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Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] vs Meraki SD-WAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Citrix SD-WAN [EOL]
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Meraki SD-WAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Networking (SDN) (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Rohit Ghorpade - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable solution for MCN controller but lacks technical supports, upgrades
There are a few things that can be improved, are domain-based routing and the slowness of virtual parts, and it may be due to the wrong configuration, which we have been unable to find out. Previously, we faced some issues with the slowness part. Apart from that, feature like end gateway level antivirus. We are currently using a NetFlow proxy to establish a virtual position for the NetFlow. Our current environment has many use cases, but we are not using them on the Citrix SD-WAN. When I navigate the NCL part, it involves configuration. I want to highlight this disadvantage. Sometimes, when we push the configuration, it tries to push it to all branch locations. This process takes a lot of time, nearly 30 minutes, to push a single change from the NCL. Overall, I don't think Citrix meets our use cases what we have. This is based on my feedback after using it for the past year and working on this Citrix SD-WAN. However, from my experience, it is the worst solution I have seen. There's no domain-based routing, which is horrible. That's why we are moving to other products. We have checked our use case requirements with Fortinet, Palo Alto, and they meet them. I will consider the PoC or another OEM. There are many things in the area you need to be prompt, like the automation part. If any link or device goes down, alerting notification, etc. We need to perform and highlight so many things to your management. This should be improved.
Martyn Walker - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"The UI is good."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"The best feature is the backup capability, where all of the users' computers are tied into a central data repository."
"The most valuable feature of Citrix SD-WAN is customization. You are able to customize the solution to your needs."
"It lowered our Internet costs and gave me the flexibility to choose providers based on each location's connectivity."
"The most valuable feature is its reliability."
"The SD-WAN solution as it is already is quite feature-rich and the upgrade process is very simple."
"The solution's most valuable feature is load balancing."
"The VPN and the load balancing are the most valuable features."
"The main advantage of Citrix SD-WAN is that it enables fast communication between our branches and data centers. And, with its cloud management features, it also makes the process of adding new branches into our company network much easier."
"Meraki SD-WAN saves costs for our customers and provides better connectivity."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki SD-WAN is the Auto VPN."
"If there are multiple network connectivities in an organization, Meraki creates an AutoVPN. It creates a channel automatically."
"The advantage you have with Cisco Meraki is that they take a lot of that complexity out of the backend."
"The solution is very stable."
"This product has a simple configuration that can be accessed through a web interface or the API."
"The dashboard is user-friendly. It's very simple to use."
"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."
 

Cons

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."
"Technical support is lacking."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"Given that Citrix SD-WAN solved all our problems by providing us with everything we needed to unify communications with our branches and data centers, I cannot suggest anything further in terms of improvements."
"Citrix SD-WAN's knowledge base has a few missing things, so you may need to seek help from support."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Overall, network security and next-generation firewall features are areas that they can improve on."
"Citrix SD-WAN does not have the SD-WAN with one optimization in a single license. Other competitors have this option and it should be added to this solution."
"The price could be improved, it's an expensive solution."
"I would like to either see the price reduced or have it packaged with other products to give better value for the money."
"The solution's licensing model could be improved."
"The VPN client could be improved."
"There are currently issues with NAT-Unfriendly situations on G4 networks that should be resolved."
"Meraki is lagging behind in using a single pipe from service providers. That is, it would be good if they could use both the internet leased line and broadband connectivity."
"When there is an issue, I find it difficult to figure out what is going wrong because the logs do not provide as much information as solutions from HP."
"The solution could be improved if it added more features, especially monitoring and reporting features."
"Meraki could make better use of virtual connect."
"I would like to see more flexibility in our choices of customization for our needs."
"They need to offer proper integration of the security features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The price is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"I'm not quite sure of the price ranges. Roughly, the hidden devices can scale up to $20K for one appliance. However, the branch CPs are USD $1,000 to $2,500."
"It's a little bit on the high side compared to the other products."
"I believe that Citrix SD-WAN is a good investment, but I do not have the information to be more specific."
"The license was a one-time purchase. It's expensive."
"Citrix SD-WAN is quite an affordable product."
"It would be helpful to have a demo license available for customers who want to prove the concept and conduct a proof of concept (POC) before committing to the solution. This is particularly important for customers in Egypt who often require a demonstration of the solution's features and compatibility with their needs before making any investment or incurring costs. Providing a demo license would allow customers to assess whether the solution would meet their needs or not."
"As NetScaler is now, I find it quite pricey."
"The price of the subscription should be cheaper."
"like everything else, it's negotiable."
"The pricing is fair, but if they can make it less it would be even more attractive."
"I am not aware of the licensing fees."
"For a pure SD-WAN solution, the pricing is competitive. However, our clients are on the lower tier in terms of budget, viewing IT more as a necessary expense rather than integral to their business. While Meraki's solution might be pricey for them, there aren't many cheaper, reliable options."
"The solution's pricing is in line with what we expected."
"This solution is more expensive than competitors."
"The licensing fees are approximately $1,000 USD annually."
"Our clients pay Meraki an annual licensing fee and the pricing is not too bad when compared to other products in the Cisco portfolio."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
24%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about Citrix SD-WAN?
It lowered our Internet costs and gave me the flexibility to choose providers based on each location's connectivity.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix SD-WAN?
It is on the expensive side. I would give it an eight out of ten in terms of costliness. In my region, the approximat...
What needs improvement with Citrix SD-WAN?
The solution's licensing model could be improved. Citrix SD-WAN is a good product from a technical point of view. How...
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 se...
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 ...
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 ex...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Citrix CloudBridge, WOC, NetScaler SD-WAN
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Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Cornerstone Home Lending Inc., Dallara, ecVision, Essar, Eurofred, Groupe Promutuel, HMSHost Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Ltd, Royal Caribbean International
École Jeannine Manuel
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