We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Meraki MX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"The solution is easy to use."
"One of the valuable features of the solution is its flexibility and it performs great."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"In Pakistan, we only use Cisco because they have good local support infrastructure. Huawei and Fortinet don't offer direct support in Pakistan."
"Previously, anyone in the organization would see any data point in the wall. They could just go and connect their machine with that data point and could access the network. But now, even if someone came and tried that, they will not be given access."
"The VPN connection portal scan works flawlessly, which was a big plus for us."
"I'm able to transfer data over internet network security. With the GRE I'm able to transfer data within one bunch to another bunch in a public way, like the internet. The communication is encrypted and is private. It gives me added privacy."
"The VPN was valuable for us because more people are working from home. It has a lot of reporting and easy-to-use management tools."
"We work also with domain control (DC) from Microsoft or Amazon. We use a whole virtual appliance with Meraki."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"Meraki makes it easy to be secure and know where the holes are to fix them. We have been fixing anything that we have ever found for 20 years. We keep up-to-date with firmware upgrades. We just try to stay on top of everything for security, like maintaining updates and getting rid of old systems. I feel like we're on top of it."
"The simplicity of configuration is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"You can use your web browser to do the configuration which is easier than Cisco CLI transcripts."
"The technical support people from Meraki are brilliant."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki MX is I can manage the solution from anywhere remotely, I can throttle bandwidth, and create all rules. Additionally, it is secure for our customers."
"Easy to deploy with a simple configuration."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve if it had a cloud-managed solution."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"We have a very bad experience on the support. They take too much time requesting logs, and they are not coming directly online to resolve the issues."
"The initial setup is complicated."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"Cisco is an expensive firewall, so the pricing can be improved."
"We cannot directly upgrade the system. The tool's deployment is also very difficult in legacy environments. The tool needs to have bigger ports as well."
"We need to pay for the license and it is expensive."
"There's a technology called SD-WAN that we would like to see. We are unable to handle multiple connections or to automatically load balance. I would like to have a feature that enables us to automatically prepare for load balancing."
"Signatures and other critical definitions need to be updated more frequently."
"In the next release, because the security is pretty basic, I think they could include additional security features."
"What I would like to see in the next version is to have more interfaces for WAN links."
"You cannot use switching behaviors as you see on the Meraki switch."
"The whole Cisco Meraki range requires easier access for cameras. For a security center, it would be helpful to have easier access to cameras through the portal. Its licensing cost could also be better."
"It can be hard to get a hold of the solution’s technical support team."
"When it comes to cost, that's a pain point."
"The product doesn't support route summarization and BGP dynamic routing protocol."
"FortiGate is cheaper than Meraki. Even the license renewal is less than Meraki."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 23rd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 59 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Meraki MX is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "User-friendly and excels in documentation, making it easier to resolve issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Netgate pfSense. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Meraki MX report.
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