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 13.1% mindshare in the category. Ekahau is ranked #1 in NM , with an average rating of 8.1, and holds a 32.1% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Ekahau users who would recommend it.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Read 118 Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN reviews

17,496 Views
13,994 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Ekahau Site Survey

Read 35 Ekahau Site Survey reviews

4,345 Views
2,369 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Ekahau Site Survey

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Wireless LAN

February 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 Meraki Wireless LAN

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.1

Number of Reviews

118

Ranking in other categories

Wireless LAN (4th)

Ekahau Site Survey

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Modeling and Simulation (1st)

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN and Ekahau Site Survey aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is designed for Wireless LAN and holds a mindshare of 13.1%, up 12.3% compared to last year.
Ekahau Site Survey, on the other hand, focuses on Network Modeling and Simulation, holds 32.1% mindshare, down 40.1% since last year.

Wireless LAN

Network Modeling and Simulation

Featured Reviews

Mageshwaran S

Solution Architect at Bharti Airtel ·

Enables organizations to control many sites globally with a lean IT team and provides visibility into the user activities

The solution can handle only medium and small businesses. We face a bottleneck on the gateway while using the solution for large enterprises. The solution must be able to expand to larger enterprises. Currently, the MX device can support only up to 10,000 users. It would be good if it can go beyond 1 lakh users. Catalyst 9300 is coming on the Meraki Dashboard. The vendor must also bring in the 9400 and 9600 Catalyst series. It will be very helpful. We will not have any choke on the gateway. There is no active-active concept. It will be very helpful if the solution provides active-active. Now, we are doing an active-passive setup, which is a warm spare. If it is an active-active setup, the gateway bottleneck issue can be resolved. I would be able to segment the Wireless LAN IPs. It will help support 20,000 devices at a go. Meraki does not have a single dashboard. I need to port an on-premise controller. There is a bottleneck while scaling the product. I need to consider a lot of things.

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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

"The product offers HA solutions and redundancy features to ensure reliable operations."

"The most valuable thing to me is the stability of the product."

"The functionalities are quite professional and complete. It offers good integration with other Meraki products, like switches and the firewall. You can get an overview of all networks and the host. It's really great; nobody else can do that."

"The big draw is the ease of installation. It's easy to manage, and it's easy to implement."

"It has good security with its Layer 7 protections."

"The visibility of the site is most useful."

"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."

"It's simple to manage when there's a problem."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN pros

"Ekahau Site Survey is user-friendly."

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

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

"The ability to perform dual-band spectrum analysis while conducting the standard WiFi site survey is a tremendous time saver."

"We are satisfied with the way this product is working."

"I have found the most valuable feature is the RF interference and integration capabilities."

"The OEM dashboard has a lot of useful features to troubleshoot the Wi-Fi."

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

More Ekahau Site Survey pros

Cons

"We have used technical support for some issues but not many times."

"I would like to see Cisco Meraki improve the accessibility by region level here in Latin America."

"Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN could improve by having more granularity in terms of the data displayed. However, I understand that with Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, you need to have a compromise point to what are the functions that you're going to provide to the users versus ease of use. More granularity in terms of the data and the things that you can do to the devices would be helpful. For example, when we wanted to make a change, restriction, or segregation within Palo Alto, we can go to the level of detail that we want. The amount of detail provided is amazing, it is very granular. However, it comes with much more difficulty, it requires a technical understanding of the environment compared to Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN."

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

"Meraki is still very much a small office type of solution. It is not a fit for large enterprise networks, as it doesn't have tunneling functionalities."

"The way Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN groups certain things, as far as the devices for either monitoring and or configuring them should be done better. They should be grouped a little bit differently because if I want to configure something, a different setting on an SSID, I have to go to their specific area where I would have thought it should be clumped as a dropdown menu in another area."

"The only concern is when the license has expired and it will no longer function, the entire network goes down, without any notification, or warning."

"The initial setup of the solution can be improved and made easier."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN cons

"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."

"The support is an area in need of improvement."

"I wish the solution was better at making different survey modes."

"We were actually able to recover some access points in some areas that were over saturated. So I I can leave at least two areas where we probably had twice as many access points as we needed to. So we actually redesigned it and pulled some of those access points where I don't know that there was any proper planning done when they were initially deployed. It was before my time, but it just seemed way over saturated, and they were all beaten on each other. So Site wasn't helping. It was probably hurting, and we saved equipment that we could then deploy somewhere else. This can be improved."

"They should improve the iPad application because it's unstable. Also, Ekahau could be better integrated with other vendors."

"The report generation has room for improvement and is missing small details."

"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."

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

More Ekahau Site Survey cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is expensive."

"Cisco Meraki requires either a one year or three year license for a standard enterprise license."

"Cost could be better."

"We pay a yearly license fee for the solution."

"Meraki is a very good solution, but the price is quite high for small markets."

"This solution is quite costly and there are costs in addition to the licensing fees."

"Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is an expensive solution."

"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

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

"9,000 Euro per year."

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

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

"Since we are an academic institute, we get better prices and discounts from Cisco, but not Ekahau."

"We pay a licensing fee."

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

"This solution is not cheap. If you only need an occasional site survey, you are better off contracting a wireless engineering professional that has one."

More Ekahau Site Survey pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 have some feature that I need or want, I wouldn't consider them. Do you have expe...

See all answers

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 be very reliable and to consistently run very efficiently. Cisco Wireless helpe...

See all answers

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 a great feature. The dashboard is a simple interface and easy to learn. It feat...

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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 they are. We got into this by upgrading our access points to Meraki, and we wanted ...

See all answers

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-dimensional perspective. They need to include backhaul features and improve the ease of in...

See all answers

Comparisons

Aruba Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 32% of the time

Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 18% of the time

Ruckus Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 11% of the time

Ubiquiti Wireless vs Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Competitors

AirMagnet Survey vs Ekahau Site Survey

Compared 63% of the time

iBwave Wi-Fi vs Ekahau Site Survey

Compared 29% of the time

RedSeal vs Ekahau Site Survey

Compared 4% of the time

More Ekahau Site Survey Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN

February 2025

Download Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN product report

Buyer's Guide

Ekahau Site Survey

February 2025

Download Ekahau Site Survey product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

Overview

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.

Cisco

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.

Ekahau

Sample Customers

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

Presidio, Planet Earth, Ruckus

Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ruckus, Cisco and others in Wireless LAN. Updated: February 2025.

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