We performed a comparison between Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN and Cisco Wireless based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: While Cisco users across the board feel that both products are very expensive and provide very good customer service and support, users reported a better ROI from Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN.
"The AI capabilities of Mist Wireless are superior to other OEMs."
"The solution is very secure."
"You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Mist is the Virtual Network Assistant, powered by artificial intelligence."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) is the ability to troubleshoot ports on the network. Additionally, when there is an update on the APs they are able to reboot quickly reducing downtime. Other solutions have a longer downtime when updates are done."
"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."
"The most useful feature of Juniper Wireless AP is the reporting Marvis."
"The artificial intelligence feature is very good."
"This product offers cloud-based configuration, so you can set it up from anywhere."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of deployment."
"The monitoring device enables you to see the network health."
"I like the status page Cisco added that shows you the health of the wireless connection."
"The captive portal feature is my favorite. It allows us to keep track of how many people are entering our client's businesses."
"Great architecturally based dashboard and the solution is accessible from anywhere."
"The most valuable feature is the technology of the security that is offered."
"The solution is fast."
"Cisco Wireless is mostly stable with a low downrate and the signal rate is good. It is also easy to use."
"The LAN network conductivity is good."
"Cisco Wireless always has the latest technology that supports WiFi 5 and 6."
"Wireless access has enabled users to be mobile and as a result, more productive."
"The most valuable feature for us is management of the systems. We can easily access all features."
"The solution is scalable."
"We were able to utilize the elements of the core and provide a solution to our customers similar to that of Cisco Meraki."
"The product enables mobility and centralized control."
"Improving third-party integration is key for Juniper Mist's next release."
"The pricing should be made cheaper."
"The pricing is very high in the Indian market."
"They should include SD-WAN features to it."
"I need a bit more time with it before criticizing the features."
"Juniper Wireless AP can improve by continually improving its reporting and integration with other systems."
"If you want to do more specific stuff, it's a bit limited."
"Improvement is needed in the user-friendliness of Juniper Mist, particularly in enhancing the interaction with AI features."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"It would be useful to have a service management platform integrated within this solution where we can measure the customer experience."
"The product's coverage area could be expanded. It would help ensure better connectivity."
"There should be better Spanish-language technical support."
"We're are not fully utilizing the features of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN to know a more in-depth analysis of what areas need to be improved. However, the security could improve. It would be a benefit to be able to lock out particular clients that are trying to connect from outside the building."
"Its price could be improved."
"Integration with the corporate LAN where Catalyst products are installed is a major challenge."
"I would like to see them improve their support where an assigned engineer can take the case all the way to closure. Usually, you get a different engineer calling regarding the same ticket."
"It was expensive. Considering the challenges faced in third-world countries like Pakistan or India, cheaper solutions are preferred."
"There is room for improvement regarding HA issues and Radius integration."
"It is not easy to use. It should be made easier to use. They can maybe migrate it to the cloud so that we can manage the WLCs together. I find the licensing part very hard to understand. Cisco is now moving towards smart licensing, so this issue will be addressed soon."
"The pricing could be reduced."
"One of our customers complained about the ripple, that some of the data was incorrect. We opened a ticket and brought it to their attention that maybe some of the data was not correct. As of now, it has been two months since we opened the ticket and the issue still hasn't been resolved."
"No product can be a ten out of ten and there are some security issues."
"The GUI could be made more user-friendly. There should also be a dashboard where it can showcase how many end-users are connected to a particular access point."
"Room for improvement wise, the wireless coverage of Cisco's equipment could be better for the price position. That is, I think that the radius for the coverage could be better to make it worth the price that we pay for it."
More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is ranked 4th in Wireless LAN with 115 reviews while Cisco Wireless is ranked 2nd in Wireless LAN with 147 reviews. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is rated 8.2, while Cisco Wireless is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN writes "Offers good mobility, stability and scalability ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Wireless writes "Allows us to deploy a wide range of wireless products with stable WiFi". Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti Wireless, Mist AI and Cloud and Huawei Wireless, whereas Cisco Wireless is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti WLAN, Mist AI and Cloud and Omada Access Points. See our Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN vs. Cisco Wireless report.
See our list of best Wireless LAN vendors.
We monitor all Wireless LAN reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
Cisco Wireless is very robust, very rugged, and can handle indoor and outdoor coverage extremely well. We found it to be very reliable and to consistently run very efficiently. Cisco Wireless helped us get more network access to more people wirelessly across some very large spaces.
It is expensive, though. The Cisco Wireless portal, like many Cisco products, can be very complex. The flexibility of the controllers needs fixing and Cisco Wireless requires a bit of tweaking to get the stability right. We would also like to see the reporting improved - this would help make troubleshooting easier.
Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is very user-friendly. You don’t have to be a wireless engineer to set it up. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is cloud-based, which is very convenient as you don’t have to have a physical controller, saving valuable space, power, and redundancy. This solution offers advanced configurations that are a great fit for small to medium-sized businesses that can’t employ an advanced tech team. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is high-performance, stable, scalable, and very easy to deploy, and offers a dashboard that makes managing the solution very easy.
Some of the built-in capabilities and filtering with Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN needs to be made easier to use. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN needs to better identify devices, and the TAC reading and interpretation capabilities are not always accurate. There are also some processing limitations when you have multiple SSIDs.
Conclusion
As these are both Cisco products, they offer brand recognition you can trust, great quality, and good durability.
We found that Cisco Wireless offered slightly better access points and improved coverage, allowing the creation of better networks. Cisco Wireless takes a one-time payment for the hardware, and then annual payments. If you employ Cisco’s knowledgeable team members, this will be a good fit for you.
The huge selling point for Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is its ease of use. You don’t need to have a lot of knowledge to deploy or manage processes, which makes this a great product for smaller businesses with a less tech-savvy team.
The standard answer to such a question is: it depends.
The pricing for both solutions is very similar: per-AP, Meraki is more expensive than Cisco Wireless. Cisco APs are cheaper, but the controller raises the solution price to be almost equal to Meraki.
Meraki is subscription-based and requires constant internet access to manage the system. If the annual license expires, the APs will work, but you can't manage them or read reports of the Meraki portal.
Cisco Wireless is a one-time payment for the hardware with annual support payments. if you have a small office with only a few APs needed, you can use the Cisco Mobility Express Controller (which uses one of the APs or a Catalyst Switch as the controller) but that has a limit of 100 APs.