Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Reviews

We are resellers and our customers are generally medium to enterprise size organizations. I'm the senior manager and we are partners with Cisco. 

The dashboard is a great feature that is architecturally based and I like the fact that the solution is accessible from anywhere. As an administrator, it is very useful to have access to the dashboard from anywhere through my mobile Meraki app. I can see if there are any issues and can get alerts over my emails. The basic value of the product is the ease of use and ease of access from anywhere. The product is very easy to manage, easy to configure, and easy for our customers to understand. It's the ease of use that sells Meraki. When it's used as a whole stack, Meraki is one of the very good and easy to manage products.

There are a lot of improvements that could be made, especially from the feature point of view. If you compare the Meraki firewall to UTM, Meraki has close to 90% of all the features that UTM offers but there are some that are lacking and that need to be rectified. For example, UTM has a feature that enables you to block videos inside Facebook or block particular applications inside another application. In Meraki, you can only block the entire app or the entire URL. For example, you can block the category video, but not any applications that are inside apps. When it comes to switching, Meraki lacks categories of features, like the traditional Cisco, Aruba, or Ruckus app, and I think they need to increase the number of modules and categories of switches.

I've been using this solution for almost six years. 

 The product is stable and I have not seen any issues over the past couple of years.

The solution is scalable, the only problem we had earlier was the Meraki firewall did not support more than two ISC links, but I think the hardware has matured and can now support more than two ISC links. Some years ago now, Meraki used to lose many customers because it didn't support more than two ISC links.

It's very easy to get support from Meraki, because everything is there in the dashboard. You just need to open a case through the dashboard and you get good support. 

The pricing is a little higher than other similar architecture products such as Ruckus or Aruba. Meraki has a premium pack added to it so it's costly.

If you're a medium enterprise type of organization, I'd recommend something like Meraki, at least from the wireless point of view, because I think it has a very, very simple and easy-to-use dashboard. As mentioned, it's easy to configure and very easy to manage. Wherever there are very low resources to manage a network, Meraki is the one. If a company isn't managing many people and there aren't too many network administrators, it's a very good solution. 

I rate the solution seven out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for our campus environment.

The solution has worked very well in our campus environment. 

The solution has proven itself to be very stable so far.

The product is very easy to use.

The initial setup is very straightforward and easy.

We've found the connectivity to be excellent.

We would like the solution to work on the pricing of the solution. It would be ideal if it could bring the overall costs down.

We haven't even used the solution for a year yet. We've used it for about six months or so. It hasn't been that long just yet.

The stability is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. It's been good so far.

The solution can scale quite well. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so fairly easily.

We currently use the solution in order to cover 500 users at our company.

Our company does plan to increase usage in the future.

Technical support has been fine. We've found them to be helpful and responsive. We're satisfied with the level of support we receive.

The installation was very straightforward, from what I recall. A company shouldn't have any trouble with the initial setup. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

The deployment is pretty fast. It only took us about two hours or so. 

We did not need the assistance of a consultant or integrator. We handled the initial implementation ourselves. We handled it in-house.

The pricing could be cheaper. It's the one pain point.

We pay a monthly fee.

We are using the latest version of the solution. I can't speak to the actual version number.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We haven't used it for that long, however, we have been quite satisfied with its overall capabilities.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations and users.

There are so many use cases. You can have multiple SSIDs and different LANs such as
guests, private, or hidden. There are so many options with it.

It is cloud-based, but the physical hardware is on-premises. We are using the Enterprise version.

It is cloud-based. It has a GUI rather than a command line, and it just works.

The biggest pain point is that they limit you through firewall throughput. I understand why they do it, but that really grates me. For instance, for 450 Mbps throughput, you're looking at £800 for a router, whereas if you look at the one gig connection, for some of us are lucky enough to have a gig connection, you could almost be spending £3,000 for the option to have one gig connectivity. That's one of the pain points I've got. I don't mind paying for throughput, but I should at least have the option to be able to update that throughput, maybe through extra licensing or something else. It is crazy expensive to jump through to the next one.

I have been using this solution for a good couple of years.

It is perfect in terms of stability.

It is perfect in terms of scalability. I've got one system here in the UAE and one in London, and I haven't even touched the one in London, and I can do it all from here.

Their support is perfect. They're there 24/7, 365 days a year. Whether you email or phone in, there is always someone there to help you.

Its initial setup is straightforward.

Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It can be for three, five, or ten years.

I'm happy with the pricing. You basically pay for what you get. It is that simple. When you look at Ubiquiti or Aruba, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN far outweighs what you get. If you're in the UK, Ubiquiti gives a three-year or five-year warranty, whereas here in the UAE, they only give a one-year warranty, which is no good to me. Who buys a piece of equipment with only one year warranty on it? It doesn't make sense.

I would recommend this solution, but there are limitations with some of these devices. The main issue that I have is related to the throughput. You can get any router that will do a gig connection, but you don't get the other features.

I would rate Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN an eight out of ten.

I work for an elementary school and Meraki's used to cover the entire building with wifi. It's not just a specific location. We're a kindergarten through sixth-grade school — an elementary school.

In terms of the product, it's been very good for us. They don't have all of the tools built-in that we would like to have such as heat mapping, but when it comes to managing it, it is straightforward and easily operated. We're able to automate as well as manually control as necessary.

This solution could benefit from a heat mapping ability so that you can tell where the hotspots are, and where the good signals are. To have that be available from within the management software would be fantastic.

We've been using this solution for four years.

Stability-wise, it's excellent. However, the software cannot tell us where there are issues. It would be nice if it could point them out to us, but without that event's information, it's more of a challenge. In terms of when we see that it's working, we know that it will be working, period. It's simply reliable.

It's very scalable. We could increase the system we have, but because of its age, we actually need to replace the entire thing at once. So instead of doing it piecemeal and having some of the older products remain while we put in a new product, we would rather replace the whole system. 

We have not used Meraki support directly. We haven't had any problems that were so horrible that we needed their assistance.

We're looking at whether to replace Meraki or go with ruckus or Aruba. There are all sorts of options for us. The signal coverage has been quite good with Meraki, but we just simply are in need of a stronger system than what we have now. 

I was very surprised. The initial setup was very straightforward. 

We had a company (reseller) install this solution because we needed so many access points. Once they put it in place and did the initial configuration, everything was straightforward and easily managed.

I don't recall the licensing cost. There is a hardware cost and separate licensing. We did buy the free lessons, but I can't recall how much it cost.

In terms of caution, I don't have any advice. In terms of a recommendation, it's been a very stable system for us. However, because our needs grew exponentially when we had to go one-to-one for students, this has made things too complicated. That's why we're looking into upgrading and replacing the whole system. Still, Meraki is not off of our list while we're considering new solutions.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of ten.

The dashboard is the solution's most valuable feature. It's very user-friendly. It's a good solution for people that don't have a big technical team.

In many wireless solutions, there are a lot of things that can be added, like WiFi 6. 

Meraki should share its viability roadmap. It is really hard to know which functionality will appear or when they will be available. It is also hard to know which features are available now but are not visible on the dashboard.

In France, there's a law that requires we should keep a log of connection for 1 year, so it would be really nice to have a solution or feature that allows us to keep a log in the cloud during the year with log rotations and secure log authorizations. Right now, in France, it is not possible.

So far, we haven't had issues with stability. 

The solution is easily scalable. There are not really any limits for the customer in terms of expanding if they need to.

The technical support of Meraki is very good. They're always quick to answer. You can create a case on your dashboard and after a maximum of 30 minutes, they contact you. This is a great process. Many other solutions should copy their support model. 

The initial setup is easy; it's not complex at all.

In terms of deployment, depending on the customer, it can be installed rather quickly. A customer can even handle the installation themselves.  Some may need more help with design, and it can take a bit more time to do that, but overall it's rather simple. 

We're a partner with Cisco. We create architecture for customers and design solutions for surveillance products. We also deploy WiFi production engineers from our company.

My advice to others considering implementation is to be aware of Meraki limitations. If you are not sure if the features you need are available, you should verify that with Meraki. It will keep you from having any surprises down the road.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a really good product.

The dashboard to keep track of 30 or so APs, switches, routers and logs, is invaluable. I liked the UX on this.

Notifications (minus the techno-speak so it's obvious what the problem is) help us respond to access points down or rogue access points attempting connections.

Tracking the usage of staff, access points, switches and routers becomes an insanely easy thing and so do producing reports for your Exec team.

Splash screens for T&C sign off by users are very easy to implement - it takes about 30 seconds to put a splash screen up. RADIUS and SSO are possible with similar ease.

Networks can be segmented into SSIDs very easily for those needing to provided users, office, POS, Events, etc, with seperated access. You can then monitor the usage down to a single MAC address for great granularity.

Reporting is easy - press two buttons et viola!

It's cut down the amount of time administering an expansive WiFi network spread over 43 acres.

We can easily monitor the up/down time so establishing KPIs and SLAs for the IT department becomes something attainable.

Adding APs is a very simple process. Plug in. Turn on. Meshes with the existing network. In an emergency, almost anyone can do it.

The error logs need to be much more comprehensive.

4 years

There can be problems if using older POS devices, WiFi APs, and you have a lot of people with mobiles around. So, say, a large event. The mix of signals can kill the WiFi APs and then you are left hard wiring "mobile" tills. Be aware if you're carrying old equipment.

Good.

Very good. Some times the odd problem may drag and require a dog-with-a-bone approach but that's the same everywhere.

Negotiate the deal put in front of you!

I haven't personally recommended the product to my company's customers. Many of my company's customers use Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN at corporate levels where wireless LANs are needed.

I am not a big fan of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN. Based on my company's customers' opinions, I feel that the best feature of the product stems from the fact that it serves as an actual cloud management platform and the ease of deployment it offers.

The thing that concerns me the most about the product is that, with a lot of our other customers, the platform's behavior once its licensing runs out. The product doesn't effectively do its job anymore since some issues crop up in it once you run out of your subscription licensing. Once customers run out of subscriptions, they could end up with a non-functional environment, an area of concern.

Overall, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is an easy platform to use. I think it would be good if the tool provided a perpetual licensing option, even if it has a limited set of features. If you went back to a basic set of features or something available on a perpetual basis, it would probably be the single biggest improvement in the solution.

Improvements are needed in the licensing part of the tool. The predominant reason why I don't recommend the tool to others is because it puts a large onus on the customer in terms of the tool's operational expenditure year on year. A lot of the customers my company works with want some flexibility and want to stop a product's use after the fourth or fifth year. If customers plan to implement a tool today, they are forecast to replace it in the upcoming four or five years. Having a tool that doesn't lock customers into subscriptions during a time when they want to switch to other products would be great.

I have been using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for four to five years. My company is a reseller of Cisco Meraki.

From a scalability perspective, I think the tool is incredibly scalable. I assisted one of our company's customers, which is a global supermarket chain, in an evaluation, which included Cisco Meraki and the wireless component, during which, for the first time, I was exposed to the true scalability feature of the platform. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Compared to Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, I recommend products like RUCKUS and HPE Aruba Networking. Considering customers who largely use Fortinet infrastructure, I would also recommend switches and firewalls from Fortinet.

Apart from the advantages offered by the product other than Cisco Meraki in areas like licensing model, from Fortinet's perspective, I like the product's ability to offer a single pane of glass, so it has a single vendor. RUCKUS and HPE are normally deployed due to the RF capabilities it offers. My company did quite a detailed RF study four or five years ago, and HPE and RUCKUS stood out quite well. RUCKUS has adaptive antenna technology. What holds back RUCKUS is that it has been acquired multiple times over the last six or seven years. CommScope is rebranding a lot of the switches under RUCKUS, which is something my company is interested in seeing and observing how that pans out over the next few years.

The cloud management aspect of Cisco Meraki has improved our company's customer's administrative efficiency in some cases, while in some other cases, it hasn't. Depending upon whether or not the tool integrates the switching and SASE aspects as well, I had a few customers whom I had to split apart due to some of the tool's features not being visible once you opt for the product's unified infrastructure model.

With Cisco products and third-party products, integration of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is good. The tool doesn't have a lot of integrations that are necessarily native. I think that a lot of the larger infrastructure providers offer the same integration features as Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN since such a solution brings on additional products through acquisition, and true integration processes take time.

Speaking about how the tool's specific security features strengthened our company's customer network defense, I would say that I am not a fan of the product as a security platform. MS Switch Access Policies (802.1X) and NAC are good areas in the product, especially if you integrate with Cisco's platform. I won't usually use the product as a layer 3 boundary.

With the current models offered by the product, it is not a solution that my company recommends to others. If our company's customer already has a large Meraki deployment in place, we recommend it for continuity's sake. The product is not normally something our company would encourage others to use, but if there are additional facilities, we recommend it.

I rate the product a six out of ten.

The management console is valuable. It helps manage everything.

The solution is limited to Meraki products. It does not extend to Catalyst products. Our customers have a mixture of Catalyst and Meraki products. They cannot manage Catalyst products. Cisco Meraki must improve the integration between its own family of products. It is a disadvantage.

I have been using the solution for two to three years.

The tool is stable. It is quite good.

We work with products like Ruckus, ExtremeCloud, and Aruba Central. Cisco Meraki is easier to deploy than other tools. Cisco Meraki supports both wireless products and switches.

For some customers, Cisco is not the first choice when it comes to pricing. The solution is pretty expensive.

I am a reseller. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.