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Cisco Meraki vMX vs Tailscale comparison

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Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Meraki vMX
Ranking in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
19th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (16th)
Tailscale
Ranking in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Enterprise Infrastructure VPN category, the mindshare of Cisco Meraki vMX is 0.9%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tailscale is 5.8%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tailscale5.8%
Cisco Meraki vMX0.9%
Other93.3%
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Liao - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Manager at DYXnet Group
Cloud connectivity has improved secure orchestration and simplified multi-site management
The most valuable features in Cisco Meraki vMX are easy deployment, an easy-to-read dashboard for information, and automatic load balancing for two circuits in the MX. These are the most important key features for our small business customers. I believe you can integrate Cisco Meraki vMX analytics for network performance when deploying it on any public cloud platform. Encryption is important, and Cisco Meraki vMX supports what most customers want, such as AES 256 or 128. The product supports modern encryption functions and features, making the connection more secure, easy to deploy, and monitor. I think the orchestration feature is beneficial. The automated failover capabilities are very important to our customers because the IT department does not need to configure any parameters; they can switch over themselves. If such an event occurs, the system will send the customers an email to notify them when it goes down or when any device is out of order. This is very easy for the IT department.
Adeniyi Stephen - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at CloudKite.io
Secure access has simplified hybrid connectivity and has unified multi-cluster workflows
I would say that in terms of Tailscale, if I have so many tailnets I need to connect to, there are some issues in the login process that need a little bit of attention from the Tailscale team. Sometimes, you would probably need to restart your entire system for it to connect. As a DevOps as a Service engineer, I have so many clients that are using Tailscale, and I would need to connect to maybe five different tailnets because they are different clients. Client A might have a Tailscale, Client B, Client C, and so on. When changing between tailnets, sometimes it hangs. Sometimes you might need to restart your entire system. This is a bit of a headache in that aspect. However, I believe if you are just using a particular tailnet, just one, then it is quite easy and there won't be any headache. For me, I think it can be improved in the aspect of having multiple tailnets to connect to. A good refresh on the Tailscale side and the backend side to refresh the connection anytime there is a new connection to be made would be helpful. Instead of needing to restart the system, it should be able to refresh itself. The connection side and connecting to multiple Tailscale instances can be problematic, and sometimes you have to restart your system when switching between them. The ACL sometimes is like another language on its own entirely. It is fine, but they need to make it in a YAML format instead of the current format because it is quite new and something you have to go and study. If they can make it like a YAML format, that would be better. Aside from the switching which I mentioned and the fact that you have to relearn their ACL, if the ACL could be in a YAML format instead of JSON format, that would be beneficial. I don't think there is much they can do about the switching of tailnets, but if they can have a YAML format of the ACL, that would be good. Every other thing is a ten out of ten. The connection-wise is easy to set up and easy to install. It is good to have things connected all together from on-premises, from so many environments, and even exit nodes as well. It is good overall. The pricing, I think Tailscale can be a little bit on the higher side. It is not for teams with just small users. If you want to set it up for small users and a small startup, I don't think you can afford it and might need to go to other open-source alternatives. It is good for teams that have maybe fifty plus users or one hundred users. In terms of pricing, I would say it is on the higher side, but it is worth it. The price is worth the functionality. As a user, I would say it is more on the higher side, but based on its functionality, it is worth the price.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Meraki dashboard helps manage our network effectively because it is quite easy; we manage ourselves very well."
"Cisco Meraki vMX offers sufficient features for most customers; it is very easy to handle and proves very efficient, with the main advantages being the visibility it provides and the ease of administration."
"<p>The most valuable features in Cisco Meraki vMX are easy deployment, an easy-to-read dashboard for information, and automatic load balancing for two circuits in the MX, which are the most important key features for our small business customers.</p>"
"The best features Tailscale offers are the ease of use and the security it provides for data in transition."
"Tailscale's best features include the ability to seamlessly integrate and add devices, exit nodes, a very simple UI that is easy to set up, and importantly, access to a CLI so that my agents can set up Tailscale for me."
"With Tailscale, it is honestly super easy."
"In my job, Tailscale has reduced the amount of work and headache of having a VPN between servers and cloud, so instead of following a longer and complex process of having a site-to-site VPN and a device with a fixed public IP to connect with the cloud and other spots in Morocco, especially in Tangier, Tailscale simplifies all of that."
"Tailscale is a very solid framework and is very useful for smaller companies if they want to start out or even bigger companies who want to have a robust network of devices that they want to manage."
"There is no better option than this."
"Tailscale has really helped in terms of security because users can be in another part of the world and, instead of them connecting to the company environment through the local network there, they can switch on their Tailscale and once they switch on their Tailscale, they don't have to connect over their internet; they just go through Tailscale to access company infrastructures."
"Tailscale is a great solution that is fast, easy, and cheap."
 

Cons

"In comparison with Aruba, I find Aruba to be far better in terms of deployment, ClearPass, and everything, which is all very easy."
"<p>Cisco Meraki vMX needs to improve its ability to configure complex policy-based routing.</p>"
"In comparison with Aruba, I find Aruba to be far better in terms of deployment, ClearPass, and everything, which is all very easy."
"It is not the strongest security solution, so if you want to have next-generation firewall features, you always need an additional component."
"Regarding how Tailscale can be improved, I think for free users, there are some limited options."
"Currently, if Tailscale goes down, our services are not operable."
"I initially got introduced to Tailscale in high school when I needed access to services running on my server, but due to deep packet inspection being in place, I could not use Tailscale."
"I choose a seven because it sells what it does honestly, but I believe some more flexibility might be needed."
"I feel the speed of the control servers are a bit too slow."
"I would not say anything in Tailscale's use case could be improved; what it does and its intended use is perfect, but the application on the laptop is a little buggy since it continuously opens in the background when it should not be."
"Another issue is that when I use Tailscale with other alternatives such as Radmin and ZeroTier, it takes high priority and takes all the incoming connections, even if the other alternative has a different IP scope."
"One thing I want Tailscale to improve is their user interface for Arch Linux, which is one of the devices I have that I installed Tailscale on, but they do not have the native package with full features, a capability I really want them to develop."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
14%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cisco Meraki vMX?
Cisco Meraki vMX needs to improve its ability to configure complex policy-based routing. The product can only be set up via the GUI interface and cannot perform complex tasks like a Cisco router wh...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Meraki vMX?
I am an architect planning for our customers to plan their enterprise connectivity via Cisco Meraki vMX and SASE. This is for internet access for mobile users, and I am a reseller, not using the pr...
What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Meraki vMX?
I have no idea about additional features that I would like to see in the next release to make it better. My customers will buy it from the AWS Marketplace and Azure. In my opinion, Cisco Meraki vMX...
What needs improvement with Tailscale?
At the moment, I don't know because it's been working very well for me, and I haven't been managing it much lately. I still use it because I connect from different phones, but everything is already...
What is your primary use case for Tailscale?
My main use case for Tailscale is for my homelab, where I have several services, including professional services. I use it to connect remotely from different places and access my services. I used t...
What advice do you have for others considering Tailscale?
There are several or many minutes of time saved, especially with WireGuard and in management, and in the mental management, it also has an impact because having to manage so many peer files with Wi...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Bamboo Health, Duolingo, Shiguredo, Instacart, Corelight, Machinify, Bolt, Mercari, Cobalt, Yugabyte, Jasper, VersaBank, Zego, Gini and Finter
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Meraki vMX vs. Tailscale and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.