Meraki Dashboard Reviews

We acquired more than two hundred and fifty Meraki APs as part of a multi-site acquisition. We bought the licensing, stood up a Meraki Dashboard and imported the APs into our Dashboard. A super easy transition of the Wireless LAN.

There is no need to swap the hardware at all the locations, and importing the APs into the Dashboard was a simple and quick process. Building the environment in the Dashboard was quick as well. Overall, the changeover was painless from the wireless standpoint.

Cloud management is nice and easy. There are no controllers to deal with upgrading and maintaining. It is easy to see all of the devices are online, and if not, which ones are down.

I am concerned about the fact that once your licensing expires the devices stop working and become a brick.

Our primary use case for this solution is network security and reporting.

This solution has improved our organization by centralizing control of multiple clients and sites.

The most valuable feature is their support, and they get better every day.

The pricing for this solution needs to be improved.

I am the Practice Director for Network Infrastructure and I primarily use this solution for edge security and WAN routing.

This solution has improved our organization by significantly reducing the time to deploy devices, and it also made remote troubleshooting a lot easier.

The features I find most valuable are the visibility and the ease of management. I like the visibility into all the traffic, feature parity with Cisco ASA firewalls and things like that.

Something that needs to be improved, is the fact that you if you don't renew the subscription license, it stops working. I would also like to see SSL BPM support for anything else.

The solution has been very stable. We've run into very few bugs, less than on the ASA platform.

We haven't had any issues with scalability and we have multi-hundred device sites, so I believe the solution is really scalable. 

The technical support has been great. Whenever you call them, they're responsive and we get an answer.

We used Cisco ASA before this and we realized that we needed better security compliance, more scalability, and some extra features. This solution now saves us time, and I like the added features that the Meraki dashboard offers. It is also consistent and very reliable. 

The initial setup was pretty easy. You simply follow the menu, and it prompts you for the inputs, which is pretty straightforward.

We have seen a return on investment. We've been spending a lot less time on tickets and deployments, so we have more time to do other things.

We have a license for 5 years. I've heard that the advanced security license is a bit on the high end because it's competitive with other solutions. I believe it really depends on the bandwidth, so the bigger your platform, the more you will pay.

We looked at Cisco ASA, Cisco FTD, and Meraki Dashboard. 

My rating for this solution is 9 out of 10 because we've had success with it, very few complaints, and it works great. I think a lot of people think Meraki is more geared towards small businesses, but I would say since Cisco's acquired them, they've come a long way. It is definitely a great solution so I would suggest that others try it out.
In the next version, I would love to see remote access VPN and getting the functionality so that the ASA product line can connect. 

We use the product to manage the services for our customers. Some of the customers operate the product themselves to monitor installations.

It is a reliable product. It provides a lot of information that is easy to read.

They could offer API functionality for Meraki Dashboard. It will help us develop software immediately using available solutions.

We have been using Meraki Dashboard for five or six years.

Meraki Dashboard is easy to expand. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.

The initial process is easy.

It is a cloud-based solution, and we can handle the activity remotely. It is very convenient and easy for customers to monitor their business infrastructure. I rate it an eight out of ten.

We're using Meraki Dashboard for warehouse management, particularly for deploying Meraki solutions, for example: Meraki wireless connections in our company.

I like that Meraki Dashboard is a user-friendly product.

What needs improvement in Meraki Dashboard is its configuration.

What I'd like added in the next release of Meraki Dashboard is more functionality.

Meraki Dashboard is a stable product.

Meraki Dashboard has good scalability.

Meraki Dashboard provides good technical support.

Setting up Meraki Dashboard was easy.

We are Cisco partners.

My clients use the new version of Meraki Dashboard.

We have seven engineers who are responsible for the deployment and maintenance of Meraki Dashboard.

I would recommend the product to someone who's new to it, or to someone planning on using it.

My rating for Meraki Dashboard is ten out of ten.

The most valuable feature is its simplicity in navigating through the dashboard. It's well set out, and the layout is nice and user friendly.

A lot of clients enjoy seeing layer 7 visibility. They get a good indication and insight into what is happening in their network and what applications are being used the most. They can then customize and give preference to business-critical applications.

They can improve the landing page in Meraki Dashboard. When I go into an organization, they can include a lot more infographics. They can also simplify it a bit and consolidate it. For example, if I've got five branches and I go into customer A's profile or organization, I'd like to see an infographic on the landing page providing a snippet of the entire network layout, that is, all branches in one snapshot. From there, I would like to go into the network that I want to work on or view.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for two years. 

It is 100% stable. Once we deploy it, we very rarely have any comebacks. 

I'm happy with its scalability. 

I only have experience of dialing into Meraki technical support. They were very good.

I don't typically work with this solution. Just from my previous experience, it is fairly simple to set up. I don't think there are any issues.

Deployment duration depends on the complexity. It can take two to three days for complex deployments. It can take a couple of hours for simple deployments.

Typically, the license model is for one, three, and five years. They can just be a bit more flexible around it and look into providing an option for 24 months.

If you are looking for a secure and simple solution, I would highly recommend it.

I would rate Meraki Dashboard an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is to deploy and manage the wireless APs and system switches.

One of the ways Meraki improved our organization is just the simplicity of deployment and scalability. We could easily see and monitor the bandwidth at all the stores easily.

The feature that I find most valuable is the product's ability and simplicity.

Probably the thing that could use the most improvement is the terminal monitor issues on ports. According to Meraki support, we need a third-party program to integrate other, non-Meraki switches if they don't have that integrator already. It is not a problem with the Meraki switches, of course.

The stability of the solution is great. The only problems we had is an issue with the firmware, but they replaced that right away and it solved the issue.

We think the scalability of the solution is great as far as the wireless AP. We expanded, so far, by ten access points. Eventually, we are going to do 30 of them.

If we experience any problem I can call technical support right away. If I have to do something like replacing a switch, they send it to me within two business days.

I was not in that position to make any type of call on the product we selected and used at the time it was implemented. 

The initial setup was really pretty straightforward.

The APs are pretty easy to deploy so we did not need the assistance of a vendor or consultant. We just got support directly from Meraki is we had any issue.

I am not in the position to evaluate the return on investment.

Cost and pricing falls outside of my responsibility.

I was not in a position to be involved in the evaluation of options.

As far as this solution I would rate it as a nine out of ten from my experience and comparing it to what I know about other solutions. It's really easy to use. The technical support and customer experience are great and that just adds value to the product.

Any advice I have for people considering the solution is that if they want something that is going to work and be simple to deploy, this is a product they should strongly consider. I don't think the simplicity of the product is matched for what it provides.

We primarily use the solution for the dashboard functionalities.

Meraki is basically a product we sell as a dashboard. It's the best part of the solution and its greatest selling feature.

Meraki gives a very comprehensive dashboard which gives the customer a lot of flexibility in terms of understanding the exact situational position of their infrastructure and what is happening in terms of the infrastructure, or how their access points are behaving. They can also gain visibility into access points of zones. 

The dashboard itself is very simplified and easy to navigate.

There is good documentation in the form of manuals.

The management is very good.It typically covers all of our client's requirements. Most of the clients are very into CSG and they are very willing to take the kind of dashboard offering Meraki has.

India is generally pro-Cisco, as far as networking is concerned, which makes the solution an easy sell. Now that the internet bandwidth has become stabilized in India, we get a lot out of the solution. That makes the cloud capabilities very attractive. With the cloud, clients can cancel at any time, and there aren't controllers on-site to worry about.

Overall, the dashboard is already quite good.

However, a few popular improvements that could be suggested include user-based tracking and user-based location tracking. If a client could add those things on, on top of whatever they're using, that would be ideal.

For example, within a building, if I am a user and I have a seat on the fourth floor, if I move across the building, the system should be able to track me and should be able to figure out my whereabouts or my position within the building if I'm connected to the wireless. That would make the administrator's life easier in terms of reachability.

There should be a certain amount of visibility in terms of security validation, or vulnerability assessment. If that can be incorporated, that would be great.

For example, in a single dashboard, you could be getting security incidents, so you could better be able to understand your readiness from the security perspective.

I've been dealing with the solution for two to two and a half years at this point.

The solution is extremely stable. I haven't found it to be non-operational on any of my customers. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs.

As far as scalability is concerned it's simply all about putting additional licenses and adding more number of access points. It's quite scalable, and it's very easy to expand the offering.

The dashboard won't change. The look and feel will remain the same. It's only the number of users and the number of access points that will be added under the same dashboard.

From a scalability perspective or from a manageability perspective, Meraki has a great amount of potential. 

In terms of technical support feedback, I won't be able to comment on anything as I am not from an implementation team. This work is being handled by my implementation team, and, since I don't assist in that respect, I've never dealt with technical support directly.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not very complex.

In terms of the length of time it takes, I won't be able to comment on the deployment part, as it's not something I handle personally. What I've heard from my implementation team is that the time compared to any other on-prem solution is pretty fast. It's really about the access points and having them share a little bit of the cloud. You can simply have a plugin-based kind of deployment scenario as well. It's not hard.

Of course, there are obviously security policies that come into play as well. That has to be done regardless of if it is on-premises or not. Security items can be complicated. That said, our team considers the setup to be easy. It's simple and fast to deploy overall.

We handle the implementation for our clients.

We are Cisco partners. We deal with a variety of Cisco products in their rather large portfolio.

We tend to observe whatever is required for the client's environment and we do ensure we take care of all those requirements. Our approach is all client-driven. Based on that, we tend to work with different versions. Most of the customers want to go with the latest version.

I would definitely recommend the solution. 

From what I have seen in the last couple of years there's a trend towards the cloud market in India (apart from a few governments). In India, we have a government regulation that if you want to have your data on the cloud, then you have to meet certain compliances and you have to have data held centrally in India only. There are lots of challenges in government cloud operations.

Apart from the government, whether it's a large, small or medium-sized enterprise, this solution would work well. They will find a lot of value in having a Meraki solution in their company. I have noticed that most of the customers moving to a cloud-based situation generally prefer Meraki over any other brands.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.