Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco ACI vs Meraki SD-WAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.6
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
7.0
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 13.4%, up from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Meraki SD-WAN is 24.4%, up from 23.2% 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 of the solution is the Call Manager."
"I recommend Cisco ACI due to its reliable tech support, timely updates for security, traffic management, and ease of management."
"I like features like policy control and micro-segmentation."
"It is easy to use because you have all the information coming from the same technology."
"It scales very well. When you increasingly scale with it, it makes the product easier to work with."
"Building the ACI Fabric is its most valuable feature."
"We get a full holistic view of the ecosystem."
"The scalability has been great. It is very easy to scale."
"The seamless end-to-end setup is really what makes it beautiful; that's why Meraki is good."
"I can manage it very well and in a very easy way."
"The best feature we're using is the packet shaping."
"It is easy to monitor and manage."
"The tool is easy to use."
"The solution's ability to prioritize traffic is its most valuable feature."
"This is a high availability solution that is easy to configure and has a nice GUI."
"t is very stable based on our experience and the application performance has been superb."
 

Cons

"Its scalability and reliability capabilities should be enhanced."
"One of the things that makes it a lot more complicated is the way contracts are handled in ACI. Contracts are like their own access lists. They can improve the setting up of contracts between devices a lot. It can be simplified."
"ACI's blade servers could be more flexible, and its storage interface is a little too complex because they use some third-party storage solution."
"It is more about resolving bugs early on in the code. Otherwise, as the product gets more mature and those bugs get discovered sometimes by the customer, then Cisco will resolve them."
"Cisco needs to enhance their technical support and pay more attention to regional support."
"Cisco ACI would benefit by providing the option to integrate easily with DNAC in their next release."
"The ability for us to figure out the traffic flows, to enable some of the more segmentation parts of it, is really tough with what is built into ACI."
"The initial setup was not straightforward. We adopted an agile strategy, starting small and expanding to multiple data centers."
"The solution needs a multi-use provider portal."
"Meraki is lagging behind in using a single pipe from service providers. That is, it would be good if they could use both the internet leased line and broadband connectivity."
"This vendor has issues with the supply chain that need to be improved."
"A run optimization feature is needed to reduce the bandwidth for any uploaded content."
"This solution can only support up to two WAN ports."
"The solution lacks a certain amount of functionality and features."
"There could be more options for integration between other devices — sort of being able to more easily make everything integrated in one solution."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is fine."
"Pricing for Cisco ACI could be expensive if you're not a gold partner. If you're a gold partner, you'll get reasonable pricing, but to become a gold partner, you must cross several layers. For example, at least twenty engineers within your organization have to be certified, with each certification priced at £2,000 minimum, so this would make some companies think twice about the product. If you're going for Aruba and Juniper products, on the other hand, you can quickly get the partner status, and you can start selling the product. As a gold partner, you can get up to seventy percent discount on Cisco ACI, for example, while an ordinary partner gets ten percent off. Cisco ACI is expensive for both customers and partners, but I'm rating pricing for the product as four out of five because even if the price is costly, you get a lot of benefits from the product. Cisco ACI isn't the best, price-wise, but it's still a good solution. If you're in a small organization, you may be unable to afford it. Cisco ACI is best for enterprises but not SMBs because Cisco ACI and its required resources are expensive."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is pretty good for new technology."
"The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."
"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"Price is always an issue."
"We don't use all of the features but it's still worth the money."
"like everything else, it's negotiable."
"The product is not expensive."
"Pricing is a significant concern for me. Amongst all the firewall brands, Cisco is one of the most expensive options. Despite its reputation and security features, many customers opt for other brands, such as SonicWall because of their lower prices. These other brands offer similar features to Cisco but at a lower cost. Cisco's pricing is something that could be improved to attract more customers. The brand has a good reputation, but when it comes to budgeting and pricing, it is not always the first choice."
"The solution is a bit expensive when compared to other products."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and product lines or prices are readily available on their website."
"This solution is more expensive than competitors."
"There are no licensing costs for the product subscription."
"Meraki's pricing is on the higher side, which may limit who can afford to use them."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions are best for your needs.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Energy/Utilities Company
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

 

Learn More

Video not available
 

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: December 2024.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.