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Cisco ACI vs Meraki SD-WAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco ACI
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (4th)
Meraki SD-WAN
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 15.2%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Meraki SD-WAN is 23.9%, down from 24.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides scalability, ease of migration for future DC moves, multi-tenancy and programmability
Cisco's MSO (Multi-Site Orchestrator) or NDO has room for improvement. Cisco monitors ACI through a product called NDI. I find it very frustrating that Cisco has multiple monitoring platforms. It has DNAC for monitoring Cisco NX-OS, campus switches, and any other routers and switches you would have in the environment. That same thing does not work for Cisco ACI monitoring. MEraki cloudbasd platform for Meraki which will get extended to Campus monitoring, to be honest Cisco never got Monitoring 100% right from days of CiscoWorks to Prime to current platforms. To monitor and manage Cisco ACI, you need to have another platform called NDI and Cisco Dashboard Insights. What frustrates me about Cisco is that it never has a central, single pane of glass platform for all its solutions. It has one thing for Cisco ACI and another thing for campus switches. I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything. I haven't thought about anything since the Cisco NDO is quite advanced, and you can deploy your cloud networking through it. I don't know how many people use it. I might explore it as my cloud orchestration tool in the future. We do a lot of cloud automation using our scripts like TerraForm, but I would like to see people using NDO more. We could have more case studies on how many people use NDO for their cloud orchestration. That might be a much easier journey for people when they move from an on-premises data center into a cloud and move from one cloud to another cloud. That is where I personally see an orchestrator being effectively used for multiple deployments.
Martyn Walker - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables productivity in terms of users and has ease of management
Scalability could be improved. Yes, you can add more than 300 or 400 sites onto it, but because it's not a true SD-WAN and, effectively, it's just a Multi-VRF, it's all hub and spoke at that point. That's the nature of the design, but that's what keeps it simple to administer. So, it's a trade off.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the data center communication."
"It is easy to use because you have all the information coming from the same technology."
"The integration with vCenter means that when I create something on the network, it only has to happen one time instead of many times for our many virtual hosts."
"The most valuable features are the ease of setup for redundancy, as well as centralized control."
"The most valuable feature is programmability, where we can manage a network via APIs and software, as opposed to having to manage complex hardware."
"We use Cisco ACI for perimeter security and threat detection."
"The most valuable feature is the unified fabric."
"We can implement customer requirements more quickly."
"The features of SD-WAN are very appealing because you have a centralized dashboard and multiple options to terminate. You have an internet leased line, which means that you can connect your broadband and 3G and 4G cellular networks on the same router. This makes it easy for us to manage everything on a single dashboard. That is, you can integrate multiple stacks in such a way that you do not have to maintain any other dashboard. You get single-pane-of-glass accessibility with Meraki."
"SD-WAN is a complete enterprise solution for securing traffic."
"The most valuable feature for me is the security functionality."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki SD-WAN is its user-friendly interface."
"If you have the technical knowledge, there is very little chance of making mistakes."
"The Meraki SD-WAN solution is simple to deploy."
"This product contributed to a huge benefit in our bottom line on operational costs."
"The solution's ability to prioritize traffic is its most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"I would like this solution to be integrated with Pure Storage."
"It is challenging for people who don't understand the programming language, making it difficult to migrate. With technology, there are two verticals. One is hardware driven and the other is software driven. Most people in our domain understand networking, but they don't understand programming. When we migrate, some programming is required."
"I would like to see a lot more integrations with the rest of the Cisco portfolio."
"I would rate this solution a five out of ten. Not a ten because I don't have good training for this solution. I am now implementing Cisco ACI in the company. It's not 100% on the network. It's on 25% approx, more or less."
"It would be great if ACI would include the next generation firewall feature."
"Its scalability and reliability capabilities should be enhanced."
"Because this is new technology, which requires a different way of thinking, it can be hard to understand. Therefore, I would like more documentation or education."
"The integration has room for improvement. There should be a drag-and-drop interface for configuring the integration where you connect some arrows to boxes, and the system takes care of the configuration. Right now, they have something similar, but it's limited. You have to take care of some things yourself. That is one area that the solution can work on. It's easy now, but it's much easier in other solutions."
"The solution is scalable for mid-tier deployments, but not for major ones."
"The blocklist on the Cisco Meraki side isn't complete or very large. We'd like to see them update and expand this."
"In some cases, like an Internet outage, this can make the solution unmanageable."
"The product should be able to support more than three internet lines."
"The deployment time of Meraki SD-WAN can vary. For someone new to the process, it could take a couple of hours. However, for someone with hands-on experience, such as myself, it only takes approximately two to three hours to set up the entire configuration."
"In Meraki SD-WAN, we have some limitations with the traffic shaping capabilities."
"The tool has challenges with features like multiple-link support, which currently only supports up to three links. Additionally, it doesn't offer router integration, and forward error correction is another missing feature. The scalability of Meraki SD-WAN is good, but there are limitations to the performance of the concentrator devices, especially in larger deployments. While the cloud scale is not an issue, the performance of the devices in branches and data centres is limited."
"I would like to see more flexibility in our choices of customization for our needs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't believe there is any licensing required."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We have seen time improvement using the product."
"Price is always an issue."
"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"It's expensive but the product is very good. I have never found another partner like Cisco with a solution like this and with great support."
"The cost is fine."
"If you compare the licensing and total cost of ACI, it's cheaper than NSX because of the licensing fees. If you are going for full NSX features it will be too expensive, especially the next-generation firewalling feature."
"The pricing is reasonable and we can choose the software or the feature."
"The price of Meraki SD-WAN could improve, it is expensive when compared to other solutions on the market, such as Aruba."
"The product is not very expensive."
"The licensing fees are approximately $1,000 USD annually."
"One of the most valuable aspects of Meraki SD-WAN is the price. It is highly cost-effective."
"Our clients pay Meraki an annual licensing fee and the pricing is not too bad when compared to other products in the Cisco portfolio."
"Meraki's pricing is on the higher side, which may limit who can afford to use them."
"This solution is more expensive than competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What do you like most about Cisco ACI?
The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution.
What do you like most about Meraki SD-WAN?
The auto VPN feature is important because it automates many tasks, making things simpler and faster. It helps with setting up devices and changing configurations without manual effort.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Meraki SD-WAN?
The price is a little bit higher than local vendors, for example, Huawei ZTE or H3C. However, some customers require the best quality and performance, thus needing solutions and products from Cisco.
What needs improvement with Meraki SD-WAN?
They have to ask us many questions about configurations. It could be improved with some automation to trigger, for example, telemetry data, so we can determine the state of the deployment as of day...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
École Jeannine Manuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Meraki SD-WAN and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.