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Nader-Elmansi - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales System Engineer at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Reseller
Top 5
An easy to use SD-WAN solution to connect users across various station

What is our primary use case?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

Buyer's Guide
Meraki SD-WAN
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about Meraki SD-WAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product’s stability is very perfect.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

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

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is simple and common.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
PeerSpot user
Production of pharmaceutical products at khaled.miles@labosalem.com
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
We can make traffic-shaping rule and do load balancing
Pros and Cons
  • "SD-WAN is a complete enterprise solution for securing traffic."
  • "The blocklist on the Cisco Meraki side isn't complete or very large. We'd like to see them update and expand this."

What is our primary use case?

Meraki SD-WAN is used to manage traffic between customers. We can make traffic-shaping rules, limit or deny sites, etc. SD-WAN can also do load balancing.

What is most valuable?

SD-WAN is a complete enterprise solution for securing traffic. 

What needs improvement?

The blocklist on the Cisco Meraki side isn't complete or very large. We'd like to see them update and expand this. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Meraki SD-WAN for seven years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

 I rate Meraki SD-WAN nine out of 10 for stability. 

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Meraki SD-WAN isn't difficult, but it isn't simple. It was easy for me because I have worked with other SD-WAN solutions. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Cisco Meraki firewalls have a 10-year license, but there is a three-year license for other equipment.  

What other advice do I have?

I rate Meraki SD-WAN nine out of 10. Cisco Meraki SD-WAN works better than other solutions. I recommend using Cisco Meraki SD-WAN with the Cisco Meraki Dashboard to centralize all your equipment, such as access points, links, switches, etc., in one console. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Meraki SD-WAN
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about Meraki SD-WAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Field service manager at reduno.com
Real User
User-friendly with affordable pricing and good stability
Pros and Cons
  • "We have found the scalability to be good."
  • "We have a lot of problems with distribution. The late deliveries likely have to do with the time it takes for the fabrication of components. It is a principal problem at this moment."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is used principally to have high availability services, high-quality services, and communication with two or more service providers in the same place.

What is most valuable?

The administration in the cloud that Merakioffers is great.

The solution is user-friendly.

Its integrations are good.

We haven't had any issues with customization.

Overall, it's a good product.

The product is easy to deploy.

We have found the scalability to be good.

The solution is stable. 

Pricing is very affordable. 

What needs improvement?

I do need to explore the solution a bit more before really finding fault in anything.

The distribution could be improved. We have a lot of problems with distribution. The late deliveries likely have to do with the time it takes for the fabrication of components. It is a principal problem at this moment.

It would be helpful if there was reporting. I'd like to be able to hand reports related to performance right over to clients. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for maybe a year or a year and a half at this point. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Overall, the solution has been stable. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. It's pretty reliable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Our company has many projects that employ Meraki's SD-WAN.

The scalability of the product is quite nice. 

How are customer service and support?

I haven't dealt with technical support. However, MEWraki is pretty simple to use, and therefore, we haven't really needed support from Cisco. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is fairly straightforward. It's not overly complex. 

Deployment would take a week or two at a maximum. It depends on the customer's requirements. 

What about the implementation team?

As a service provider, we install SD-WAN services in the sites of our customers.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is pretty reasonable. 

What other advice do I have?

I'm a Cisco distributor in Mexico. We are a service provider. We install SD-WAN services in the sites of customers.

We have multiple deployments, both on cloud and on-premises. 

I'd recommend the solution. the management is easy and the solution is pretty reasonably priced.

I would rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Solution Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Simple to use, has a good outer VPN, and the dashboards are user-friendly
Pros and Cons
  • "The dashboard is user-friendly. It's very simple to use."
  • "The solution could be improved if it added more features, especially monitoring and reporting features."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for two purposes. One is to connect the different locations, and the other is for security.

What is most valuable?

The outer VPN is the solution's most valuable feature.

The dashboard is user-friendly. It's very simple to use.

What needs improvement?

The solution could be improved if it added more features, especially monitoring and reporting features.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for two to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is okay, but the solution is much more suited to small and medium-sized companies and isn't really suited for large ones. If you have 500 to 1000 or 2000 people it's okay. For a large international company, it's not the right product. At the moment, we have about 2-3,000 users on the solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support has been very good. We're satisfied with the level of service they offer.

How was the initial setup?

The solution is straightforward. As long as you can get all of the required information from the client, it's very easy. 

How long it takes to deploy depends on the requirements. It can vary. To configure it is easy, but in most cases, we don't get all the information from the customer which can hold things up a bit.

We have about 20 people for deployment and maintenance.

What about the implementation team?

We handle the deployment ourselves.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing is on a monthly basis. There are also fees for technical support.

What other advice do I have?

We're a Cisco partner.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Samuel-Emesoronye - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Easy to manage, helps to optimize and prioritize network traffic
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is application performance monitoring and being able to browse packets dynamically based on priorities."
  • "The port density should be improved because this solution is limited to two."

What is our primary use case?

We are a tech services company and the Meraki SD-WAN is one of the solutions that I provide to my customers and have experience with.

How has it helped my organization?

One of my clients was able to optimize their traffic by having the Meraki device direct all of their branch traffic through the DIA (direct internet access), rather than through the WAN. The WAN was corporate-wide, meaning that prior to using this solution, all of the branch traffic had to be routed through there.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is application performance monitoring and being able to browse packets dynamically based on priorities. For instance, I have a customer that has multiple connectivities across five different sites and they wanted to leverage SD-WAN for business and application intelligent routing. They wanted to be able to assign higher priority to packets that originate from mission-critical applications.

What needs improvement?

The port density should be improved because this solution is limited to two. We are getting more and more use cases where clients have more than two internet connections and require more than two ports. There should be three or four ports. It is possible to work around this limitation by using a layer two switch, but it does not provide the same flexibility as the statically assigned port.

The price of this solution is too high for smaller companies in Africa, where it is the enterprises that can afford it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Meraki SD-WAN provides a very stable environment.

For example, when I travel out of my city, I still have remote access to my Meraki device. I can access things like my camera feed, I can see my dashboards, and I can manage users. The connection is almost always on, 24/7, with no downtime. In cases where there is downtime, it is almost always a problem with the provider and not the Meraki device.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support from Meraki is fantastic. I do, however, see a bit of resentment when it comes to trying to integrate Meraki with other products such as Cisco ASA or Fortinet. I can understand it because they probably don't have much experience with the products from other vendors. When it comes to supporting their own product, they do a fantastic job.

How was the initial setup?

This is a very straightforward deployment, especially compared to some of the other solutions that I have worked with.

The length of time required for deployment depends on the level of complexity and the environment. I've had some locations where it has taken three weeks, although two or three days is usually enough, once the design phase is concluded.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Meraki solutions come with a choice of several different subscription options including one year, three years, five years, seven years, and ten years.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, this is a very good solution. I like products where you can deploy them and then go to sleep because they are watertight. It isn't going to give you headaches from support calls at 3:00 AM from a customer saying that the site is down. I definitely recommend that people look at the advantages of Meraki, and in particular, the Meraki SD-WAN because of the access to the cloud management interface.

If you ever had a problem with SD-WAN then you do not have to drive to the corporate head office or use a VPN. You can always access the dashboard from anywhere, as long as you have the required privileges on the portal.

The only complaints I have are about the port density and the pricing. They are doing a fantastic job, although there is always room for improvement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
SivaKumar6 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at Westcon-Comstor
Reseller
Interface is really well driven and very mature; it delivers and is secure
Pros and Cons
  • "The Meraki interface is really well driven and very mature."
  • "There is still some work to do when it comes to AI."

What is our primary use case?

I am the architecture lead.

What is most valuable?

I believe this solution does a perfect job. It delivers what it's supposed to do and it's secure. The Meraki interface is really well driven and very mature. I like that it's a dashboard on the cloud so profile settings can be done from anywhere.

What needs improvement?

I think Meracki still has some work to do in terms of catching up with other companies when it comes to AI. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

When it comes to scalability, there's no compromise with Cisco, there is always scalability. 

How are customer service and support?

Our technical support is local, from Saudi Arabia, and I believe the Smart Tech function is really awesome. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward, everything is built-in, and it's plug-and-play.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

You need to pay for quality. We don't have a problem with the price but I know there is competition. We have an enterprise contract with Cisco. 

What other advice do I have?

I take this solution 10 out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
PeerSpot user
reviewer1442538 - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO Training & Consulting at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Real User
Intelligent load balancing that is easy to setup and implement, with good support
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of this solution are load balancing and the security possibilities you have."
  • "Meraki is more or less intelligent load balancing, although a lot of features are missing that our SD-WAN solutions will have."

What is our primary use case?

It allows us to steer the traffic into two parallel links.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of this solution are load balancing and the security possibilities you have.

What needs improvement?

Meraki is more or less an intelligent load balancing. A lot of features are missing that other SD-WAN solutions have. For example, forward error correction and WAN optimization. These features are missing.

The best thing would be if you could have more than two uplinks in the Meraki Gateways. Also, forward error correction would be nice to have.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Meraki SD-WAN for approximately a year and a half.

We are using the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are a small company. We have approximately 120 users.

With Meraki, you have only two WAN links. You cannot have more than that.

You can scale it very easily if you want to have thousands of locations, but in every location or with every Meraki WAN gateway, you can only have two WAN uplinks.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have not contacted technical support, it's always perfect.

Cisco's technical support is very good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is quite simple.

We are a training company that provides training on Meraki. It's a matter of minutes to implement an SD-WAN router.

We have a team that is responsible for maintaining this solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

If you purchase a Meraki gateway, you have to purchase a license. It's a basic license, and you will have SD-WAN included.

When you buy a Meraki gateway, you already have SD-WAN.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

When comparing Meraki SD-WAN with other SD-WAN solutions, Meraki is more or less for free. It's an easy to use solution that helps you to do things that you can't do without SD-WAN. 

It is not as advanced as the Cisco SD-WAN solution, or SD-WAN solutions from other vendors.

It does not have a very rich feature set.

What other advice do I have?

For others who are interested in using Meraki SD-WAN, I would suggest that they know the limitations of the two uplinks and that it is not a separate solution. It's included in what you have. You will not have the same dashboard as you would have with the Cisco SD-WAN, or VeloCloud, VersaStack, etc.

For a free solution, I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Cisco Learning Partner
PeerSpot user
Akshay Kharkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at Manschaft IT Pvt Ltd
Real User
Helps route traffic to data centers without separate internet connections
Pros and Cons
  • "If there are multiple network connectivities in an organization, Meraki creates an AutoVPN. It creates a channel automatically."
  • "The granularity could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Meraki SD-WAN for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate the scalability as eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

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.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user