Cisco ACI vs Meraki SD-WAN comparison

Cisco ACI and Meraki SD-WAN are both solutions in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category. Cisco ACI is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8, while Meraki SD-WAN is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Cisco ACI holds a 15.5% mindshare in SDN, compared to Meraki SD-WAN’s 23.2% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Cisco ACI users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Meraki SD-WAN users who would recommend it.

Cisco ACI

Read 101 Cisco ACI reviews

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468 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Meraki SD-WAN

Read 77 Meraki SD-WAN reviews

1,484 Views
994 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Cisco ACI

Meraki SD-WAN

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Cisco ACI and Meraki SD-WAN are key competitors in the field of network management solutions. While both products have strengths, Cisco ACI offers advanced integration and scalability, giving it an edge in complex IT environments.

Features: Cisco ACI excels with centralized management, scalability, and extensive automation capabilities. It integrates with various virtual environments, supporting multi-tenancy and network segmentation. Meraki SD-WAN stands out for its ease of configuration through a cloud-based dashboard, Auto VPN, and traffic shaping, focusing on simplicity and quick integration.

Room for Improvement: Cisco ACI can improve its user-friendliness and reduce complexity and costs as its features might not be fully utilized by all users. It could also benefit from better multi-cloud capabilities. Meraki SD-WAN could enhance its security features and bolster integration capabilities to match enterprise-level solutions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco ACI's on-premises deployment often requires professional setup, increasing deployment time. Customer service is generally positive but varies with complexity. Meraki SD-WAN offers flexible deployment across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments, focusing on simplicity and efficient customer support for straightforward assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco ACI is often seen as expensive due to smart licensing, although it offers returns through operational efficiency. Meraki SD-WAN provides a more budget-friendly solution with flexible licensing, appealing to cost-conscious clients while delivering effective network management. Both demonstrate ROI through operational improvements, with Meraki being particularly cost-effective.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco ACI vs. Meraki SD-WAN Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI vs. Meraki SD-WAN

April 2025

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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 (6th)

Meraki SD-WAN

Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 15.5%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Meraki SD-WAN is 23.2%, down from 25.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

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.

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Martyn Walker

Business development manager at Virgin Media

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Now, our customers have tiers of management that have meetings with about the simplest tasks because it has to be approved from upper management and senior management and by the time it gets to the engineer that's going to deploy it, it takes way too long. With the solution, they can delegate a person who would be in charge of running the ACI as a whole, and it will be much faster because it doesn't have to go through the whole chain of command for the simple task of deploying one little machine on one port in the data center."

"It is more scalable than our previous products."

"This solution allows you to do everything quicker and more efficiently."

"We get a full holistic view of the ecosystem."

"It has the fastest automation. You can move and deploy services in just a couple of minutes."

"With Cisco ACI, I can deploy things with a script, then run it in five minutes."

"The most valuable feature of Cisco ACI is that it is eay to manage. We can automate and it can be scripted. Virtual ACI is very good."

"It has made it much easier to deploy and make changes in the data center versus the previous infrastructure, which was NX-OS based."

More Cisco ACI pros

"Because it's a cloud-based network infrastructure, everything is done in the cloud, so I don't need to be on-site physically to be able to troubleshoot or resolve an issue. I can be anywhere and resolve an issue."

"It is secure, and some features, like work device management, are very useful."

"Using Meraki just solves a lot of problems."

"The solution is a whole vertical solution, so it doesn't need any other components in order to provide basic features."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of setting up Meraki SD-WAN."

"They're known for their ease of use and ubiquitous management platform that covers everything. Meraki really excels in plug-and-play solutions. You just plug it up, and everything works. All of the components—the firewall/router, the switches, the access points, the cameras—work very nicely together, and they all can be managed from one platform. That is probably their biggest selling point. Everything comes in one ubiquitous package, and you don't have to manage different components from different platforms. You can see everything from one platform."

"In my experience, Meraki is very easy, simple, and clear to set up and use."

"We have found the product to be quite scalable."

More Meraki SD-WAN pros

Cons

"In terms of improvement, I would like to see some sort of way to baseline the system in a network-centric fashion."

"The product needs to be simpler. There is too much complexity in ACI. 80 percent of its features are of no use to us. We could do with a simplified version."

"An area for improvement in Cisco ACI is security, which Cisco needs to enhance in the solution. Though Cisco ACI uses a whitelist model, you must purchase an external product, such as a security firewall solution, to make whitelisting work, which the customer could find expensive. For example, you're a customer who has Cisco ACI, and the solution doesn't have IP-based filtering, so as a customer, you've purchased Cisco ACI. However, you still need to buy another product for security, and some customers wouldn't like that. However, some customers prefer to go with Cisco ACI because of its scalability and flexibility versus other solutions such as Juniper and Aruba. Technical support for Cisco ACI also needs improvement, particularly in product knowledge."

"Since it is a new technology, Cisco moved all the menus. This made it tricky to use."

"The only drawback that we are seeing is the user interface is still a little complex and difficult to use. It needs a more user-friendly interface."

"The CLI needs to be improved."

"The ACI setup is in its initial phases is difficult. The learning curve at the beginning is higher than a normal setup."

"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."

More Cisco ACI cons

"The port density should be improved because this solution is limited to two."

"The only problem occurs when users are not paying attention and turn on the wrong switches, like power switches, in places they should not."

"This solution can only support up to two WAN ports."

"The solution could be improved if it added more features, especially monitoring and reporting features."

"The product should be able to support more than three internet lines."

"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."

"Perimetral security for new requirements on financial networks and DRP systems, like SAP."

More Meraki SD-WAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost for ACI is expensive - I would rate its price 2.5 out of five."

"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."

"I don't believe there is any licensing required."

"Once you sign for the start kit implementation, you have to go all the way through to the implementation, even if you are experiences issues."

"We bought a package for hardware, software, and support. At that time, Cisco was simply selling that package to distributors, then we opted for it directly."

"Cisco is much more expensive than other vendors, especially when it comes to the licensing."

"A big company can automate it themselves or spend a lot of money and buy it."

"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."

More Cisco ACI pricing and cost advice

"The product is not very expensive."

"The solution's pricing is in line with what we expected."

"The pricing is fair, but if they can make it less it would be even more attractive."

"The tool is costly. I rate the tool's price as a ten out of ten since it is very expensive."

"The solution offers yearly licenses and product lines or prices are readily available on their website."

"like everything else, it's negotiable."

"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 price can vary depending on the challenges that you need to address. When you look at the stability and reliability against the price, you absolutely get the value for the price."

More Meraki SD-WAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

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...

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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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Secure Workload vs Cisco ACI

Compared 23% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco ACI

Compared 21% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco ACI

Compared 15% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco ACI

Compared 10% of the time

Aviatrix vs Cisco ACI

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco ACI Competitors

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Meraki SD-WAN

Compared 21% of the time

Omada Cloud SDN vs Meraki SD-WAN

Compared 21% of the time

VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN vs Meraki SD-WAN

Compared 16% of the time

Prisma SD-WAN vs Meraki SD-WAN

Compared 15% of the time

Aviatrix vs Meraki SD-WAN

Compared 4% of the time

More Meraki SD-WAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI

May 2025

Download Cisco ACI product report

Buyer's Guide

Meraki SD-WAN

April 2025

Download Meraki SD-WAN product report

Overview

Cisco ACI automates data center networking, centralizing management and configuration of diverse network environments. It's used for micro-segmentation, replacing legacy networks, and deploying software-defined networking.

Cisco ACI enables seamless integration with cloud platforms and multi-site connectivity. It ensures high availability and redundancy, supports network-centric applications, enhances security, and facilitates agile service implementations across different regions and data centers. The platform offers high throughput, ease of configuration, centralized management, and programmability. Users find value in its single management interface, policy-based routing, Service Graphs, and simplified deployment. Cisco ACI also excels in scalability, automation, low latency, and supports data center expansion efficiently.

What are the key features of Cisco ACI?

High Throughput: Ensures fast data transmission and network efficiency.
Ease of Configuration: Simplifies setup and changes to network configurations.
Centralized Management: Provides a single interface for managing the entire network.
Micro-Segmentation: Enhances security by isolating network segments.
Integration with VMware: Seamlessly integrates with VMware environments.
Scalability: Easily expands to accommodate growing organizational needs.
Automation Capabilities: Reduces manual tasks through advanced automation.
Policy-Based Routing: Optimizes network traffic based on set policies.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating Cisco ACI?

Seamless integration with cloud platforms and multi-site connectivity.
High availability and redundancy ensuring consistent service uptime.
Enhanced security with micro-segmentation and policy-based control.
Agility in service implementations across regions and data centers.
Efficiency in network management with centralized control.

Organizations in industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology implement Cisco ACI to modernize data centers, improve security, and streamline network operations. Its capabilities support expanding infrastructure, integrating with cloud services, and managing complex network architectures with minimal effort.

Cisco

Software-defined WAN is a new approach to network connectivity that lowers operational costs and improves resource usage for multi-site deployments, allowing network administrators to use bandwidth more efficiently and ensure the highest possible level of performance for critical applications without sacrificing security or data privacy. For more information on deploying and configuring SD-WAN on the Meraki MX Security Appliance, see the Meraki SD-WAN Deployment Guide.

Cisco

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University

École Jeannine Manuel

Buyer's Guide

Cisco ACI vs. Meraki SD-WAN

April 2025

Free Report: Cisco ACI vs. Meraki SD-WAN

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