FortiCare Support
Essentials, Premium and Elite, what each tier actually entitles you to
- Licensing
- Per device, by term
- Tiers
- Essentials (business hours), Premium (24x7 + NBD), Elite (24x7 + advanced replacement)
- Term
- 1, 3 and 5 year options, co-terminable
Every Fortinet appliance needs a FortiCare contract. The tier decides two things that matter during an outage: how fast someone answers, and how fast a replacement unit arrives. Essentials is business hours; Premium is 24x7 with next-business-day hardware replacement; Elite is 24x7 with an accelerated response target and advanced hardware replacement.
Where it fits, and where it stops fitting
Our rule of thumb: if the device being down stops the business, it is Premium or Elite. A perimeter firewall with no failover on a business-hours contract means a Friday-evening failure is a Monday-morning fix. We will not quote a chassis on a base tier.
Highlights
- Co-terminated renewals, one date, one purchase order
- Advanced hardware replacement on Elite
- Free expiry audit: send us your serial numbers
- Lapsed FortiCare means no firmware or security updates
Typical deployments
- Matching support tier to what an outage actually costs
- Consolidating a scattered estate onto one renewal date
- Finding out what has already quietly expired
What to work out first
Every Fortinet appliance needs a FortiCare contract, and the tier decides two things that matter during an outage: how fast someone answers, and how fast a replacement unit arrives. It is the least glamorous line on a quote and the one people regret economising on.
The tiers differ on support hours, response-time targets and hardware replacement speed. Essentials is business-hours. Premium is 24x7 with next-business-day replacement. Elite is 24x7 with an accelerated response target and advanced hardware replacement.
Our rule of thumb: if the device being down stops the business, it is Premium or Elite. A perimeter firewall at a site with no failover on a business-hours contract means a Friday-evening failure is a Monday-morning fix.
Questions worth answering before you order
What happens if this device fails at 2am on a Saturday?
If the answer is 'the business stops', you need 24x7 and advanced replacement. If it is 'we fail over to the secondary', a lower tier on each unit may be entirely reasonable.
How long can you wait for hardware?
Next-business-day and advanced replacement are different promises, and 'next business day' is measured from despatch qualification, not from the moment you notice. For remote sites, factor in the courier reality as well as the SLA.
How long a term?
Multi-year terms price better and, more usefully, remove the annual renewal scramble. We co-terminate everything to one date so the estate renews together.
Have you got a lapsed contract anywhere?
A lapsed FortiCare means no firmware updates, including security patches. Send us your serial numbers and we will tell you what has expired; that audit is free and it regularly finds something.
What this includes
Fortinet publishes no throughput table for this product; it is licensed per user, endpoint, workload or account. What follows is capability and sizing, not benchmarks.
What you are buying
| Licensing | Per device, by term |
|---|---|
| Tiers | Essentials (business hours), Premium (24x7 + NBD), Elite (24x7 + advanced replacement) |
| Term | 1, 3 and 5 year options, co-terminable |
How this is sized
Fortinet licenses this product per user, endpoint, workload or account rather than by appliance throughput, so there is no comparable performance table to publish. We size it from your actual environment, tell us the numbers and we will work it through with you.
| Licensing | Per device, by term |
|---|
Sources
- Fortinet product line overview, retrieved 2026-09-01
Reproduced from Fortinet published documentation and subject to change without notice. Where a figure is load-bearing for your design, ask us to confirm it in writing before you order; we will.