Meraki Dashboard Reviews

The solution is used to monitor our devices.

The most valuable features are the ease of use and a single-pane-of-glass that allows us to identify issues across the entire network from one dashboard. We can access the dashboard from any network.

The solution has a limited routing table and needs improvement by increasing the numbers as well as providing a summarization for the table.

I would like to have some features that enable the customer to choose the MTU. This is extremely helpful as it is not currently possible to do this from the customer side. We can see that this will be useful for setting up the MTU for various conditions, particularly for voice and any traffic manager that can alter our routing table.

The routing for calls was limited due to certain protocols, so a big review was conducted. Especially for advertising, the routing table and receiving routing tables from internal BGP or external BGP, enhancing this would be helpful. We also collect everything. We only have the option for BGP and BGP is not available in the routing mode, it is a routed model. All features such as a concentrator mode are included, however concentrator mode only has one cable, so we cannot control it. For example, if we want to connect one connection to concentrator mode, we have to do it manually from the firewall side, not from the concentrator mode or Meraki side. It would be helpful if we could add one connection for the concentrator mode to be managed from the Meraki Dashboard, not from the firewall such as Fortinet or Palo Alto.

I have been using the solution for one year.

I give the stability a nine out of ten.

I give the scalability a seven out of ten.

The solution is designed for a midsize organization.

The technical support is good.

Positive

I give the initial setup a seven out of ten. 

We sometimes encounter some unexpected problems during the initial setup, particularly with some devices. We should create a reset button to connect them to the dashboard. This is definitely an issue for us, as sometimes the device is not directly connected to the dashboard. We have to restart the device. Additionally, if we change one connection, it may become static, and we need to reset the device. Therefore, we need someone to do this on-site.

Deployment takes around 30 minutes per switch and requires one person per site.

I give the solution a one out of ten for pricing. The solution is currently the most expensive on the market.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

Two people are required for maintenance.

The solution is useful for medium size organizations, is user-friendly, easy to monitor, and doesn't require any configuration. I recommend the solution to others.

I use Meraki Dashboard to manage our Cisco Meraki devices. It is where I handle the setup and configuration of wireless networks, security settings, and more. The real-time monitoring helps me keep an eye on the network's performance, making troubleshooting and issue resolution a breeze.

What I love most about the Meraki Dashboard are its user-friendly features. Configuring wireless networks is a breeze, and troubleshooting is made easy with insights into RF parameters and roaming issues. The simplicity of the dashboard makes configuration a quick task, and the ability to perform packet captures is a game-changer for in-depth troubleshooting. Overall, it is a go-to solution for efficiently managing and monitoring our network.

One area that could use improvement in the Meraki Dashboard is user-friendliness when navigating to port configurations. While it is functional, the process could be more intuitive and straightforward. After using it for three years, I find that the user interface for configuring ports might benefit from some enhancements to make it more user-friendly and efficient. Clarifying the GUI and simplifying the settings would be a great step forward in improving the overall experience in managing switch configurations.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for three years.

I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of the solution as a nine out of ten. We have approximately 20 users at our company.

We switched from Cisco Prime to Meraki due to continuous improvement, better features, and enhanced integration capabilities. Meraki's dynamic approach aligns well with our need for ongoing advancements and scalability. Unlike the appliance-based nature of Cisco Prime, Meraki offers easier deployment, making it more cost-effective and adaptable to evolving technologies.

I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as an eight out of ten. The time it takes to deploy the Meraki solution can vary, but it is generally quicker than traditional setups.  It takes about a day to deploy it. For a full integration of the Meraki solution, typically two people are needed.

Meraki Dashboard is fairly priced. It is not too expensive.

Overall, I would rate Meraki Dashboard as an eight out of ten. It is a great solution but could use slight improvement.

We primarily use the solution for WiFi. It’s the only thing we use. We have eight Meraki’s for WiFi and use this as a dashboard. We have the devices in the dashboard when we link up to the WiFi.

Principally it is for delivering the internet and for the sites to be standard in the company. We have a firewall, servers, storage, and backup all in the cloud.

I like the configuration capabilities.

The implementation process is good.

The cloud security is excellent.

It’s very stable and reliable.

The scalability is good.

I can’t recall needing anything specific to be improved. Maybe in six months, we might have a different opinion.

I’d like the product to allow for other solutions to be integrated with the dashboard as well.

I’ve been using the solution since 2015.

The solution has been quite stable. We haven’t had issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn’t crash or freeze. It’s reliable and the performance has been good.

The product can scale if you need it to. It’s not a problem at all.

We have approximately 80 employees using the solution right now.

We have local technical support. We haven’t had an issue with them.

It’s neither easy nor difficult to set up. It’s got a moderate level of difficulty when it comes to implementation.

The pricing is good. It’s reasonable. We don’t have an issue with the costs. I’m not sure of the exact cost, however, it’s my understanding the Meraki WiFi is around $800. That’s for a three-year license. It’s about $150 a year.

We are a Cisco customer and work with local Cisco partners.

I have friends in other companies and I do recommend this solution to them. Cisco Meraki is the best solution. Other partners from banks, for example, also recommend this solution. I am very happy with this product.

I’d rate the solution ten out of ten. It’s the best.

Meraki is a networking device which is cloud managed. It's a kind of software defined networking device. You connect to it via the cloud and then you have some dashboard services available from the cloud provider, from Meraki. We have traditional networking devices and we use Meraki for other purposes. I'm the company manager of network services for Europe, India, and Africa and we're a customer of Meraki. 

I like that there is great visibility on the dashboard and you immediately see when something is going down. If you want to dive deeper and get more details you can. Because this is a cloud solution, you have everything configured and there's nothing we really need to configure ourselves to get the information we need.

I've been using this solution for six years. 

I find the solution very scalable. We have both internal and external users. Internally, we have five admins and externally we have about 1,000 users. Because it's outsourced, we probably have around 40 administrators who can log into the system, due to our 24/7 support model. We have approximately 20 locations here in Europe and Russia which are my responsibility, and there are probably maybe 200 end users behind that.

technical support? Are you satisfied? Not satisfied with anything?

Alexander: Yes, I'm satisfied.

The initial setup is very straightforward, it probably took a few hours to set up the first devices. After that it goes very quickly. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use Meraki Dashboard for office network management. The solution is full SaaS services deployed on the Cisco Meraki cloud.

The dashboard is a valuable feature because it is fully SaaS. This means we can access it from anywhere and we don't have to worry about the infrastructure. This is something that is already available in Cisco regularly, in the old version of Cisco, and something that Meraki sold. The hardware of Meraki is very good quality. Cisco is implementing new features into the dashboard from time to time. The best quality of the Meraki Dashboard is its high level of service. 

The cost of the solution is high and can be improved.

I have been using the solution for five years.

I give the stability of the solution a nine out of ten.

The support is quick, responsive, and user-friendly. It's been a pleasure working with Cisco Meraki Support. They always provide a response and answers. Even when we need to replace devices, they do it quickly.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward for someone with experience.

Depending on the architecture of the network the deployment can take from one hour to one working day.

Meraki Dashboard isn't a cheap product, but the quality is worth the price. I can't say if it's expensive or not, because everyone understands that quality costs.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We currently have two people using the solution.

Just as Mercedes is known for its high-quality cars, Cisco is known for its high-quality networking hardware. If we're looking for a reliable network, we can't go wrong with Cisco equipment. Hardware and software come from different sources, but together they create a winning solution. Cisco provides the hardware and Meraki provides the software. I believe that there are cheaper products available, but the quality is not the same. In the five years I have been using Meraki I have not checked the competitors. I am not familiar with the pricing for alternative solutions, so I can't compare where Meraki Dashboard fits in terms of cost.

I recommend the solution to others. Meraki Dashboard is a quality solution, intuitive, easy to implement, and has great support.

We're using Meraki Dashboard for the overall insight and management of the products and services that we have with Meraki, whether switches, SD-WAN, access points, MDM, or the system manager. Meraki Dashboard is our overall portal for service management for all Meraki products.

Meraki Dashboard helped my company because it allows the oversight and management of Meraki products and services from an operational and maintenance perspective, including software updates and overall utility. The solution also allows the segregation of rights so that multiple people can quickly manage different aspects of the services.

What I found most valuable in Meraki Dashboard is that it's well-organized, easy to use, and practical.

An area for improvement in Meraki Dashboard is licensing management because it's a little complex. Product licensing can be made a little bit easier through license concurrency and a more straightforward approach to applying the license to products and services.

I've been using Meraki Dashboard for five or six years now. I'm still using the solution but in a different capacity.

Meraki Dashboard is a stable solution.

Meraki Dashboard is a scalable solution.

I found the technical support for Meraki Dashboard good, so I'm rating it four out of five.

From a dashboard perspective, my company used Fortinet before  Meraki Dashboard to oversee products and services.

Meraki Dashboard was straightforward to set up.

I've seen ROI from Meraki Dashboard.

Meraki Dashboard is a utility and portal that's part of the Meraki solution.

In my company, ten to twelve people use Meraki Dashboard.

As the Meraki Dashboard deployment was very straightforward, only two to three people deployed it. Ten people handled the maintenance of the solution, but it was based on areas in which people had responsibility.

Currently, there's no plan to increase the usage of the Meraki Dashboard.

I would recommend Meraki Dashboard to others who have Meraki products and services, as the solution can provide oversight into what you're doing and what you'll be able to maintain from a Meraki point of view.

My rating for Meraki Dashboard is eight out of ten because it's a strong product for me.

I'm doing everything with this solution. I'm renting some access and using it for my enterprise. I'm doing the insights. I'm doing the API integration with the NordLayer. I can work from home with it as well. 

For the most part, it's perfect. The features are all great.

The initial setup is very good.

It's a scalable solution.

The solution is stable. 

It is a little bit expensive. 

Maybe sometimes they just need to add some more integration to not be a hundred percent Cisco. For example, with Cisco Umbrella, if they could integrate, let's say, Palo Alto or some other third-party devices on the API, not on the VPN channel, that would be great.

Some features could be added. 

I've used the solution for around two years.

The solution is very stable and reliable. There are no bugs. Its performance is good. 

I've found the solution to be scalable. 

The number of users vary. 

For my company, I'm providing consultancy. That's around ten people. However, for other companies where we provide the consultant, there's sometimes 2,000, or 5,000 people. I cannot distinguish between my business as a small enterprise doing that consultancy or in general our clients. It's hard to give exact user numbers.

I didn't face any real problems that would require support. Maybe some other people might if they are doing things on their own side.

Sometimes, with the old way of Meraki VPN connection, it did not work on Windows. However, I asked somebody to follow up with customer support or with technical support and we worked out the issue.

I'm using the Cisco Meraki right now for my own business. In my company, we are using FortiGate. 

The setup is easy. It's not complex. It could be more friendly. When we connect on the API, maybe we can add some more features. Other than that, it was great.

I don't have a huge environment, to be honest. If I have a big environment, I would automate that. I'm doing everything manually in a small environment, and it's straightforward and fast.

The amount of people you need to maintain the solution depends on the third party. Our monitoring or support will be two or three people. However, usually, maintenance is handled by a third party. We don't consider how many people; we do the fees, and they will do their job.

I handle the initial setup in-house. I did not need the assistance of other outside individuals such as consultants or integrators. 

Of course, the last time I deployed around 1200 sites and I used a third party.

While we haven't seen any ROI just yet, we expect to see an ROI in three to four years. 

It is a pretty expensive solution. I'd rate it four out of five in terms of how expensive it is, with five being the most expensive. 

There is just the licensing fee and the integration. If I do it with the Cisco Umbrella, since I'm forced to use the Umbrella to get the full features, I'm limited with the Umbrella. That said, I don't want, as an example, a SaaS solution. If I do it with NordVPN or any other SaaS solution, I have to pay there, and I do a VPN connection which is not the right solution for me in 2022. 

We're a customer and an end-user.

We are using the latest version of the solution. However, I don't know the exact version number. 

I'd advise users that the solution can be expensive, and they need to brace for that.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

The primary use is to have centralized control over all the Meraki devices and services on your network. Primarily I use it for security configuration and reporting.  

Very intuitive, complete overview of entire network including branch offices. Ability to drill down into events and alerts and lookup in the knowledge-base. Create tickets and track them.

I think that the most valuable part about the dashboard is the analytics. A firm that I was doing some IT consulting work for was hit with a ransomware attack and this thing was amazing. After we got things cleaned up, we found that the actors had some IP numbers somewhere on the West Coast. They started to try to get back into the network and Meraki was there to say, "You know what? This same malicious IP number is knocking at your door again." We were able to take care of that and block them off so they could not access the network and that problem was put to rest.

The biggest problem is the absence of a VPN client like AnyConnect with the device. The Meraki rep that I dealt with actually agreed. He said a lot of people are complaining about the fact that they had to work with a separate VPN.  

Here is the problem. Let's say you have got to deploy and install a VPN client on 50 workstations. You physically have to go to every one of the 50 workstations and do the VPN deployment manually. You can not just push it out through an email or a group policy. That means you have to touch every machine and configure it based on the type of network card it has and make a whole bunch of other settings.  

Manually deploying the VPN is about a 20-minute procedure and that is after you learn how to do it. By comparison, if I wanted to roll out 1000 VPN clients with a normal Cisco device, the Cisco AnyConnect software can be just pushed out with some easy instructions and away you go.  

I think the VPN client is really the only true issue I had with the product itself. The connection that I get from home is sometimes a little shaky when I have to use it remotely, but it is impossible to put the blame on that connection as due to Meraki.  

I have been using this product for about a year.  

We never had any issues at all with the stability of Meraki. It is self-healing. If the power goes out or whatever, it is very good at handling that kind of issue. It is easy to learn, easy to read the reports, and it is easy to use the dashboard.  

I had worked with Fortinet and some other firewalls — Linksys of course, going all the way back to the old WatchGuard. I think Meraki really kicked off the whole cloud-based managed device movement and everyone else is just hopping on to do the same kind of thing. SonicWall and Fortinet and all the other newer competitors just followed along when they figured it was something valuable. If Meraki could get their VPN sorted out, I think they would have themselves a flagship product that was really the leader of the pack.  

I have not really had the opportunity to test the scalability first-hand. We were are a small office, so I never really got a chance to try and add hundreds of users. If that had been the case, Meraki probably would have suggested that we go to the next model up because we needed a more robust system.

The configuration of the VPN between branche offices was wonderful. You just click on the address and it basically does everything itself. For a non-engineer type person, pretty much anybody in IT can configure these things once you do the webinar. It is easy and intuitive and as far as I have been able to work with the scalability, I think a lot of the product.  

When I did get to engage the technical support people at Meraki, I would give them a 10-out-of-10. The technical support was great.  

I have been working with firewalls for a long time. I worked with the Cisco 5500 series. I worked with a lot of their older stuff back in the day. Mostly my job for the previous 10 years was not to be the supplier and was not the implementer. Rather I was more of a consultant, so I never really had the opportunity to get the hands-on experience I have now.  

The setup had a few different stages to take care of. The first step was to create a VPN, a branch office connection, and then a better sister location. I bought another MX to act as a backup, so we had that configured as a hot spot or a failover. Then I configured the VPN so that users would be able to work from home. That VPN configuration is probably the one thing that I did not much like about the product. It almost makes no sense that it does not have its own VPN client. You have to use the Microsoft VPN client, which is a bit of a pain. If it has to be that way there surely has to be a better way to integrate it.  

With the main Cisco stuff, you just download the VPN client and it has got your anti-virus component and your VPN client. That is just not the case with Meraki. I know they have been talking about trying to work that out and get that installed. Right now it is a sorta major glitching point.  

I did not configure the product originally. Somebody else did it and they did not configure it very well. For example, there is a feature to protect against ransomware and that feature was not even turned on in the device. After I realized it was not working optimally, I got together with the Meraki folks and they got in there and reconfigured it. It became a true AI device at that point. There were really a lot of things wrong with the initial configuration, but that ransomware piece was a pretty major feature to miss.  

After Meraki helped me reconfigure everything, I felt much more comfortable after that. It was done by one of their resellers and I guess I should have gone that way out of the gate.  

For a small MX 64, it is maybe $300 to $400 a year. It is nothing really outrageous. I was originally put off that you had to pay for a subscription, but I am a veteran thinking back 10 years ago when there was no such thing as subscriptions. Now just about everything seems to be going that route.  

I could see a firewall device and that is sort of comforting. I do not agree with the solution being like a switch and virtually invisible. Like you could have a switch-up in the ceiling somewhere that nobody knows is there. Then all of a sudden it gets tripped and just stops working. You don't see a device go down. But again, it is not just Meraki that is going with the subscription scheme. It is also other companies like SonicWall. They are all going to subscription-based licensing.  

For small businesses, I would recommend Meraki over pretty much anything else on the market.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is worst and ten is the best, I would rate Meraki Dashboard as an eight-out-of-ten.