Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN vs Ekahau Site Survey comparison

The compared Cisco and Ekahau solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #4 in Wireless LAN , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 13.0% mindshare in the category. Ekahau is ranked #1 in NM , with an average rating of 8.2, and holds a 48.3% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Ekahau users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 8, 2024

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN and Ekahau Site Survey cater to network management and planning within the wireless solutions market. Ekahau Site Survey holds a slight edge in network planning capabilities, but Cisco Meraki is notable for its ease of management and deployment.

Features: Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN offers centralized cloud management, a user-friendly dashboard, and Layer 7 security, streamlining configuration and network monitoring. It facilitates network segmentation into SSIDs, supports RADIUS, and provides efficient network analytics. Ekahau Site Survey specializes in network planning with Autoplanner, customizable reports, and precise importation of floor plans. It excels in dual-band spectrum analysis, optimizing site surveys with high accuracy.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN should enhance its logging features and include more advanced enterprise-level configurations. Users suggest improvements in technical support response times and the detail of logs. Ekahau Site Survey could reduce its resource consumption and expand compatibility for mixed outdoor-indoor environments. Enhanced UI elements and clearer report explanations are also needed.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is deployable in private, public, and hybrid cloud environments, granting users flexibility with diverse infrastructure needs. While its customer service is generally well-received, support quality can be inconsistent. Ekahau Site Survey focuses on on-premises deployment with positive feedback on its prompt, effective technical service.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is priced higher than some competitors due to hardware and licensing costs, challenging enterprises with tight budgets. Despite the expense, users often see ROI through streamlined network management. Ekahau Site Survey, while also costly, is justified by its comprehensive planning and analysis tools, offering significant ROI particularly in larger WiFi environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Wireless LAN Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Wireless LAN

November 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Juniper Mist Wireless Acces...

Mindshare comparison

Wireless LAN

Network Modeling and Simulation

Featured Reviews

Gyan Sharma

Assistant Programmer at Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha

Offers good performance, good solution and smooth implementation

I do have a suggestion: it would be helpful to have even stronger security features to help protect against interference from other nearby access points that aren't part of our network. If there are access points from other brands installed nearby; they can cause interference and disrupt the range of our Mist access points. So, the security features could be stronger, especially in terms of authentication. The connectivity is excellent, but security needs improvement. In future releases, integrating more AI features would be beneficial. If Mist had stronger AI features, it could provide better security against network threats and cyberattacks. So, this solution still needs to improve its AI capabilities. It would be great if the AI could improve the range of the access points, and auto-protect functionality should be there to avoid interference by other nearby access points and enhance threat detection. In the future, I'd like to see stronger threat detection features integrated with Mist, as well as better detection of nearby access points that might cause interference.

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Danila Fradeani

Strategie, Innovazione e Customer Experience â€“ Analytics & Customer Experience (CEX) Manager at Telecom Italia

Simple-to-use platform with a centralized management system

Deploying Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is relatively easy for our colleagues in the delivery department. They face challenges in planning, learning critical issues, and finding solutions during deployment. However, our team has gained valuable experience handling such deployments over the past three to four years. Currently, I am not directly involved in the configuration, design, or delivery analysis. However, maintenance may present more challenges for us. Our primary proposal for network solutions typically involves Cisco Meraki because our team has a long-standing familiarity and confidence in Cisco technologies. However, we also work with Fortinet, depending on the specific requirements of our customers. We offer both options to ensure we meet the diverse needs of our clients. I rate it an eight out of ten.

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ALEXANDRE VIANNA

CTO at Redeswirelessbrasil

Good optimization capabilities, automatic network planning tool and saves time

Ekahau needs to enhance the view of materials and make some adjustments to the reports. Currently, it's possible to make changes to the Word report using Python, but it could be improved. For example, when I create an AP on a survey report, information like the cable view, distance, and support assessments could be enhanced. Only one comment about Ekahau Optimizer. It needs improvement. I tried to upload site products, and for five products, I needed to involve Ekahau's supply chain. When I try to solve that, it's not possible. For example, I uploaded one product for a large bank, and the optimizer didn't finish. I needed to involve Ekahau support, and they sent me the file two or three days after I opened the case.

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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

"Mist AI is a very powerful feature. Juniper is the only company that has introduced AI into networking."

"You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment."

"It's well-detailed in terms of troubleshooting logs."

"It provides private network access, helping us protect our company’s devices."

"Overall, we've been very pleased with the performance."

"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."

"For the most part, it does what it's supposed to do, and I like it. It's a great product."

"The solution is very secure."

More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points pros

"If you're trying to identify one of the switches or pinpoint a computer or pinpoint something, you could find it just like that and change the IP address. It's easiest to do it that way."

"The settings of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN can be very granular. You can lock down and block devices with the controls. For example, we have four different wireless settings, such as guest, employee, security, and backup. For example, the settings for the employees, if they use laptops, they're required to have certain settings, such as an antivirus installed. If they do not then Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN will not let them connect. This is very good protection because the network works on the bringing your own device(BYOD) principle. It's a BYOD environment now, and you also don't want them to bring infection into the environment because these people are connecting to the LAN via wireless connections. We have to be careful because we're managing it, we have to be very strict with regards to the rules and policies."

"The product has been very stable over the years."

"It enables quick deployment within all branches for the users."

"The single dashboard of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is the most valuable feature for me."

"Its ability to be cloud-managed is the most valuable feature so if there's a reconfiguration or an issue, we have excellent visibility into the network and we can usually resolve the problem online without having to go onsite."

"The solution is trustworthy. I find it easy and secure."

"The primary value lies in the ease of configuration; these products seamlessly integrate, and work well together."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN pros

"Ekahau Site Survey can be crucial for troubleshooting our Wi-Fi network."

"The most valuable function is the site survey capability."

"The planning feature is useful because it's very affordable."

"The troubleshooting tools are the most valuable feature of the solution."

"I like that our users can send us a floor map. Sometimes it's not feasible to travel to another country where the users are based. So, the floor map is very useful. It's a fantastic product."

"The most valuable features of the Ekahau Site Survey for us are the combination of using the tool."

"I like Ekahau's interface and the reports it can generate."

"Ekahau lets you create heat maps without doing the initial survey. It makes the task easier."

More Ekahau Site Survey pros

Cons

"The solution is expensive."

"Juniper should make the products more affordable."

"The price could be better."

"There is room for improvement in terms of support and installation."

"Supporting multiple protocols would be beneficial."

"Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points’ support services need improvement."

"Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) could improve if the MIST platform had a built-in master key. This would be an advantage."

"The product should include adaptive Wi-Fi to show a more accurate location."

More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points cons

"In a future release, they should offer a next-generation UTM, where you can manage all items and the network, and have it include a lot of security features like fingerprinting functionality."

"The price could be slightly better, but then again, we negotiate deals every time so the market price isn't really relevant."

"Initially, I liked some of the filtering features, but that's one of the components that we ran into problems with."

"The issue primarily revolves around failure to renew the license on time, leading to service termination."

"There is only one particular thing that needs improvement. Sometimes, for example, when you need to open a ticket, although it's under the umbrella of Cisco, you still need to go to the Meraki support."

"Meraki should share their viability roadmap. It is really hard to know which functionality will appear or when they will be available. It is also hard to know which features are available now but are not visible on the dashboard."

"Integration with the corporate LAN where Catalyst products are installed is a major challenge."

"Currently, only a limited number of clients can connect to these devices."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN cons

"The cloud takes a lot of time to upload the site survey, and we regularly face issues with syncing to the optimizer."

"Lacks an in-app photo app or a way to upload photos while carrying out an active onsite survey."

"I am having problems importing maps to Ekahau Site Survey. Importing is one of the first steps in using the solution and it is getting stuck. The problem could be that our maps are large with many layers."

"Ekahau Site Survey is an expensive solution, and its pricing should be improved."

"Sometimes there is a cancellation between two signals that the solution is not able to monitor correctly, this could improve in the future."

"In all of our buildings, whenever we deploy wireless access points, we also have to deploy wireless intrusion detections. The Ekahau Site Survey tool doesn't allow us to differentiate between the access point and the intrusion detection device. That's because they're the same devices, but they're configured differently for the type of usage. That's one area that I would ask them to improve. They should allow the identification of access points versus wireless intrusion detection."

"Most features are there, but the network adapter support should be better. Ekahau should support all laptops and versions. There's an issue with the driver too."

"Our CTO was not real happy with their support."

More Ekahau Site Survey cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product price as a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is inexpensive, and ten is expensive. It is a reasonably priced tool."

"The solution is expensive."

"I rate Juniper Mist's pricing a ten out of ten since it is expensive."

"The pricing is too high."

"We pay maybe 1000 SEK per year, per access point."

"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten."

"The pricing is something Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) can work on. The pricing is very high compared to the competition."

"The pricing is fair."

More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points pricing and cost advice

"Users have to pay a yearly license fee for the solution."

"The box itself is very cheap. The question here is about the subscription because this is what you will pay every year. In the initial year, for purchasing, Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN gives you an attractive price. While during renewal, we are not given much discount."

"These units cost between $800 and $900 per device and on top of that, you have to pay yearly fees for maintenance."

"We don't like the licensing model and we think that it needs to be improved significantly."

"The price of the product could be cheaper."

"The pricing is on the higher side."

"At this price point, I would not mind seeing a four-way channel, instead of a 3x3 or a 4x4, like they do in the Cisco Aironet system with their other brand. For the same price point in this other Cisco brand, it is a lot cheaper, and you can get a slightly better throughput than you can with these."

"If you are wondering if Meraki can work for you, contact one of their representatives because they will do onsite trials where you can set up their system. If it does not work, you can send it back to them for no charge."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN pricing and cost advice

"Ekahau Site Survey is a really expensive solution."

"We pay $6,000 yearly for the licensing, but each piece of hardware, the Ekahau Sidekick, is $5,000."

"I believe that it is approximately $2,000 per year for us. I know we pay for it on an annual basis."

"The pricing is high."

"9,000 Euro per year."

"The licenses are a little pricey compared to iBwave, etc."

"That's a tricky thing. When it started off, we had one three-year license and one one-year license because we have two devices. Now, from my understanding, we can only renew every year or get a one-year license, and that cost varies. Being a government organization, we get a different cost than commercial. We have deployed it on Surface Pro tablets. So, the only other cost would be the hardware cost."

"The solution is less costly than one of its competitors."

More Ekahau Site Survey pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

20%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series)?

The solution is very secure.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series)?

Juniper Mist is cheaper than Meraki, placing it in the middle of the pack.

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What needs improvement with Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series)?

Supporting multiple protocols would be beneficial.

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What are pros and cons of Aruba 515 Series AP vs. Cisco Meraki or Extreme Networks?

Depends. I have personally used both Cisco and Aruba so I am familiar with them. Extreme I am not, so unless they h...

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Which is better - Cisco Wireless or Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN?

Cisco Wireless is very robust, very rugged, and can handle indoor and outdoor coverage extremely well. We found it to...

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How does Ruckus Wireless compare to Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN?

Cisco’s Meraki Virtual MX is a virtual instance of the Meraki SD-WAN appliance. We liked the Meraki. The Wifi APs are...

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What do you like most about Ekahau Site Survey?

We reviewed the maps as a team and determined if any changes needed to be made or if we could just replace APs as the...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Ekahau Site Survey?

The pricing and licensing of Ekahau are costly.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Ekahau Site Survey?

Ekahau could be improved by adding three-dimensional modeling, as we currently cannot view APIs in a three-dimensiona...

See all answers

Comparisons

Aruba Wireless vs Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points

Compared 18% of the time

Ruckus Wireless vs Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco Wireless vs Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points

Compared 4% of the time

Fortinet FortiAP vs Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points

Compared 4% of the time

Ubiquiti WLAN vs Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points

Compared 4% of the time

More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Competitors

Aruba Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 32% of the time

Ruckus Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 10% of the time

Mist AI and Cloud vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 7% of the time

Ubiquiti Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Competitors

AirMagnet Survey vs Ekahau Site Survey

Compared 66% of the time

iBwave Wi-Fi vs Ekahau Site Survey

Compared 26% of the time

RedSeal vs Ekahau Site Survey

Compared 4% of the time

More Ekahau Site Survey Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points

December 2024

Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points report

Download Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

December 2024

Download Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN product report

Buyer's Guide

Ekahau Site Survey

December 2024

Download Ekahau Site Survey product report

Also Known As

Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series), Mist Access Points

MR18, MR26, MR32, MR34, MR66, MR72, Meraki Wireless LAN, Meraki WLAN

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Juniper

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Cisco

Ekahau

Overview

Juniper Wireless Access Points work in conjunction with Juniper Mist Cloud Services and Mist AI to deliver premier wireless access capabilities. The Juniper Mist Edge extends microservices to the campus to bring agility and scale while enabling new applications at the edge.

Cisco Meraki access points are built from the highest grade components and carefully optimized for a seamless user experience. The outcome: faster connections, greater user capacity, more coverage, and fewer support calls. The Cisco Meraki dashboard gives visibility into the network users, their devices, and their applications. Armed with rich analytics, administrators can quickly create access control and application usage policies, optimizing both the end-user experience and network security.

Over 12 years in the making, ESSTM maintains its reputation as the easiest to use, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi design and maintenance tool for Wi-Fi professionals. With crystal clear heat maps and easy-to-use reports, ESS makes it simple to optimize Wi-Fi.

ESS allows you to plan and create Wi-Fi networks according to your performance and capacity requirements—taking into consideration the increasing amount of wireless clients and applications such as VoIP, HD video streaming and web browsing.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Advanced Medical Transport, Banco de Guayaquil, Baylor Scott & White Health, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Calligaris, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Del Papa Distributing, Department of Justice, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Hertz, K&L Gates , LightEdge, Lone Star College System, Management Science Associates, Mindtree, NBC Olympics, Quest, Sony Corporation, The Department of Education in Western Australia, Valley Proteins

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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.