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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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (7th)
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
6.8
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Networking (SDN) (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
Rohit Ghorpade - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Network Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
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.
Mageshwaran S - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at airtel
Experienced streamlined network management with enhanced usability and room for improved security features
On the security features, when compared to Fortinet, they have more patterns and AI-generated ones. Meraki SD-WAN is slowly implementing AI, but it is not yet full-fledged. If AI comes into the picture, it will be helpful. I work with Fortinet where with a single command you can deploy the entire SD-WAN along with FortiGuard within minutes. For AI, it can discover and connect, but currently, we are doing it manually. In Meraki SD-WAN, some features require additional licenses and subscriptions. If these were bundled together, such as 10 or 20 licenses, it would be very helpful for a mini branch or small campus area coverage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"The solution is brilliant, the way it calculates its paths and trails is great."
"The stability is the main feature of Citrix SD-WAN. You can also upgrade the data packages or have less transmission."
"The zero-touch deployment is most valuable for us."
"The VPN and the load balancing are the most valuable features."
"The SD-WAN solution as it is already is quite feature-rich and the upgrade process is very simple."
"The most valuable feature is its reliability."
"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."
"It allows you to combine two asymmetrical connections."
"The most valuable feature is application awareness."
"The dashboard is user-friendly. It's very simple to use."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of setting up Meraki SD-WAN."
"The solution has many features available."
"Meraki SD-WAN is user friendly."
"If there are multiple network connectivities in an organization, Meraki creates an AutoVPN. It creates a channel automatically."
"Meraki can react fast to emerging trends."
"SD-WAN is a complete enterprise solution for securing traffic."
 

Cons

"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"Its stability could be better."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"Citrix SD-WAN's knowledge base has a few missing things, so you may need to seek help from support."
"The price is the only thing that could be improved. Citrix is not a cheap solution."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"The reports need to be improved. We need to have them customized but they don't have that right now. I would like for them to have better system predictions. We don't have that right now. My system may be working fine right now but after making some changes, that can change."
"Even though the monitoring is pretty good, there is some room for improvement there."
"I would like to see support for additional reporting."
"The communication around the life cycle would have been really helpful. The main issue we have had is related to the life cycle because some of the things that we are using were discontinued. They were discontinued within a year after we had purchased it, which is a bit painful. If we had known that, we would've made some other decisions."
"Enhancements are needed to improve the stability."
"We have had some problems doing the implementation."
"With Meraki, it's more of a basic connectivity. It doesn't have all the feature sets that a Cisco SD-WAN solution has. It's limited."
"You need to have internet access to configure the solution. You cannot do it locally, there should be a local option."
"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."
"This solution can only support up to two WAN ports."
"I think they should enhance the security."
"In Meraki SD-WAN, we have some limitations with the traffic shaping capabilities."
"Sometimes we face issues with VPN connections when someone connects from a different time zone, like from Georgia to the Middle East."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The solution is expensive."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It is not too pricey."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The price of the subscription should be cheaper."
"It's a little bit on the high side compared to the other products."
"It depends on the scale. In our case, it would have been better if we had known about the life cycling steps, but otherwise, it is worth the money."
"The price is relatively expensive."
"As NetScaler is now, I find it quite pricey."
"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."
"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."
"I believe that Citrix SD-WAN is a good investment, but I do not have the information to be more specific."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and product lines or prices are readily available on their website."
"Regarding pricing, Meraki SD-WAN is quite competitive, especially compared to solutions like Fortinet. However, it's essential to consider that Meraki requires cloud orchestration, which adds to the overall cost. Overall, it's one of the most competitive solutions from Cisco for SD-WAN."
"The pricing is fair, but if they can make it less it would be even more attractive."
"The licenses cost a fortune."
"The price of Meraki SD-WAN could improve, it is expensive when compared to other solutions on the market, such as Aruba."
"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."
"They have a baseline software license, and then they've got an SD-WAN software license, and then they've got an advanced security software license. They're low cost, and they'll provide any amount of flexibility that you want from a modeling perspective for payment. Typically, it's either annually or multi-year, but they are a lower-cost company. They're not the most expensive by far."
"The price of this solution is good, it is not expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
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 advice do you have for others considering Citrix SD-WAN?
If a customer already has Citrix NetScaler and is not looking to change anything in their existing environment, we pr...
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?
When compared for the long run, it is reasonable, but for the short term, such as one year, it is costlier, especiall...
What needs improvement with Meraki SD-WAN?
The pricing of Meraki SD-WAN depends compared to which vendors, because it's a bit pricey, so not all retail would go...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Citrix CloudBridge, WOC, NetScaler SD-WAN
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Riverbed, Cato Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in WAN Optimization. Updated: March 2026.
884,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.