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Cisco ACI vs Meraki SD-WAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
Cisco ACI enhances efficiency with cost savings and stable performance, though some face challenges and unutilized features.
Sentiment score
7.1
Meraki SD-WAN boosts ROI by reducing costs through easy management, remote capabilities, and features like VoIP integration.
Efficient utilization leads to cost savings and efficiency gains.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Cisco ACI's customer support is mixed, with responsive staff but inconsistent expertise and room for improvement in newer versions.
Sentiment score
6.9
Meraki SD-WAN's support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though integration clarity in complex cases can improve.
The technical support from Cisco is satisfactory.
When issues occur, the TAC is not able to provide much support, leading to difficulties in finding RCAs.
We raised it in TAC, and they were very approachable and supportive.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cisco ACI excels in scalability and flexibility, supporting integration across environments with strong automation and plug-and-play features.
Sentiment score
7.6
Meraki SD-WAN scales well for SMBs, but faces challenges in large complex deployments despite improved enterprise traffic management.
The solution offers high performance and scalability with connectivity options up to 100 GS.
You can use the multi-site and multi-pod features, which help you scale the data center over the WAN and create large sites.
The scalability of Cisco ACI supports our organization's growth effectively.
Scalability depends on the model number of each switch, but generally, it is scalable according to need.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco ACI is now stable and reliable, with high availability, effective support, and improvements enhancing performance for data centers.
Sentiment score
8.2
Meraki SD-WAN is highly stable, providing reliable performance, excellent remote access, and user-friendly management, despite minor cloud integration issues.
For stability, Cisco ACI rates a nine or 9.5 because I've seen three customers using Cisco ACI and once deployed, the solution is very stable.
Sometimes it is not working in Azure or GCP as it has interoperability only with some clouds, so that part needs work.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco ACI users seek improved usability, integration, documentation, deployment, automation, security, and support for a more efficient experience.
Meraki SD-WAN needs security, AI integration, reporting, scalability, customization, and pricing enhancements, plus better WAN optimization and support.
Their lack of on-ground offices can result in business losses.
VeloCloud provides much more detail and many more tabs for troubleshooting everything, such as ARP, IPv4, IPv6, TCP dumps, routing, and switching.
I work with Fortinet where with a single command you can deploy the entire SD-WAN along with FortiGuard within minutes.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco ACI's high costs are justified by its quality and capabilities, making it a valued investment for large enterprises.
Meraki SD-WAN provides flexible subscription models and advanced features, offering competitive value despite higher costs than some competitors.
In general, Cisco ACI is on the higher side; it's not a cheap solution.
Cisco's pricing tends to be on the higher end compared to other vendors.
If the license expires in FortiGate, the basic functionality will work, but in Meraki SD-WAN, the entire system will shut down.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco ACI centralizes management, enhances security, scalability, and automation, simplifying network operations, improving efficiency, and integrating with VMware.
Meraki SD-WAN offers ease of use, real-time analytics, scalability, and cost-effective, flexible remote management for optimized performance.
Cisco ACI provides substantial capability; you can design your network accordingly and it's part of the SDN family, providing many benefits to the organization, especially when moving from traditional network infrastructure.
Its features, like easy application deployment, short deployment time for new applications or software, and eliminating the hassle of STP, are appreciated.
It is essential for growing our data center connectivity and enablement for our customers.
The real-time visibility and analytics capabilities of Meraki SD-WAN are very good for troubleshooting ports, especially when viewing traffic running on these ports in real time.
The architecture allows us to see whether the physical cable is connected or disconnected.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco ACI
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (5th)
Meraki SD-WAN
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 14.6%, up from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Meraki SD-WAN is 22.5%, down from 24.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Khandelwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables streamlined data center management with automation and application-centric design
The main features of Cisco ACI that I really appreciate are the application-centric and network-centric designs, allowing you to create your network according to your application. That's helpful, and it's good for one-time implementation. The automation capabilities are really helpful. We deployed one data center using Terraform, and after deployment, many automation features are available, which can be very helpful. Based on my experience, Cisco ACI provides substantial capability; you can design your network accordingly and it's part of the SDN family, providing many benefits to the organization, especially when moving from traditional network infrastructure. Many organizations are actually using the old traditional Nexus infrastructure or some old data center devices. It gives you significant control and one-time implementation capabilities, and it also provides better performance and security. Functionality-wise, Cisco ACI provides integration using automation. We implemented it through Terraform, which was easy. Those features are available, so I don't think any new features are needed right now; something new could come up, but they have implemented many improvements over the years.
Mageshwaran S - PeerSpot reviewer
Experienced streamlined network management with enhanced usability and room for improved security features
On the security features, when compared to Fortinet, they have more patterns and AI-generated ones. Meraki SD-WAN is slowly implementing AI, but it is not yet full-fledged. If AI comes into the picture, it will be helpful. I work with Fortinet where with a single command you can deploy the entire SD-WAN along with FortiGuard within minutes. For AI, it can discover and connect, but currently, we are doing it manually. In Meraki SD-WAN, some features require additional licenses and subscriptions. If these were bundled together, such as 10 or 20 licenses, it would be very helpful for a mini branch or small campus area coverage.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What do you like most about Cisco ACI?
The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution.
What do you like most about Meraki SD-WAN?
The auto VPN feature is important because it automates many tasks, making things simpler and faster. It helps with setting up devices and changing configurations without manual effort.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Meraki SD-WAN?
The price is a little bit higher than local vendors, for example, Huawei ZTE or H3C. However, some customers require the best quality and performance, thus needing solutions and products from Cisco.
What needs improvement with Meraki SD-WAN?
They have to ask us many questions about configurations. It could be improved with some automation to trigger, for example, telemetry data, so we can determine the state of the deployment as of day...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
École Jeannine Manuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Meraki SD-WAN and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.