Meraki Dashboard Reviews

We use a private cloud that is owned by Cisco. We create an account and we can add devices via their MAC address. We then can configure them even before we take them out of the box or when they are on site. It saves a lot of time.

The main use for the Meraki Dashboard is instead of the traditional Cisco way of configuring things where you need a common line, with the Cisco Meraki Dashboard you can configure them through the web. You only need to configure it by doing some checkmarks and typing some IP addresses. It becomes a lot easier when configuring the whole equipment. You can also know the device locations of where they are installed. It will give you a Google Maps location of where the devices are.

Meraki Dashboard has improved organizations because the configuration of the solution is very easy. It has saved a lot of time.

Meraki Dashboard does not require a lot of maintenance. Cisco tells communicates through the Meraki Dashboard web client, it will automatically send updates to the equipment. They will send you an email on what day the updates will take place. If you want to proceed, you can click on accept, or you can decline them and schedule the updates at another time.

I have been happy with all the features that Meraki Dashboard provides.

Meraki Dashboard could improve the user interface by making it more user-friendly. The configuration can at times be difficult.

Also their support team could be better with response times.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for approximately eight months.

The stability is very good in the Meraki Dashboard. 

For example, when something is about to break, it will give you a warning, such as "There is a problem that I think will be happening. Let's fix them before it happens." 

The support itself, it´s not been great. Long times waiting for them to pickup a phone call (1h30min) long or even more!

Cisco provides a 24x7 support if you are on an enterprise license.

Negative

The initial setup of Meraki Dashboard is straightforward. You only need to click on add a new device, insert its MAC address, and then it is almost done. You have to type the name you want to give to the equipment, and the IP address, and you are finished.

The deployment takes approximately 10 to 15 minutes.

We used an integrator which was the vendor's support.

The price of Meraki Dashboard is kinda expensive because knowing that it is a cloud-based solution has its benefits. 

Meraki Dashboard is a great solution for every company. 

If you want ease and peace of mind throughout and especially if you are starting out with networking. This is a great solution to learn.

Where I see the real potential for today's networking, would be for the healthcare services.

I rate Meraki Dashboard a nine out of ten.

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.

Our primary use case of Meraki Dashboard is to manage networks, whether our own or those of our customers. We also manage the firewalls through the portal as well as switches, wireless access points or whatever devices there are. Meraki controls the devices, configures them and also troubleshoots. I'm a senior solution architect and we're a Cisco partner, specifically for the Meraki brand.

The solution saves us a lot of time. They say work smarter, not harder, and Meraki allows us to do that and not waste time on issues that previously concerned us. Meraki is pretty much the leader in cloud-based technology when it comes to networks and they've saved us and our clients a lot of time. 

It's great that everything is in a single pane and you can look at your network in one centralized place. I also value the ability to troubleshoot network issues through the solution. For example, you can do a cable test off their switch port from the portal even if you're not on-site. If I want to know whether the data cable is good, I can run a test through the portal, then the switch, and it'll come back and tell me whether that cable is good or has been damaged. 

They also have a nice system included for firmware updates and numerous good logging files and many features that help whenever something goes wrong. As a pivot onto the security aspect, if you have their Advanced Security License, then they monitor for you. Cisco has lots of different security teams, and they're able to almost make network security a passive thing. As long as I have the right license and have it configured, it catches malware, and will stop a user from downloading a file that's malicious software. In addition, they have a lot of group policy features. You can assign specific users on the network to group policies that either give them access to or bar them from specific things. 

The positives are all about the ease of being able to see everything, the ability to troubleshoot and for the solution to passively stop malicious events without me having to do a whole lot of work.

The client VPN could use some help, but that's probably partially Microsoft's fault because of the Windows client for VPNs, which keeps changing. Meraki don't have their own software for connecting to the VPN so you have to use the Windows one. It would be great for them to create a client for users to install to connect to the client VPN server. It's one of the biggest complaints about Meraki.

I've been using this solution for about three years. 

The solution is stable, it's only been down once or twice in three years and even then it was for a short amount of time and it wasn't completely down, just aspects of it. It's very stable. If a customer has an issue with their network log, we get an alert and check what's going on.

The product is very scalable and I've never had an issue. They have a ton of networks around the world that are all on the portal. In our own company, we have two users dealing with maintenance and we use the solution every day.  Some of our larger customers have over a hundred employees and it works well. 

Technical support does a great job. They have a support portal when you're logged in, you can either call a number, or open a ticket and they're onto it quickly. They usually resolve or respond with helpful information within an hour.

I've worked with Aruba Cloud, they have a different type of cloud portal. I've also worked with regular Cisco, not the Meraki side and HP which bought Aruba, so some of that is now the same. We've also dealt with UniFi Dashboard from Ubiquiti, which is a cheaper brand that doesn't really compare but is for anyone on a tight budget. 

As long as you understand how it works, the initial setup is very easy and you can configure the network before the devices come in, because they put them in your dashboard and you plug it in when you're ready and it automatically does the work. This is the easiest system I've used and I've worked with most of them. It saves a lot of time because they have lots of templates and abilities to clone configurations from other sites. We're consultants so we did the integration for our company, although Meraki have sometimes helped out on projects. 

The license is not cheap as you have to pay a fee for each device but in return they provide good support. If you're buying a Meraki firewall, then you have to buy a license or it won't work. There are options for an annual, three-year, five-year or 10-year license and they have three different lines; the Enterprise Baseline License, the Advanced Security License, and then they have an SD-WAN Plus License, which is the top line license.

The three-year license is about one-third of the price of the actual hardware so if you have a $1,000-$1,200 piece of equipment, then the base license is about $300 for three years for the firewall. Access points are a separate license. It depends on what you're buying. There are 25 to 30 different products and they have different lines of each product.

It can get complicated. They have a top-of-the-range firewall, the MX250, which runs to $20,000-$30,000, and a license for it can be close to $10,000 for three years. They don't actually charge you a license for the dashboard, you get it when you pay for the license for all the hardware.

It's important to find a good partner to work with and to plan what you actually plan to do, and understand what you're buying. There are so many different options with Meraki and you can end up spending more money than you actually need to. We've been educating our customer base about why they should spend more money on their networks and migrating them to Meraki because it's a very good solution. 

The solution saves me a lot of time and there aren't many negatives so I rate it nine out of 10. 

We use the product to monitor and configure network components within our environment. It includes managing Meraki access points and switches, adding new devices to the network, and providing access through a streamlined process.

The most valuable feature of the platform is its ease of configuration. Adding new devices to the network is straightforward, requiring just the MAC address to provide access.

They could improve the product by providing enhanced utilization reports and more detailed independent access reports.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for almost one and a half years.

The product is stable. 

The product is scalable. 

The technical support services are satisfactory. 

I used Aruba ClearPass in my previous organization. 

The initial setup was straightforward and very fast. The user-friendly interface facilitated a quick and efficient setup process.

We implemented the product with the help of our in-house team. 

Meraki Dashboard is a robust and user-friendly solution that simplifies network management. Its cloud-based nature ensures easy access and scalability.

I rate it an eight out of ten. 

Our use case for this solution is primarily monitoring and configuration of the Meraki database.

Meraki Dashboard is the feature I find most valuable because it gives you remote feasibility of managing all the devices worldwide. You don't need to be in the local location already.

I think this product could be improved with a CLI for more directives.

In the next release, I would like to see a little more user intervention or more control given to the engineer.

I have been working with Meraki Dashboard for around five years.

I would rate the stability of this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

My impression is that this solution is quite scalable. We have some 10 users currently in our organization.

The initial setup process is quite simple. I would rate it a 10, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. This solution is deployed on the cloud.

We compared Meraki Dashboard with Fortinet. FortiManager gives you options, but Meraki Dashboard has more feasibility and more control over all of the Meraki products.

I would recommend this solution to other users.

Overall, I would rate this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst, and 10 being the best.

The Meraki Dashboard we are using for the cloud. On-premise, we build or fix division racks and all the customer recommend configurations. We'll go and inspects, for example, what is the VLAN? What is the solution? 

We will do the configuration and everything remotely. We do everything on the backend, including Meraki switches, Meraki access points, and Meraki firewalls. We'll take the remote session and open that and handle things remotely.

With this product, we get a better sense of if something is changing the configuration. In other firewalls, we're not able to change anything, however, we can revert back. 

The initial setup was easy.

The solution is stable.

We like the ability to see everything in one single console.

We can log in from anywhere in the world.

The filtering on offer is good. 

We need to log into the solution separately. We can only log into a single access point. For example, we can log into one firewall or access point and do configurations. We cannot do multiple configurations across multiple endpoints. 

We'd like more support on the side of the ISP. 

The solution can be expensive. 

We'd like to be able to see new, upcoming features and have alerts when they are available or coming up.

I've been using the solution for the last six months. 

There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. Everything is fine. It is stable. 

It's a scalable product. We haven't had any conflicts in that sense. 

At this point, we have four people using the solution. They are network engineers. 

I've never needed the assistance of technical support. I've learned some basic knowledge and that has been enough so far. 

If there is something we cannot fix, we will reach out to support. For example, we are trying to do the packet capture. The traffic is not going. We'll try to check the configuration first and we'll try to check the logs. Still, if we are not able to find the issue, we'll look into how we can get the issue resolved and may ask for help.

We also work with Fortigate. 

It's an easy product to set up. We know the architecture and the configurations. If we don't know the concept, then it can be more difficult to set up. 

This is a small company. We can do an implementation in a day or maybe two. It's pretty fast.

I handled the initial implementation process. 

While I cannot speak to the exact cost, it is my understanding the price is high. 

We are a partner. 

We are using the latest update of the product. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. 

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use most of the features, even the filtering, and layer three level filtering, and we are pulling to the wireless. Our whole network is wireless. The notification feature for detection is very good.

When users are trying to roam from one location to another location, geographical tracking would be helpful. When the administrator can arrange a locking feature it will be handy for others from a security perspective. I would like to see more communication, integration, and visibility.

I have been working with Meraki Dashboard for around five years now.

It is very stable and we have been using it for five years. We are not a twenty-four-seven operation but in that context, we have not had any downtime. 

The scalability is of a high level and is flexible.

The setup is not complex. The Meraki Dashboard has more competitive pricing because almost everybody has a Cisco dealer. They can play around with the margins.

We compared Meraki Dashboard with Aruba and both products are good.

I would rate Meraki Dashboard an eight out of ten.

We use Meraki Dashboard for troubleshooting and configuring networks, statistics, reporting, and monitoring security threats. Our clients' networks depend on it daily, and it's part of our core business model.

We can remotely monitor clients' networks through Meraki Dashboard, dramatically reducing the on-site visits required. Meraki Dashboard has cut down on personnel costs because it requires fewer people to support. 

It also helps us stay on top of potential problems, which keeps our clients happy. We get critical notifications ahead of time, so we know about the issues before our clients do.

The most critical feature of Meraki Dashboard is its scalability.

Meraki Dashboard is a mature product, so it doesn't have a lot of bugs or significant issues, but would love to have the ability to save configurations externally instead of storing them in the database. 

I've been using Meraki Dashboard for over four years.

Meraki Dashboard is stable. We rarely have significant crashes or downtime. The solution has gone down maybe once in four years.

Scalability is one of Meraki Dashboard's strongest features. We have thousands of users if we're counting the end-users on our clients' network, but we have hundreds of clients. 

The wait time to speak with a Meraki support engineer is always long, but they get the job done. I rate Meraki support eight out of 10. 

Positive

We never based our business on other cloud solutions of that level. We use other products, but I hated the HP solution. There were so many glitches. Unfortunately, we have to deal with it from time to time because of existing clients, but that's not what I would recommend to anybody.

I rate Meraki Dashboard eight out of 10 for ease of deployment. It's straightforward to deploy Meraki Dashboard at a new site because you can use a template, and it's easy for me, in particular, because I have been using the solution for a long time. 

With a template, it usually takes no longer than 10 minutes if you have all the network equipment ready to go. A full setup from scratch takes about two days. Usually, a single person can set it up but it depends on the number of clients we have. If we have more clients, we might need additional staff to manage and maintain the solution. 

We do the deployment ourselves.

I rate Meraki Dashboard six out of 10 for affordability. The cost depends on the amount of equipment at each site, including switches, access points, firewalls, etc. Meraki's licensing model is per unit per year. At a minimum, it's around $500 for the smallest networks.

I rate Meraki Dashboard nine out of 10. It's one of the best products on the market, but there's always room for improvement. More convenient licensing and faster technical support would probably bring it up to a perfect 10. 

If you plan to implement Meraki Dashboard, I recommend first creating a structure that you can replicate. It's much easier to support that way because there's already an internal structure. If you have consistency in naming devices, ports, etc., it will help you search data to identify ports and troubleshoot.