I wonder if such “price on application” behaviours is partially what drives services like AWS

I’m looking at buying some fortigate firewalls to do some natting, looks like 200Fs will be fine, but even the fortigate sales guys won’t give me a price, I have to go to resellers who also refuse to give prices, which adds friction. Cisco exactly the same.

When looking at options, price is at the forefront of my mind, but sales guys want me to choose their company, and even commit to the specific device and numbers, before I even see the price.

Almost walked away from the fortigate option until I found avfirewalls which gave me a ballpark idea of what I could afford to implement, and what trade offs. The benefits of the fortigate over a mikrotik were worth it at that price, but it was painful getting the price out and they nearly lost the sale as I assumed it would be 10 times more.