Meraki SD-WAN Reviews

We mainly use Meraki SD-WAN for connecting sites.

The most valuable feature of Meraki SD-WAN is the Auto VPN.

Meraki SD-WAN could improve by adding wireless access time-scheduled and overall capabilities.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for approximately six years.

The price of Meraki SD-WAN could improve, it is expensive when compared to other solutions on the market, such as Aruba.

We have approximately 50 customers using this solution.

We used Meraki SD-WAN for connectivity between our stores, primary data center, and service locations.

Meraki SD-WAN improved the way my company functions because it allowed quicker time to market for connectivity, efficacy, and security. It also contributed to better expense management in terms of not using dedicated services, instead utilizing more public cloud services to establish connectivity.

What I found most valuable in Meraki SD-WAN is its simplicity. I also like its manageability.

The only area for improvement in Meraki SD-WAN is its licensing model, as well as its cost structure.

I have three to four years of experience with Meraki SD-WAN, and I used it in the past year.

Meraki SD-WAN is a stable solution. It had well-managed updates that created a pretty stable and manageable environment overall.

Considering the number of locations where Meraki SD-WAN was used, I found it scalable.

I would rate Meraki SD-WAN technical support as four out of five.

Positive

We didn't use other solutions apart from Meraki SD-WAN.

Meraki SD-WAN had a straightforward setup.

I've seen ROI from Meraki SD-WAN.

I don't have information on the exact cost of Meraki SD-WAN, but I'd rate it a three out of five, just because the licensing model is very much associated with the Meraki solution. Meraki has its own pricing model.

Other solutions were evaluated, but I can't recall which ones off the top of my head.

Thousands of people used Meraki SD-WAN within the company. Meraki SD-WAN had a substantial deployment because the company I was in had quite a few locations. Hence, about fifteen to twenty people took care of the deployment, but to maintain and monitor Meraki SD-WAN, a minimum of two people would suffice.

There's no plan to increase Meraki SD-WAN usage because of the current economic conditions.

I'd recommend Meraki SD-WAN to others because it's easy to deploy and manage, but my advice is to be aware of the licensing and cost structure of Meraki SD-WAN.

My rating for Meraki SD-WAN is eight out of ten.

The best feature we're using is the packet shaping. We can feed the traffic shaping rules according to our requirements, so if we need application-based packet shaping, we can configure it. If we want URL-based traffic shaping, we can do that too.

Also, we can enable per-client bandwidth according to our requirements. 

The solution can only support two up-links, so if you have three internet lines, there is not a provision to connect the third internet line. There is a provision to use the cellular data like a dongle, and you can use that dongle to connect the third line. We need that feature because we need to have three internet lines. The product should be able to support more than three internet lines.

I've been working with Meraki for the last four and a half years. 

It is stable for my business requirements. Some of our locations are assembly branches, so we use MX60 at those locations. We use that effective product for user compatibility, and we haven't had any issues.

The solution is scalable. We have 100 locations using this solution. 

We had a licensing issue, so we contacted the support team and got a response. I would rate their help as a four out of five. 

Previously, we were using the MPLS network. We then removed the MPLS network and installed Meraki products, which are compatible with this technology, so that's why we're using this product now. 

The initial setup is very easy, you just need to configure the IP addresses, gateway, subnet mask, and DNS. Once it's connected to the internet, you have to claim the device on the dashboard, and then the dashboard will automatically show if it's online or not. Once it is online, you can configure the policies, as per your requirements, through the dashboard. The remaining part of the setup can be performed and configured on the dashboard.

It takes around 15 to 20 minutes to configure it. 

We have a yearly license. 

You can use this solution for SMB branches according to your requirements. At this time, you cannot use Meraki on a single device, so suppose you have a core suite, distribution suite, and access suite. If you're a data center, you cannot use the solution at this point.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. It is very user-friendly, and it doesn't take much time to configure the simple dashboard.

It's for enterprise networking. So some of the customers are from the BFSA domain, and some of the customers are from manufacturing. It's a distributed customer base.

Any customer looking for a single solution that can serve them for network security, which can serve them for the SD-Branch all branch networking. We use it for this purpose. It's used for a combination of SD-WAN and SD-Branch plus security.

Everything is under one umbrella. The Meraki dashboard is one of the valuable features which I use. I can control the devices across walls and across the landscape.

It's not difficult to set up the solution. 

The solution is stable.

It can scale well. 

The cloud area and the security area can be improved. Meraki has a limitation, especially on the cloud. If I deploy the services on the cloud and I want to make a site-to-site connection or maybe I have to do some sort of routing, inbound routing, it is not properly working with the Cisco Meraki. It needs to be matured a bit.

They need to offer proper integration of the security features. They talk about the next-gen technology, the next-gen UTM feature. It's not a complete security solution, however. 

I've used the solution for about five years now. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We can easily scale the solution. 

We are supporting multiple customers that use this solution. There are approximately 5,000 people using the access. 

We are well connected with the RR account manager. He is based out of Australia. Every time, whenever we have some sort of need, he is the go-to guy for us.

Positive

We use a variety of SD-WAN technologies. 

The solution is very easy to deploy.

How long it takes depends on the kind of site you are setting up. If I'm tiering the site, and have 20 users or 30 users and have a couple of links and the security postures are not very complex, maybe I can do the deployment in a week's time. 

I can do two or three cuts over a week if it is small. You can bifurcate. I don't have any ready-made answer as to how long it will take as every setup is different. 

We do look into ROI and show clients possible ROI if they decide to go with Meraki. 

The price of the solution varies. It depends on the customer. For most of the customer deployments, we tend to do either three or five years of licensing. Having a longer-term give us some discounting in terms compared to one year.

We are partners. 

We use the MX64 deployment, although it goes all the way up to 300.

I don't want to be Meraki biased, however, if anyone is looking for the kind of solution that can include the branch office or the network security or even a Cisco Umbrella kind of solution, Meraki is the right choice.

From an SD-WAN perspective, I would rate the solution seven out of ten. I'm just cutting down three numbers due to the lacking of cloud networking and the weaker security posture.

Meraki SD-WAN is connected to branches and the data center. You can also connect branches or connect remote users to their respective offices. It enables users working in hybrid environments, whether from the office or home, to access their applications on the cloud.

Firstly, the solution manages other market products on the same dashboard. It is very simple and can be managed in three clicks. Secondly, There are many device models on Meraki MX devices. Also, it has a license with variable duration from one year to five years.

The product supports small and medium business solutions. It could be improved to support more enterprise use cases.

The solution can support more security features like the Cisco firewall.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for three years.

The product’s stability is very perfect.

The solution’s scalability is awesome. You can scale it up.

We recommend this solution to small and medium-sized businesses.

The initial setup is simple and common.

I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

Meraki SD-WAN is a combination of two products: Firewall and router. When you compare these options with other vendors, you will not find the same as Meraki. Meraki is best for small and medium business solutions.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We implemented Meraki SD-WAN to replace our traditional WAN infrastructure, particularly for our email and messaging system (referred to as MLSP).

We have successfully transitioned to SD-WAN. So, it's primarily used for connecting our remote sites.

I like it because it works. Moreover, the solution is pretty easy to configure.

Meraki SD-WAN had trouble prioritizing traffic for VoIP calls, specifically for Microsoft Teams. They faced challenges for sometime when you set up QoS on Meraki's access points. There are profiles available for different services, such as Microsoft Teams, which effectively put all the rules in place for you. During their SD-WAN deployment, these profiles were not accessible to them. It's possible that Meraki has since introduced them. Therefore, having profiles for different services would be beneficial.

Meraki SD-WAN could make the license cheaper; the licenses cost a fortune.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for a year. 

We've had a few minor things where it's gone down, but it has been stable most of the time.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Meraki SD-WAN is pretty easy to scale. You just buy more devices; it is easy.

I rate the solution’ scalability a ten out of ten. We have about 150 users using this solution.

The customer support has been very good. The Cisco account manager named, Luke Brennan was really very helpful. If you ring him, he'll answer, and he'll tell you what you need to know. They are good.

The initial setup was pretty simple. We were able to do it in a day.

We did have an integrator to help while setting up.

We've got one person in the team doing the maintenance, although we have somebody else who knows quite well that we do lean on external parties quite heavily, a company called Lixcel. Overall, we have a team of two people for maintenance. 

The solution is expensive. I rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the access points and switches for remote locations for a client. We have 100 or more remote offices, and we connect those together to a data center in Florida.

We like that it is cloud-enabled.

The solution is easy to use. It's so simple to set up and connect the connection points. We don't require any static IPs or anything like that on our ISPs. It's very quick and easy.

It is stable and reliable.

The solution can scale so long as you are scaling Meraki products together. 

It offers a very good "single pane of glass," which helps with management and visibility.

I don't have any notes for improvement. 

Technical support could be more knowledgeable and responsive. 

You do have to pay for the solution in perpetuity. 

I've used the solution for six or seven years. 

The stability is pretty good. I'd rate it an eight or nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is very scalable as long as it is a Meraki-to-Meraki environment. 

I'd rate the scalability eight out of ten. 

Technical support isn't the best. They aren't as responsive as we would like. The quality of the techs needs to be better. They need to be more knowledgeable. 

Neutral

The solution is very simple to set up, and we don't need any static IPs from our ISPs. This simplifies things. 

I'd give the ease of setup a ten out of ten. 

Meraki's a subscription service. You "pay forever," and in that sense, it can be a little expensive. That said, I'd rate it seven out of ten in terms of affordability. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

Other than warning people that it is a subscription, this does offer a single pane of glass which makes it easy to manage if you have multiple sites.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Instead of having MPLS or direct, separate internet connections at each branch location, we can use SD-WAN to route the traffic to data centers. If someone is hosting applications or other web servers in a data center, we can route that traffic toward the data center where the application server is located, and they can access a wired local service provider.

It's deployed on the cloud and can be managed from the cloud. It only needs to be connected to the internet, and then it will start communicating with the Meraki Cloud. If it's connected to the cloud, it will sync the configuration on the cloud to that device.

Meraki AutoVPN is an interesting feature. If there are multiple network connectivities in an organization, Meraki creates an AutoVPN. It creates a channel automatically.

The UI is user-friendly.

The granularity could be improved. It's not very granular for URL filtering or content filtering. If you want to do a specific route or a specific rule, that feature is lagging a bit. 

The stability could also be improved.

I have used Meraki SD-WAN for two years.

I would rate the stability as eight out of ten. It's quite stable, but we've had issues in the past.

I would rate the scalability as eight out of ten.

I would rate technical support as nine out of ten. Support is pretty knowledgeable and assists us in whatever manner they can. It can take about 30 to 45 minutes  to connect because of longer hold times.

Setup is easy and straightforward. Deploying the SD-WAN hardware needs to be done statically. Once you have found the IP address, it connects to the internet. That's the only thing where physical assistance is required. The rest can be managed via cloud.

If you're doing the deployment remotely, only one remote person and one technician is needed. If you are onsite, then one person can do the deployment.

We did the implementation in-house. The documentation on their portal explains everything. We just had to go through the documents if we needed any assistance. It was pretty helpful.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

For a larger enterprise level customer, I would recommend the MX450 or MX400 series.