and any minimum contract charges. Ask specifically who owns the configuration and documentation, who responds to an outage, and what help they provide for SOC 2 evidence and cyber insurance renewals. Experience with small offices alone doesn't necessarily mean they know the compliance side.

9n!fuseclip_241:

Is there a useful ballpark for MSP pricing? I'm trying to figure out whether we're talking hundreds or thousands a month.

r.62!Velt:

I'd get scoped quotes rather than rely on a generic range. Coverage hours, response expectations, included changes, and contract minimums can make the numbers hard to compare.

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Mirel-7d

Meter is worth comparing as a managed service, not just as a hardware rental. The appeal is having one provider responsible for installation, upgrades, and maintenance rather than finding someone to take over a design you put together.

Before signing, ask for the outage response process, service levels, how they contact your designated people, and exactly what happens to the equipment and configuration at the end of the term. At the quoted rate, the service alone is about $36,000 over three years, before the circuit. Compare that with hardware, support, licensing, and any replacement costs for the other option.

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Jorvik.8b

The 10G lab traffic is the part I'd draw out before picking the firewall. If microscope-to-NAS traffic stays on the switching fabric, firewall WAN performance isn't the same thing as the capacity needed for that workload. But if segmentation requires that traffic to cross a firewall, or another device doing the routing and filtering, the design needs to account for that throughput.

Have whoever designs it show where the VLAN boundaries are enforced and how logs get collected. Don't assume a mix of FortiGate and UniFi automatically gives you one central view of everything. Ask for a concrete logging plan that meets your audit needs.

Veldin.8q:

Good distinction. It also helps to separate the NAS-to-WAN backup path from the local microscope traffic when sizing and documenting the network.

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8n~sprocket_317

UniFi is a reasonable lower-cost option for switches and Wi-Fi, and it can handle VLAN segmentation. Some people are comfortable using it in much larger deployments, while others prefer different equipment for a business network. The bigger question here is whether your support provider knows and wants that stack.

It's also worth pricing Meraki if the previous setup worked for the space. Check the subscription costs and management arrangement alongside the hardware quote rather than comparing purchase prices alone.

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