Meraki Dashboard Reviews

I would say the ease of use is the most valuable feature. It's very easy to set up and get up and running. 

The downside to the simplicity is that you can't get as granular as you could with the Cisco APs. They don't have a command line interface, or CLI, so you can't just go into the CLI and copy and paste a bunch of commands. You have to do it through the dashboard. That would be the biggest downside.

Their biggest improvement needs to be their documentation. With Cisco, for example, you can just Google whatever image your controller is on. You can say, "I want an 8.5 config guide," and they will give you a PDF that goes from A to Z, with everything you need to know in one place for that software image. You can just open up the guide, do a search for whatever you're looking for, and boom, it'll take you to it. Meraki, on the other hand, does not do that, so if you want to learn anything, you kind of have to know what it is you're looking for to begin with. It's just a webpage database of articles and you've got to basically find what you're looking for. I would love to just have a guide for each software release as opposed to me having to hunt it out.

I've been using this solution for about a year and a half now. 

The stability has been amazing. I don't have to manage it a 10th as much as I have to manage my Cisco stuff.

It's very scalable. We have dozens of employees using the dashboard because each location has its own technician and they have access to their location.

I did 99% of the setup. The only thing I had to get help with was for some of the security guys to do their stuff, but it's really easy to set up. That's the great thing about Meraki et al. It is super easy, almost just straight out of the box. You can watch an eight minute video and have an access point up and running. Getting into the nitty gritty is a little harder. When you want to start doing radio profiles and power control, that gets a little more convoluted. It's easy once you know where to look in the dashboard, though. The hard part is knowing where to find the granular stuff, but the initial setup is super easy.

I would say that once you get it really scaled out, one person can maintain it, but that's not how we do it. The security guy handles the firewall part, the voice guy handles the voice part, and I handle the wireless part.

You don't have to pay for the dashboard. You pay for a license, and an access point comes with it. You use the free dashboard to manage those access points.

My advice to those considering this solution is that if you want a set it and forget it solution, this is great. If you want a solution that you can get into the minutia and adjust at a really super granular level, this is not the solution for you.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for WiFi. It’s the only thing we use. We have eight Meraki’s for WiFi and use this as a dashboard. We have the devices in the dashboard when we link up to the WiFi.

Principally it is for delivering the internet and for the sites to be standard in the company. We have a firewall, servers, storage, and backup all in the cloud.

I like the configuration capabilities.

The implementation process is good.

The cloud security is excellent.

It’s very stable and reliable.

The scalability is good.

I can’t recall needing anything specific to be improved. Maybe in six months, we might have a different opinion.

I’d like the product to allow for other solutions to be integrated with the dashboard as well.

I’ve been using the solution since 2015.

The solution has been quite stable. We haven’t had issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn’t crash or freeze. It’s reliable and the performance has been good.

The product can scale if you need it to. It’s not a problem at all.

We have approximately 80 employees using the solution right now.

We have local technical support. We haven’t had an issue with them.

It’s neither easy nor difficult to set up. It’s got a moderate level of difficulty when it comes to implementation.

The pricing is good. It’s reasonable. We don’t have an issue with the costs. I’m not sure of the exact cost, however, it’s my understanding the Meraki WiFi is around $800. That’s for a three-year license. It’s about $150 a year.

We are a Cisco customer and work with local Cisco partners.

I have friends in other companies and I do recommend this solution to them. Cisco Meraki is the best solution. Other partners from banks, for example, also recommend this solution. I am very happy with this product.

I’d rate the solution ten out of ten. It’s the best.

I use Meraki Dashboard to manage our Cisco Meraki devices. It is where I handle the setup and configuration of wireless networks, security settings, and more. The real-time monitoring helps me keep an eye on the network's performance, making troubleshooting and issue resolution a breeze.

What I love most about the Meraki Dashboard are its user-friendly features. Configuring wireless networks is a breeze, and troubleshooting is made easy with insights into RF parameters and roaming issues. The simplicity of the dashboard makes configuration a quick task, and the ability to perform packet captures is a game-changer for in-depth troubleshooting. Overall, it is a go-to solution for efficiently managing and monitoring our network.

One area that could use improvement in the Meraki Dashboard is user-friendliness when navigating to port configurations. While it is functional, the process could be more intuitive and straightforward. After using it for three years, I find that the user interface for configuring ports might benefit from some enhancements to make it more user-friendly and efficient. Clarifying the GUI and simplifying the settings would be a great step forward in improving the overall experience in managing switch configurations.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for three years.

I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of the solution as a nine out of ten. We have approximately 20 users at our company.

We switched from Cisco Prime to Meraki due to continuous improvement, better features, and enhanced integration capabilities. Meraki's dynamic approach aligns well with our need for ongoing advancements and scalability. Unlike the appliance-based nature of Cisco Prime, Meraki offers easier deployment, making it more cost-effective and adaptable to evolving technologies.

I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as an eight out of ten. The time it takes to deploy the Meraki solution can vary, but it is generally quicker than traditional setups.  It takes about a day to deploy it. For a full integration of the Meraki solution, typically two people are needed.

Meraki Dashboard is fairly priced. It is not too expensive.

Overall, I would rate Meraki Dashboard as an eight out of ten. It is a great solution but could use slight improvement.

I'm a consultant. When a customer moves buildings, I help them understand what they're going to need for the new building. We put them in touch with all the right companies that can help put that together.

This solution is usually deployed in the cloud.

Meraki provides the most features. It's helpful to be able to see that your network is online. Something I love about Meraki is on all the Meraki switches in the dashboard, you can see what their current data transfer rates are, and you can run cable tests from it. We've used the cable test function numerous times. It's fantastic.

One of the things we love about Meraki is that we work a lot with audio visual systems for new buildings. We find that Meraki has all the features you need to be able to enable complex network protocols for AV equipment. We deal with a streaming product over IP, and Meraki is fantastic at that. With wireless presentation, you can set Bonjour and mDNS replication really easily on your wireless network and have it traverse different VLANs and different wireless servers. It's fabulous, but you have to know how to do it.

It's a very complex system. Customers have told me that sometimes there are lots of advanced features that are available and that you can change in the dashboard, but sometimes it's very hard to know what they are. It would be very helpful if next to a lot of the settings, they had a button you could click on, and it would explain what that setting actually does and how it affects your network.

Particularly when you're in the dashboard and particularly when you're looking at wireless networks, they have so many advanced options and they're hard to understand. A lot of people don't know what beacon intervalling is or even basic things like channels. 

Meraki has good documentation on their website, but if it was better linked with the dashboard, it would make it a lot simpler. Small businesses that we deal with use Ubiquiti. In their dashboard, next to every setting you can see what that setting does, which is really helpful. DrayTek is like that as well.

We always employ a third party who knows the system inside and out. If you apply it yourself, it would take you forever. From my perspective, that would be the number one thing I would want to see improved as a high-level person, because it would save us a lot of money if we didn't have to employ a third party.

I have been using this solution since before it was purchased by Cisco.

I would give technical support an 8 out of 10. It's very good. We're very lucky. There are a couple of people who are based in Australia who are part of Meraki support, and they're easy to get a hold of and very helpful.

The reason I would mark them down by two points is that sometimes the system is a little bit automated, so it's hard to get to the person you want to talk to. They probably need more support staff, like with most companies. The response time can be a little bit slow sometimes.

Initial setup is very complex.

Every time we've deployed it, we've had to employ third parties to do it for us.

My view is that it's expensive, but it's the best.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

Every time we've deployed it, it's fantastic. It works great. You just have to understand that it's complex, but all systems are complex. Palo Alto is complex, Arista is complex, Extreme Networks is complex.

I would never recommend Meraki to someone who only has 100 users. They would need to have 300 users. For a small number of users, it's expensive, it's complex, and you really need to be able to afford to pay someone who knows how to use it. If you have 300 users, you can have a full-time network engineer.

If you want the best and you have the money, then get it.

The solution is used to monitor our devices.

The most valuable features are the ease of use and a single-pane-of-glass that allows us to identify issues across the entire network from one dashboard. We can access the dashboard from any network.

The solution has a limited routing table and needs improvement by increasing the numbers as well as providing a summarization for the table.

I would like to have some features that enable the customer to choose the MTU. This is extremely helpful as it is not currently possible to do this from the customer side. We can see that this will be useful for setting up the MTU for various conditions, particularly for voice and any traffic manager that can alter our routing table.

The routing for calls was limited due to certain protocols, so a big review was conducted. Especially for advertising, the routing table and receiving routing tables from internal BGP or external BGP, enhancing this would be helpful. We also collect everything. We only have the option for BGP and BGP is not available in the routing mode, it is a routed model. All features such as a concentrator mode are included, however concentrator mode only has one cable, so we cannot control it. For example, if we want to connect one connection to concentrator mode, we have to do it manually from the firewall side, not from the concentrator mode or Meraki side. It would be helpful if we could add one connection for the concentrator mode to be managed from the Meraki Dashboard, not from the firewall such as Fortinet or Palo Alto.

I have been using the solution for one year.

I give the stability a nine out of ten.

I give the scalability a seven out of ten.

The solution is designed for a midsize organization.

The technical support is good.

Positive

I give the initial setup a seven out of ten. 

We sometimes encounter some unexpected problems during the initial setup, particularly with some devices. We should create a reset button to connect them to the dashboard. This is definitely an issue for us, as sometimes the device is not directly connected to the dashboard. We have to restart the device. Additionally, if we change one connection, it may become static, and we need to reset the device. Therefore, we need someone to do this on-site.

Deployment takes around 30 minutes per switch and requires one person per site.

I give the solution a one out of ten for pricing. The solution is currently the most expensive on the market.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

Two people are required for maintenance.

The solution is useful for medium size organizations, is user-friendly, easy to monitor, and doesn't require any configuration. I recommend the solution to others.

Meraki is a networking device which is cloud managed. It's a kind of software defined networking device. You connect to it via the cloud and then you have some dashboard services available from the cloud provider, from Meraki. We have traditional networking devices and we use Meraki for other purposes. I'm the company manager of network services for Europe, India, and Africa and we're a customer of Meraki. 

I like that there is great visibility on the dashboard and you immediately see when something is going down. If you want to dive deeper and get more details you can. Because this is a cloud solution, you have everything configured and there's nothing we really need to configure ourselves to get the information we need.

I've been using this solution for six years. 

I find the solution very scalable. We have both internal and external users. Internally, we have five admins and externally we have about 1,000 users. Because it's outsourced, we probably have around 40 administrators who can log into the system, due to our 24/7 support model. We have approximately 20 locations here in Europe and Russia which are my responsibility, and there are probably maybe 200 end users behind that.

technical support? Are you satisfied? Not satisfied with anything?

Alexander: Yes, I'm satisfied.

The initial setup is very straightforward, it probably took a few hours to set up the first devices. After that it goes very quickly. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use Meraki Dashboard for office network management. The solution is full SaaS services deployed on the Cisco Meraki cloud.

The dashboard is a valuable feature because it is fully SaaS. This means we can access it from anywhere and we don't have to worry about the infrastructure. This is something that is already available in Cisco regularly, in the old version of Cisco, and something that Meraki sold. The hardware of Meraki is very good quality. Cisco is implementing new features into the dashboard from time to time. The best quality of the Meraki Dashboard is its high level of service. 

The cost of the solution is high and can be improved.

I have been using the solution for five years.

I give the stability of the solution a nine out of ten.

The support is quick, responsive, and user-friendly. It's been a pleasure working with Cisco Meraki Support. They always provide a response and answers. Even when we need to replace devices, they do it quickly.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward for someone with experience.

Depending on the architecture of the network the deployment can take from one hour to one working day.

Meraki Dashboard isn't a cheap product, but the quality is worth the price. I can't say if it's expensive or not, because everyone understands that quality costs.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We currently have two people using the solution.

Just as Mercedes is known for its high-quality cars, Cisco is known for its high-quality networking hardware. If we're looking for a reliable network, we can't go wrong with Cisco equipment. Hardware and software come from different sources, but together they create a winning solution. Cisco provides the hardware and Meraki provides the software. I believe that there are cheaper products available, but the quality is not the same. In the five years I have been using Meraki I have not checked the competitors. I am not familiar with the pricing for alternative solutions, so I can't compare where Meraki Dashboard fits in terms of cost.

I recommend the solution to others. Meraki Dashboard is a quality solution, intuitive, easy to implement, and has great support.

The primary use is to have centralized control over all the Meraki devices and services on your network. Primarily I use it for security configuration and reporting.  

Very intuitive, complete overview of entire network including branch offices. Ability to drill down into events and alerts and lookup in the knowledge-base. Create tickets and track them.

I think that the most valuable part about the dashboard is the analytics. A firm that I was doing some IT consulting work for was hit with a ransomware attack and this thing was amazing. After we got things cleaned up, we found that the actors had some IP numbers somewhere on the West Coast. They started to try to get back into the network and Meraki was there to say, "You know what? This same malicious IP number is knocking at your door again." We were able to take care of that and block them off so they could not access the network and that problem was put to rest.

The biggest problem is the absence of a VPN client like AnyConnect with the device. The Meraki rep that I dealt with actually agreed. He said a lot of people are complaining about the fact that they had to work with a separate VPN.  

Here is the problem. Let's say you have got to deploy and install a VPN client on 50 workstations. You physically have to go to every one of the 50 workstations and do the VPN deployment manually. You can not just push it out through an email or a group policy. That means you have to touch every machine and configure it based on the type of network card it has and make a whole bunch of other settings.  

Manually deploying the VPN is about a 20-minute procedure and that is after you learn how to do it. By comparison, if I wanted to roll out 1000 VPN clients with a normal Cisco device, the Cisco AnyConnect software can be just pushed out with some easy instructions and away you go.  

I think the VPN client is really the only true issue I had with the product itself. The connection that I get from home is sometimes a little shaky when I have to use it remotely, but it is impossible to put the blame on that connection as due to Meraki.  

I have been using this product for about a year.  

We never had any issues at all with the stability of Meraki. It is self-healing. If the power goes out or whatever, it is very good at handling that kind of issue. It is easy to learn, easy to read the reports, and it is easy to use the dashboard.  

I had worked with Fortinet and some other firewalls — Linksys of course, going all the way back to the old WatchGuard. I think Meraki really kicked off the whole cloud-based managed device movement and everyone else is just hopping on to do the same kind of thing. SonicWall and Fortinet and all the other newer competitors just followed along when they figured it was something valuable. If Meraki could get their VPN sorted out, I think they would have themselves a flagship product that was really the leader of the pack.  

I have not really had the opportunity to test the scalability first-hand. We were are a small office, so I never really got a chance to try and add hundreds of users. If that had been the case, Meraki probably would have suggested that we go to the next model up because we needed a more robust system.

The configuration of the VPN between branche offices was wonderful. You just click on the address and it basically does everything itself. For a non-engineer type person, pretty much anybody in IT can configure these things once you do the webinar. It is easy and intuitive and as far as I have been able to work with the scalability, I think a lot of the product.  

When I did get to engage the technical support people at Meraki, I would give them a 10-out-of-10. The technical support was great.  

I have been working with firewalls for a long time. I worked with the Cisco 5500 series. I worked with a lot of their older stuff back in the day. Mostly my job for the previous 10 years was not to be the supplier and was not the implementer. Rather I was more of a consultant, so I never really had the opportunity to get the hands-on experience I have now.  

The setup had a few different stages to take care of. The first step was to create a VPN, a branch office connection, and then a better sister location. I bought another MX to act as a backup, so we had that configured as a hot spot or a failover. Then I configured the VPN so that users would be able to work from home. That VPN configuration is probably the one thing that I did not much like about the product. It almost makes no sense that it does not have its own VPN client. You have to use the Microsoft VPN client, which is a bit of a pain. If it has to be that way there surely has to be a better way to integrate it.  

With the main Cisco stuff, you just download the VPN client and it has got your anti-virus component and your VPN client. That is just not the case with Meraki. I know they have been talking about trying to work that out and get that installed. Right now it is a sorta major glitching point.  

I did not configure the product originally. Somebody else did it and they did not configure it very well. For example, there is a feature to protect against ransomware and that feature was not even turned on in the device. After I realized it was not working optimally, I got together with the Meraki folks and they got in there and reconfigured it. It became a true AI device at that point. There were really a lot of things wrong with the initial configuration, but that ransomware piece was a pretty major feature to miss.  

After Meraki helped me reconfigure everything, I felt much more comfortable after that. It was done by one of their resellers and I guess I should have gone that way out of the gate.  

For a small MX 64, it is maybe $300 to $400 a year. It is nothing really outrageous. I was originally put off that you had to pay for a subscription, but I am a veteran thinking back 10 years ago when there was no such thing as subscriptions. Now just about everything seems to be going that route.  

I could see a firewall device and that is sort of comforting. I do not agree with the solution being like a switch and virtually invisible. Like you could have a switch-up in the ceiling somewhere that nobody knows is there. Then all of a sudden it gets tripped and just stops working. You don't see a device go down. But again, it is not just Meraki that is going with the subscription scheme. It is also other companies like SonicWall. They are all going to subscription-based licensing.  

For small businesses, I would recommend Meraki over pretty much anything else on the market.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is worst and ten is the best, I would rate Meraki Dashboard as an eight-out-of-ten.