We compared Centreon and Meraki Dashboard across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Centreon features a user-friendly interface with useful options for customization and manual configuration. Users like the solution’s flexible dashboards and the ability to create plugins. Meraki Dashboard users like its centralized console, cable testing, firmware updates, and group policy features. The solution is also praised as user-friendly, stable, and scalable.
Room for Improvement: Some Centreon users requested better documentation and more flexibility to customize reporting. Other areas for improvement include auto-scanning efficiency and integration. Users say Meraki Dashboard could improve its client VPN, hardware discovery, and integration with external solutions, Some users mentioned a need for more comprehensive documentation and granular control.
Service and Support: Centreon is highly regarded for its prompt and knowledgeable customer service that offers support in multiple languages. However, some customers feel that the lower levels of support are inadequate. Meraki Dashboard's customer service receives mixed feedback. Some users spoke fondly of the technical support they received, while others expressed frustration over long wait times and had a hard time finding the right person to help them.
Ease of Deployment: Centreon's initial setup is described as time-consuming and complex. The deployment varies in duration depending on the IT infrastructure. Users said Meraki Dashboard was effortless and intuitive to set up, noting that features like templates and configuration cloning saved time during deployment.
Pricing: Centreon's cost depends on the company's size. It is affordable and suitable for small companies, but it can be costly to scale up. Opinions on Meraki Dashboard's pricing varied, with some users finding it pricey and others deeming it fair.
ROI: Centreon delivers value by helping users identify and resolve critical issues fasters, which could yield large savings. Meraki Dashboard simplifies IT operations, and some users expect returns within a few years.
Comparison Results: Centreon is a flexible solution offering a range of customization options. The solution has earned high marks for support and affordability. At the same time, users say the setup can be complicated and time-consuming. Others said that auto-scanning and integration have room for improvement. Meraki Dashboard is a scalable, user-friendly solution with a smooth, painless setup made easy by built-in templates and features like configuration cloning. However, some users complained that the solution is too expensive and needs better integration with non-Cisco platforms.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"We have the business activity monitoring, the map, and the MBI modules and they are all very good."
"In addition, the flexibility, customizability, and analytics of Centreon's dashboards are all very good. The dashboards help us see the whole network map, and that is quite valuable for us. In addition, the dashboards have helped to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time... The flexibility has given us the ability to add in our own monitoring metrics and that has been quite interesting and very useful for us."
"Valuable features include the ability to schedule downtime, intensity or depth of monitoring which it does, different plugin packs, Centreon MAP, Centreon BI."
"The product is available in ISO image format, ready for deployment. Centreon also has a comprehensive guide and documentation that are simple and easy to follow."
"E-mail alert notifications are valuable."
"Centreon's most valuable feature is Opsgenie."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of servers and networks, because we have a lot of them and need to maintain control."
"Another feature we use is Business Activity, which provides us with an end-user perspective when a service is down or isn't working correctly. This is helpful when monitoring the KPIs. When we see a device or server that isn't working, we find the root cause."
"The hardware of Meraki is very good quality."
"We find that Meraki has all the features you need to be able to enable complex network protocols for AV equipment. We deal with a streaming product over IP, and Meraki is fantastic at that."
"What I love most about the Meraki Dashboard are its user-friendly features."
"We greatly utilize the network because we can plug it into the DNS, VPN, or equipment. It's very good. Meraki Dashboard enhances wireless network management. We appreciate its flexibility, as it allows for easy suite configuration. We can handle everything on there when there's a policy or any other requirement."
"The solution scales well."
"Great visibility on the dashboard."
"It is very stable and we have been using it for five years."
"An excellent dashboard that is currently unique in covering both SD-WAN and SD-LAN with built-in security."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The reporting has room for improvement."
"The problem with the reporting is you have to configure the report, and after that, you will have the same report every month, every week, every day. You have to sync it in order to have a great report."
"To get it started is a lot of work, since it comes empty. We had to push information into it to make it work."
"Centreon needs to improve the granularity of the data as well as the graphical data. It would also be better to if there was improvement to the filtering/grouping system as well as the creation of views."
"There are improvements that they need to make to their API. When we're using different systems and we want to disable monitoring for a specific server, we still can't do that through the API. That's something that's lacking."
"I would like them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful."
"The most important issue is the capability to interconnect with other systems. It already exists for some of them. For example, the Stream Connector is something we use to populate data in another system. This kind of facility for connecting should exist for all products that it makes sense to have connected to a monitoring solution."
"This solution lacks service monitoring in the cloud."
"Some features could be added."
"The initial setup is complex and can be made more straightforward."
"The downside to the simplicity is that you can't get as granular as you could with the Cisco APs."
"What needs improvement in Meraki Dashboard is its configuration. It'll also be better if the tool has more functionality, and that is what I'd like to see in its next release."
"If I am a user and I have a seat on the fourth floor, if I move across the building, the system should be able to track me and should be able to figure out my whereabouts or my position within the building if I'm connected to the wireless. That would make the administrator's life easier in terms of reachability."
"There is a bit of a problem when you try to log in and you don't have a fixed IP address. If you're granting access, you need to log in by using the IP address. If your administrator's IP address is not a fixed IP address and it has changed, you might need to update the changed IP address in the interface. For this, you need to log in to the interface to update the IP address. This issue might not have so much to do with Meraki interface."
"You can't really clone or replicate a device, that sort of feature would be useful. You can clone the site but you cannot clone the device."
"I think this product could be improved with a CLI for more directives."
Centreon is ranked 11th in Network Monitoring Software with 27 reviews while Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews. Centreon is rated 8.6, while Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Centreon writes "Proactive reporting guides our NOC on what needs to be fixed, saving them time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios Core, Icinga and ManageEngine OpManager, whereas Meraki Dashboard is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud and LogicMonitor. See our Centreon vs. Meraki Dashboard report.
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