Meraki MS Switches Reviews

It's a cloud-managed, stackable access switch. It has various features, like providing quality of service to prioritize critical traffic, such as voice and video. It has various levels of support for simplified voice deployment. We also use this switch for multicast traffic. In addition, we use the switch for high capacity trunking where we require link aggregations. 

This switch is enabled with network security features. We use it for port security and MAC whitelisting, as well as DHCP snooping to prevent users from adding unauthorized DHCP servers to the network. The switch supports BPDU guard, root guard, and rapid spanning tree protocol for the loop prevention mechanism.

Moreover, now with the advent of automation in our environment, the switch supports various automation testing tools, and it's quite helpful for network troubleshooting as well.

The switch has a good speed and low latency. I will not say it's the market leader of low latency, but it competes with Arista switches in terms of latency. 

It is a compact switch, so there are a limited number of ports, and it needs improvement in terms of scalability. The number of ports should be increased. I would love to see modular capabilities, and various security features, like the ones provided by Palo Alto and various emerging cybersecurity solutions. I would like this switch to match that level of competency.

This switch is robust. It's never, ever gone down. It has not been rebooted during the last two years in my environment. In terms of stability, I don't see any challenges. I haven't seen any bugs associated with the current IOS. 

It is a scalable solution, but compared to competitors' technology, I still see some gaps. There are a lot of scalability improvements needed in this particular model.

There are 500+ on-prem users. Counting business employees altogether though, there are about 2,000. 

The support is quite easy and handy. No one can compete with Cisco's tech support.

The initial setup was very straightforward. I have been in the IT industry for the last 16 years so I didn't have any challenges with the configuration or deployment. It is a plug and play solution, and needs basic configuration during the initial setup. We pushed the configuration and provisioned this switch immediately. 

I see a return on investment in terms of manageability because a single employee can easily manage the switch. I don't need to hire additional resources for taking care of the vulnerability assessment or anything else.

I don't know the exact price, but in terms of comparison, I know that Extreme switches are more cost-effective than Cisco Meraki Switches. Cisco should have some switches that are more cost-effective.

There are some other competitors nowadays, like Extreme switches. They are cost-effective and have many security features embedded in the switches. We want to see that level of competency for modular capabilities in Meraki switches soon. I still see Cisco as the market leader because no one can compete with Cisco's fast tech support.

To someone considering this solution I would say that compared to other switches, like Arista, Meraki switches are quite robust. In terms of performance, we haven't faced any issues or vulnerabilities in the last two years. 

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

We primarily use the solution for switches. 

The switches are great. The basic features are sufficient. 

The stability is good.

You can scale the product.

Support has been very good. 

The solution offers very good integration potential.

The pricing is fair and offers good value. 

Since 2019, we have not encountered any problems with the switches. On our servers, there are occasionally some bugs or some problems with some features that need Meraki support; however, everything works well with Meraki Switches. 

We aren't missing any features. 

We've used the solution since 2019. We've used it for a few years now. 

For the most part, the solution is stable. Upgrades are typically great. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

We do not have issues with the scalability. It's very easy to expand. 

There are more than 20 companies using the solution, however, I don't have details about how many individual users are at each company.

As we have Cisco Premier, when we have to call them, Meraki is very fast in solving our tickets and definitely was very fast in their support. It's very, very good. We can call them directly and get immediate help.

We pay for the solution on a yearly basis. We pay a standard fee and there are no additional costs.

While it may not be the cheapest, for the quality you receive, the price is very good. 

We are resellers. 

We are a Cisco Premier Partner, and we're trying to do Meraki certifications. It's in progress.

We provide Meraki to our customers, and it's working well.

Meraki's on the cloud. All solutions that are using SD-WAN is managed on the cloud.

Almost all our customers here in the Madagascar area are 49 or 24FP versions of Meraki MS 210. It's suitable for all our customers here.

We recommend the solution. 

It's reliable and I advise others to use it. If they are using Meraki Switches, I recommend them to use also the firewalls and access points. They work well with everything in one dashboard. It's better to pay and have the firewall, switches, and access points together to get a good view on the dashboard and the management. It's better to use Meraki. It is very, very stable.

I'd rate the switches a nine out of ten.

We are a technology consultant and we work with a variety of products, including Meraki MS Switches. We have installed these switches in certain hotels in Egypt.

One of the hotels we work with has standardized on Meraki.

Meraki's support for outdoor switches is something that we're facing problems with. This is an area that needs to be improved.

Meraki should include an application to assist users with the design of access points.

We have been working with Meraki MS Switches for perhaps two years.

This is a good switch for a small installation, such as a hotel, but it's not an enterprise-level solution. In that regard, it is not very scalable.

The hotel network has almost 300 rooms.

We have no problem with technical support from Cisco. They have good support, although it's not cheap. 

We have experience with switches from different vendors including Cisco and HP.

HPE Aruba is very popular in my country, and we have done a lot of these installations. Most people, given the choice between Aruba and Cisco, choose to implement Aruba.

One of the advantages to Aruba is that the switches have a lifetime warranty. They are also cheaper than Cisco.

We have not faced any problems with respect to installation. They just need internet connectivity for the cloud configuration.

Installation is done by the system integrators.

Meraki is not an expensive switch, like Cisco. However, the cost of technical support is expensive.

We have researched different Cisco solutions. One of the things that we have found is that Stealthwatch for Cisco has the sensors built into the switches. We are interested in knowing whether that feature is compatible with other hardware because we don't want to be tied to a single vendor.

Some companies in Egypt are not allowed to use cloud-based services, so the use of this type of product has not been popular.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We primarily used the solution as a switch.

The product offered a lower CapEx cost for the appliance. That's why they tried that infrastructure.

It was easy to set up.

We didn’t like the performance, which is why we ended up stopping usage.

We had issues with the stability, issues with the pricing, and the total cost of ownership.

The feature set is less attractive than other or similar equipment from other companies.

You can’t really scale the solution.

We’d like to have on-premises management in the future versions of the product.

It would be great if there were industrial protocols with more on them for an IT environment.

We’ve used the solution since 2018.

We faced some stability issues when using the product.

It’s not a very scalable product.

It’s used for energy generation, and we only really need 5% of our team managing it, so it doesn’t really require that many users per se.

I recall technical support being good. They were pretty helpful and responsive.

Positive

We used Cisco switches, among other options.

The solution was relatively easy to deploy. It was straightforward and not overly complex.

The deployment itself only took a couple of hours.

You only need one person to handle the deployment tasks.

We used an integrator. They helped us manage the initial setup.

We’ve removed all of the switches. We didn’t really witness an ROI.

In the long term, we likely did not get any ROI as we had to buy the switch. We should have bought it a couple of years ago. At this moment, it was a good return on investment in the sense that we had a switch working. However, it was not doing everything we wanted, yet we had it quickly working for low pricing. In the beginning, it seemed reasonable; however, in the end, it was not, as we have to replace everything.

The solution offered low Cap-Ex pricing.

However, it ended up being expensive. We purchase dit as a package from an integrator. There were some extra fees, for example, for maintenance.

We didn’t really evaluate any other options. A company approached us about the product, and we decided to try it out.

We are currently removing our Meraki switches. I’m not sure which version we were using. The latest was likely MS 120. We replaced the switches with others, and we’re bringing in ways to interconnect with other systems, which was providing us with more stability.

I’d rate the solution a four out of ten and advise potential users to go with a different product.

When Meraki creates a VPN, you don't even have to configure it. You say that you want this to talk, and it automatically creates a connection. That's the greatest part of it. You don't have to deal with passwords and keys.

Meraki's site-to-site VPN function is phenomenal, and the VLAN is simple to use and set up. If you need the VLAN to sort the networks out, that works very well. The performance is also excellent.

I've been using Meraki MS Switches for a couple of years now.

Meraki MS Switches are rock solid. We haven't had any downtime.

It'll scale up as much as I need, and there are many more options higher than what I've got, so their scalability is superb. Right now, we have about 40 users.

Cisco support is excellent. 

I had some Hewlett Packard switches before. We decided to go with Meraki because it offers a holistic integrated solution with management through a single pane of glass.

Setting up a Meraki switch is straightforward. You just plug it in, and it goes. I could do it all myself.

Licensing is the only thing I can complain about. It's expensive, but everything is these days. There are no added costs beyond the hardware. Overall, I rate Meraki MS Switches eight out of 10 for affordability. 

I rate Meraki MS Switches 10 out of 10. If you're considering Meraki, I say do it. You'll never look back.

We are using the Meraki MS120, MS425, and MS355 switches. We currently have a mixed environment with Cisco switches as well as these Meraki switches. We're replacing them one by one to see how well they perform. So far, we have only configured the MS120, which are the eight-port switches. We have some poor equipment, so we are replacing the existing switches. There are fewer network ports that are required, so we've set up these first.  

 We haven't yet finished setting up the MS425. They're supposed to work as the core of our network, replacing the 38 switches that we have on the core. They haven't been configured on the network. We're still trying to just do tests and see if they will work. The MS355 are supposed to be on the distribution, so we haven't configured those, either.

These switches are not expensive and their configuration is very easy. You can provision them on the dashboard, then you just connect them to everything. It picks up from there. Management is easy.

I wouldn't say I'm in a position to talk about any improvements because I'm still learning. We're still on the learning curve, so we have not implemented a lot of the things that we can do with the other switches. But I'm sure that maybe during the course of the next month or two, we'll be able to replace enough of these switches to see how well they work.

We've only been using Meraki MS Switches for about a month or so.

So far, it's been very stable. They run with no issues.

It is scalable.

The initial setup is very easy. It's not complex at all. It's much easier than the Leader switches we've had to configure that required us to learn some commands and so forth. 

The pricing is good especially if you have a tight budget, and you want to implement these. But I guess some people would have some reservations about the yearly subscription.  Maybe they could offer an option of having a one-off or perpetual license to let people test it and see how it goes. 

And then I'm not sure about the compatibility with other models because I haven't tried them to see if they work with other switching models. But I do know that they work with Cisco. With other brands, I don't know.

I would rate it an 8.5 out of 10. 

We are using it for local LAN switching.

Quality of Service is easy to deploy. The ease of deployment, in general, is valuable. It is easy to do port configuration and VLAN assignments.

On the switches, I don't know a whole lot that I would change. Different levels of switches have different layer 2 and layer 3 functionality. It's always nice to have layer 3 functionality across the board if you can, but that drives up the cost. 

They've got different lines for different amounts of layer 3 functionality. However, on their models that do include full layer 3 access, when you choose to use layer 3 on a switch, it doesn't have the full functioning routing capabilities of an MX firewall. It can be limiting in some of those aspects. I have found myself in a situation where I thought I was going to have the ability to do all the routing from an MX firewall, but even on their fully functional layer 3 switches, you don't have that. There are drawbacks. So, it is not just a, "Oh, I can use a switch instead of a firewall for the routing part of it." The answer is, "That's probably not a good way to think about that."

I have been using this solution for six years.

They are rock solid. I've got hundreds of these deployed, and we rarely had any issues. Meraki support is always great to handle advance replacement regardless of how old it is. It is really good.

Their support is really good.

The setup of all Meraki products is extremely simple.

We don't use standard licensing. Most of the time, we use the advanced security model. 

If there is a drawback to Meraki, it is the cost, but you also have to evaluate it based upon the other factors that you do get. Their support is really good; their hardware is really good. The ease of configuration and deployment is really good, but it is more expensive than most.

If you're looking for a solution that is easy and quick to roll out, you can go for these switches. If you want to deploy them without having somebody on-site, you can hire somebody very inexpensively to plug these up and configure them remotely or do advanced configuration beforehand. For deployments of a changing environment, these are the best switches I've ever used.

I would rate Meraki MS Switches a nine out of 10. There is something that could be better, but I don't have a lot of performance needs that drive that situation.

I use the MS series when I need to add power over ethernet (PoE).

This product has QoS, decent visibility of what's going on, and it's a managed switch.

Mandatory maintenance is an area that needs improvement.

I have been working with Meraki MS Switches for between five and ten years.

These switches are really stable.

I've used their lower-end products, and I haven't really looked at the larger units with additional ports. As such, I can't really say, although I think that there are some level 3s and even some level 4s.

At each location, there are between 15 and 20 users.

The technical support is very good. They are responsible and knowledgeable. On the Meraki side, you get through right away, whereas, on the Cisco side, you put in a call, and then it is difficult to predict when they will return it.

I work with a variety of Meraki Switches including the MS series, MR series, and MX series.

Prior to using Meraki, I was using a lower-end switch from Cisco. It didn't have any support requirements and my boss wanted me to get rid of anything that required maintenance. For this same reason, we will be getting away from using Meraki switches, as well.

The initial setup is easy.

As a one-person operation, I manage 15 or 16 locations.

The yearly maintenance fee is $100 and you can purchase used switches for about $200 each.

My advice is that this product may work well for a smaller shop, where they do not have many devices to pay maintenance fees for. I have 15 or 16 locations and combined, these have many switches and access points. For example, I have more than 45 devices in total, and paying $100 for each, annually, surpasses the amount of my initial investment. This is the reason that I am changing to another product.

In summary, this is a good switch but I just don't like the ongoing cost.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.