Ruckus Wireless Reviews

Our clients use this solution for hotel and restaurant management, stadium management, and other forms of retail — typically for large environments. Still, for clients that don't have the resources for this type of hardware, we are looking for a cheaper solution or another enterprise-level access point.

Our clients are typically large businesses. They consist of a lot of major hotels; they all require huge deployments. We're talking hundreds, if not thousands of users. 

We have access points with EOL (end of life) — actually, they are working very well nowadays. Still, with the new technology, we need to improve these agreements because the new data rates need to be parallel with the new technology. That's the only reason the old access points are working so well.

Performance-wise, it's great. The throughput of the speed base and the capacity when it's operating in a high-density environment is outstanding. 

As an elite Ruckus partner, we get a big discount. That said, the analytics could be improved. Some of our engineers prefer the IQ platform in Extreme. They like the analytics and all of the information that they can validate from its cloud platform.

It would be nice if there was a way to compare access points and hardware so you can always get the same level of performance.

The platform that we have with version 5.12 has only just begun supporting R320. This makes things a little slow, especially in regard to the cloud menu. The analytics or maybe the kind of information that we can get about it could be better. We should be able to click on an icon for more graphics and less text.

The company I work for has been using Ruckus Wireless for roughly 12 years. Personally, I have been using this solution for six years. 

Stability-wise, Ruckus Wireless is great. 

Scalability is good. The SmartZone controllers have been working well. We know that they had a manufacturing issue with the first order as they had a lot of problems with the hard disks, but they seem to have resolved that problem. With the cloud, our clients have the capacity for a lot of systems.

We haven't had any issues with the technical support.

Personally, I think the deployment is easy. With Ruckus, there is a lot of documentation included to assist you with the initial setup. 

We are the owners of the equipment. We rent out services to our customers. We pay for all of our devices and rent them out. We have contracts from anywhere from 36 months to five years. 

Many of our customers also test and evaluate the analytics of Meraki. Analytics is very important to our customers. Ruckus has the ability to connect and get analytics, but you need to pay for that. With other platforms, we can get a lot of information for free. With Meraki, you need to pay for a license on a year-to-year basis.

With Ruckus, even if you have a big environment, you can get great performance with only one access point. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.  

We are a Credit Union with over 100 employees. We utilize the Ruckus Virtual SmartZone appliance and about 25 R600 access points to provide a secure wireless solution across five branch locations. The Ruckus solution is used as a guest network for third-party vendors while onsite, as well as by staff members to access corporate data.

With a quality enterprise wireless solution, our employees are more mobile than ever. They experience significantly better performance at longer ranges with the R500 access points, compared with our previous wireless solution. Information Technology staff can quickly issue guest passes for vendors and the instructions are very straightforward, requiring very little effort to get connected.

Our staff maintain a wide gamut of products and we needed a wireless solution that works reliably and has all of the features we needed (walled garden, client isolation, 802.1x with dynamic VLAN, guest passes, etc.) at a cost that wouldn’t break the bank (literally). The quality of the hardware and low cost of maintenance are primary driving factors, and Ruckus exceeds in this space by providing great hardware and a low annual operating expense. 

The Virtual SmartZone appliance is easy to use and quick to deploy, which helps to ensure our staff is focused on actionable results instead of constantly fiddling with wireless configuration or contacting support to resolve troublesome issues.

While the Virtual SmartZone appliance has improved in the last few years, it isn’t without issue and the performance of the Web page leaves something to be desired.

Additionally, Ruckus seems to have removed the built-in help from the appliance, urging the user to log on to the support web site to obtain it. This is simply a nuisance if one wishes to look up what a particular field on the configuration page does, for example.

The tool is expensive.

I have been using Ruckus Wireless for three years.

The solution is stable but have some issues. I rate it five out of ten on stability.

100-150 users are using this solution.
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

Support sometimes provides delayed response.

Neutral

I have used Cisco and Aruba. We switched to Ruckus because it is cheaper than Cisco.

The initial setup is not easy and takes few days to complete. Professional teams find it difficult. I rate it two out of ten.

We use some integrators for the infrastructure enhancement.

The tool is very appropriate for high-density environments. We use it for outdoor areas and factories. It’s been useful for our dense environments.

Different WiFi routers are cheaper and cover areas quite well. They work in different environments. They have cellular connectivity.

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

The controller is most valuable. Through Ruckus ZoneDirector, we can easily manage the websites and the web.

We are using the R610 or R510 model, and it is good in terms of signals.

They can improve the cloud portion. Other vendors have a cloud controller, and they can provide the same so that we can see everything.

I have been using this solution for eight years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. We have more than 100 users.

They provide quite good support, and for the product, they have a lifetime warranty.

It is very easy. The setup or configuration of a new access point takes only 10 minutes.

Its price is reasonable for me.

It is a good product, and it is very competitive in terms of price.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I'm not on the technical side, I would say one of the most valuable features from my perspective is Ruckus Analytics. 

Ruckus Wireless already has mesh networking. I look forward to see how stable the WiFi 6 mesh is compared to a cabling solution of access points.

Ruckus is the first high end enterprise grade Wi-Fi product I have been this actively involved with. Our company also engages with Aruba, however, we have not deployed as many Aruba solutions lately.

Setting up Ruckus Wireless is probably quite intuitive. I haven't set it up myself, but it looks forgiving from what I've seen. 

In the last year, there's been a significant price jump, but I think Ruckus Wireless products are good value for the money. You get quality products at a reasonable price.

I rate Ruckus Wireless 10 out of 10. Overall, we are very satisfied with Ruckus support and hardware.

We are using it for hospitality and private companies. I have a private cloud server acting as a controller, and I also have it on-premises for some of the clients. Some of the clients also have it in the Unleashed mode, and they're using the embedded controller on the access point.

Our clients have significantly improved their functions by reducing the number of access points and avoiding downtime, disconnect issues, and other issues.

I was trying to solve a problem for a client who had multiple access points to cover an area. There were several issues, and a colleague of mine suggested using Ruckus, and it was a revelation. It resolved all our issues. We changed from 12 access points to 3 access points, and everything started to work.

Zero-handoff is one of the top features. The client balancing between the access points is good. Its security is also fine.

Its pricing and licensing can be improved. Its UI can also be more user-friendly.

Currently, in the Unleashed mode, the information that you have about the switches that you add to the controller is quite limited. I would like more information regarding switches. In this mode, an access point acts as a controller, so you don't need a controller. It is for deployments with less than 125 access points, and you can use an access point as a controller.

I have been using this solution for the last five years.

It is quite stable.

Their technical support is fine. When and if I need something, they respond instantly.

I have used several solutions. In some cases, I am still using Ubiquity. If I have advanced requirements or need an enterprise solution, I go for Ruckus.

I have cloud and on-premises setups. Most of them were straightforward. Some of them were complex. In general, it takes a few hours for a site.

I am a reseller and system integrator.

It depends on the client. You have an initial license cost that you need to buy to bind the access point with the controller. This is a one-time fee. You also have to pay the support fee that, if I remember correctly, is about $25 per access point. Its pricing and licensing can be improved.

I am mostly using it as an access point. I plan to increase its usage and increase the number of companies. I would advise others to test the product. It is a fantastic product.

I would rate Ruckus Wireless a ten out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Ruckus is one of the wireless networking products that we implement for our customers. In this context, we are a managed service provider because after well sell the package, then deploy it, we manage it for them.

This is a full solution including Rucks Access Points, Rucks Switching, Ruckes Cloud Controller, and we have a point-to-point set up in these installations. It's multiple locations, but they're all pretty similar to each other.

As a managed service provider, we are a little different than a reseller. Our relationships are not with the companies that are selling us the equipment, it's more with our customers. So, we're trying to put ourselves in a position that we're making those decisions not based on a relationship with a vendor because those can change as technology changes. Today it might be Ruckus, tomorrow it could be Cisco Meraki. It's all based on customer needs and what they're looking for. Though, the vendor relationship is also important because, obviously, we need to support all of this stuff

The most valuable feature is the performance. It works great.

The second most important feature is that it is super easy to deploy. As an example, we deployed this without having any of our physical techs on site. We basically used a contractor to put stuff where we asked for it to be put, but there were no real technical people on site, due to COVID. It is a very large processing plant, so they have maintenance people that we were able to ask to plug things in and place hardware. Pretty simple stuff. After that, we were able to remotely configure and optimize the setup remotely. Again, we didn't buy it because of that, but that turned out to be a huge benefit to going with this product.

The management software is cloud-based and they're constantly revising their cloud software, so there's always room for improvement.

I would like to see this product made a little more economical because it's very expensive. If I look at the percentage of my customers that I can sell it to, it's under 5%.

Our deployment for Ruckus Wireless started several months ago, at the beginning of this year.

Ruckus Wireless is extremely stable.

This product is very easy to scale and I have a couple of pretty decently-sized Ruckus deployments.

The one that we are currently working on is a very physically large deployment and it's a mix of indoor and outdoor access points. Inside the single physical location, there's a pretty large distance between the location itself and an offsite, which is the reason we have a point-to-point.

There is the main physical location and then there is an offsite a couple of miles away, which is part of the deployment. The offsite doesn't really have any physical structures, though it does need the ability to have wireless. So, we're using a point-to-point to connect the two.

The technical support is tiered. Their first level of support is very responsive, maybe not super technical. But again, depending on the size of the problem, they are pretty quick to offer more advanced, technical support or escalate technical support pretty quickly.

We ran into a few issues during this deployment, where stuff wasn't working the way we thought it should be, or we were having some difficulties configuring things, and they were very, very responsive to get involved in it. It seemed like that response was also pretty much on demand. So, even if we would call late in the day or at night, they were able to get someone on support. We rarely had to wait until the next day to get anything resolved.

It is set up as a public cloud, with the vendor's controller on its cloud. All of the equipment is on-premises but managed remotely through the cloud.

Our in-house team is responsible for deployment and maintenance.

This is a very expensive solution.

Ruckus has a very specific niche and is surely not the cheapest solution. You have to have customers that are willing to spend that kind of money. If they are willing, then it's a really good solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a reseller, our clients' use cases are quite broad but mainly focussed on SMB with multiple locations. A main office and satellite branches. This is where the cloud controller comes into its own.

The solution is very easy to deploy.

The product is extremely easy to manage after it is implemented.

Ruckus is very innovative as a company and they currently drive improvements to the WiFi standards themselves. Their range of products is broad. It covers all the requirements I have, which aren't as broad as the whole market. We don't do many outdoor installations, for example, however, they cover outdoor as well as point to point and they seem to work well.

Whilst vendors are always working to improve the features of their products and make them more attractive than the competition, I cannot identify any core features which are missing. Of course, today the product offers all kinds of features, many more than our specific requirements demand.

The solution isn't the cheapest option on the market. However, you are getting a quality product. Cheap is not always best. Cheap can come back and bite you.

We have sold Ruckus wireless for the past ten years at this point. It's been quite a while, way before they went public. They have been bought and sold a couple of times in recent years but the quality remains. They have fantastic people and the product is exemplary.

When the new cloud controller came out it was functional but lacked some of the finesse of other solutions. That did not matter as much as it was an excellent product from an AP perspective. The refinements in the interface have come and Ruckus continue to innovate. I prefer a good AP over a fancy interface any day.

The solution is very easy to scale. Once you have the cloud configured and set up, you can post a single access point to remote location. Plug it in and off you go or you can pre-provision hundreds of them in advance for a mass deployment.

If there is an issue, the support is very responsive. Very helpful, never failed me in ten years.

We have used other solutions in the past. Occasionally, we do installations for clients that go against our advice and then often we have issues, however, with Ruckus, this is never the case. Never, in all the years.

The initial setup isn't complex. It's pretty straightforward.

Obviously, you have to mount access points and in the right locations. You've got to screw holes in the wall and stick it to the wall or ceiling or whatever. Once the physical installation is done and it's connected to the network/internet, which, again, is part of any kind of hardware deployments. It takes about 20 minutes to deploy a new access point from scratch.

Obviously, there's a cost factor. It's not the lowest cost solution, however, from an engineering standpoint, which is what we're more interested in, you have to ask does it work? Does it work well? The answer is yes and yes.

We continually monitor the competition. In enterprise WiFi there are about 4 or 5 contenders from my point of view. In the past Ruckus did not have a cloud management solution and that was an issue. Now it's not an issue.

We are an authorised reseller of the product.

The reason that we sell Ruckus Wireless is that, in my opinion, it's the best-engineered hardware solution. Ruckus are innovative and define many standards in wireless technology, they apply those standards to their products and their products work very well.

We stripped away all the marketing blurb that various companies do when they're jockeying for position. The proof is in the deployment, how happy the clients are, how easy it is to deploy, and how easy it is to manage afterwards.

This solution has one of the easiest deployments. Obviously, whether I recommend it or not depends on my clients' requirements, however, I would wholeheartedly recommend Ruckus over other solutions. Having had firsthand experience of Ruckus, as well as other solutions, we do prefer it.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten... I don't do ten!