MikroTik Routers and Switches Reviews

I mainly use MikroTik Routers. We use them for laboratory and integral solution purposes and different kinds of load balancing and network switching. We also use them for different kinds of use cases that highly rely on network switching. I am using the latest version, and I do automatic updates.

They are stable.

It would be very good if these products are accessible via different kinds of shells and GUI. It will make these solutions very usable.

I have been using this solution for a few years.

They are stable.

They are scalable. The number of users varies based on the usage of the company, but generally, we have between 20 to 100 users.

I never used their technical support.

I didn't have any difficulty with the initial setup. They provide different kinds of documentation. As long as they provide an installation document, I don't have any problem with these installations and different kinds of procedures. 

I installed it myself.

I would recommend this solution to others. We plan to keep using this solution. 

I would rate MikroTik Routers an eight out of ten.

The routing features are the solution's most valuable aspects.

Next year, we are planning to buy a hardware firewall from Sophos. The firewall and the VPN features in MikroTik are a little bit hard to set and are not user-friendly in terms of configuring those features. 

The protection of the web servers, VPN, and spam mail management, will be better in the Sophos model which we want to buy. We'll still use MikroTik for routing between our objects, however, for the main firewall features and VPN features, we want to use something more specific for this job.

There's a new VPN protocol called WireGuard. It's very good to implement MikroTik in the router as firmware. It is more configurable, with WireGuard. It's very practical.

We've been using the solution maybe for five or six years at this point. 

The solution is extremely stable. We don't have issues with crashing. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's good.

The solution is very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, they can do so easily.

Ultimately, the whole company is using it as it s is the main router for distributing internet services.

We don't use technical support. If we need to troubleshoot, we tend to get our answers from the internet. We have access to forums and we have a lot of local technical support and knowledge. It's not official technical support. It's from the providers.

We didn't previously use a different solution. 

The initial setup can be a bit difficult. The configuration can take a lot of time. We only have one person in our company that can do this. It's somewhat impractical. If he's not at work, we can run into issues.

The pricing is very reasonable. It's not too expensive.

We're currently looking to replace some aspects of MikroTik with Sophos and will use Sophos next year as the main firewall.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

Originally, we had little MikroTik routers installed at first. Afterward, we bought a cloud core router and we've had that at this point for six or seven years.

We use the solution both at our company and for our clients.

I'd advise new users to take some time and learn about the configurations. They need to be prepared for a bit of a learning curve when it comes to implementation. However, after that, it's not a problem to use it.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The main reason we use this solution is for the price — it's very cheap.

Personally, I know that Fortinet, Cisco, and Palo Alto are great products, but my customers are just interested in the lowest price. I can't change their minds, it's up to them.

I have been using this solution for a few years.

MikroTik Routers and Switches are both scalable and stable.

I haven't had to contact technical support. I enjoy studying configuration on my own.

I hope to stop using this solution and switch over to FortiGate soon.

The initial setup is not hard, but it's not necessarily easy either. Upgrading can be difficult with MikroTik. Sometimes, when I need to reboot or change software, MikroTik crashes. When this happens, I need to physically change the configuration. 

We have our own small team that handled deployment.

I would recommend this solution to others who prefer price.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of five.

We mainly use this solution for switch and routing.

This solution is easy to configure and it's very flexible. 

The batch management could be improved. 

I have been using this solution for approximately three to five years.

This solution is both very stable and scalable; we haven't experienced any issues with bugs. 

We haven't had to contact technical support. We have a team of six engineers that handle all maintenance related issues.  

For switches, we use Cisco. We are familiar with them and so are our clients. They are comfortable with the higher price. 

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the client. The deployment can take a few weeks.

MikroTik Routers and Switches are great. If you are having issues understanding how to properly use them, study materials and video lessons are available for a low-cost.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give MikroTik Routers and Switches a rating of eight. 

The price-performance is great. I am sure there is a better solution out there (maybe Cisco ISR), but it would be more expensive. 

MikroTik is our main router for incoming and outgoing traffic throughout the system architecture.  

I really have not found anything valuable or special about MikroTik routers. I have not used them a lot and have not done enough with the product to know if it is good or bad in certain areas that I can put my finger on.  

In general, I know that it is functioning and we have not had any breaches or any kind of attacks through our firewall. We have not had any downtime with it. It has been a solid performer that way.  

My first impressions of the MikroTik router I have are that it is old and slow. I would like to see a higher throughput in the switch. The throughput speeds are killing us. Our VPN speeds are not up to par. MikroTik may make some routers and switches that do have higher throughput, but the models that we are using are not in that group of products.  

The security itself is lacking. For instance, most later model routers have web filtering so we can filter out websites and types. I would like to just be able to go in and say that I want to block out porn sites, or I want to block out hate speech — whatever the case may be. I would like to do that and get it done in an expeditious manner and have it work as expected. There is nothing like that type of simplicity and functionality in this router.  

So, the two main things that I look for in a router — speed and filtering by classification — are two things that I did not see. It is working, so I kind of leave it alone for right now because I do not really have the time to figure out what is making it work at all.  

I do know that the interface is very archaic-looking. It does not seem like the ease-of-use was a major concern in the development of the product. It is not very good in the area of user-friendly.  

Another problem that I do not like about the MikroTik routers is that I have to use a specific program called Winbox to access it and configure it. I should not be limited to accessing the configuration using just one tool.  

I have actually been able to use and access it for maybe three weeks now. It has been at the company for several years.  

One thing I can say for the product is that it has been stable. There has not even been downtime. I checked the uptime on it and it has been up almost a year without having to reset or do anything of that nature for maintenance. So by whatever magic, it is stable.  

I would say that these products do not have much potential for scalability. They are limited to what is in the hardware now without doing a firmware update. But one thing is for certain, any firmware update is not going to change our throughput speed. The actual hardware itself is limiting us.  

We have approximately 52 employees passively using these products.  

With a year of uptime, we obviously have not had to use the tech support at all. On the day when the thing falls apart and I do not know a thing about it, that is when I will find out how good the support is as well.  

Because the product has been here for several years, I was not involved in the installation. I assume it was not much different than other routers and switches.  

There are not any external or hidden costs. The company bought the products and put them in. They are not paying for any kind of maintenance or anything of that nature at this point.  

My main advice to people considering this solution based on my experience is that I would suggest looking for other robust solutions. I know they are out there because I have used them.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best. I would rate MikroTik routers and switches as a six-out-of-ten. It seems to be working by its own devices but there is just too much old, slow, and unfriendly about them.  

I have worked more with the MikroTik Routers, as opposed to their switching products.

We use this solution to route traffic in our network. For example, if one group is experiencing a slow connection then we can re-route the traffic. This is possible because we have multiple links on our premises.

The most valuable features are the versatility and ease of use.

We make use of a script that will automatically re-route traffic when connections are slow.

The manageability of the web-based UI needs to be improved. I still prefer to use the Winbox application.

It would be great if they included some next-generation features in the future.

I have been using MikroTik Routers and Switches for about three years.

We had some trouble with the latest patch that was released. There were issues with high CPU usage, so we reverted back to the previous version.

This is a scalable solution. We have between 1,000 and 1,500 users.

We do not rely on technical support from the vendor. We do our own research, test situations in our lab, and solve our own problems.

The installation is straightforward.

Our in-house team deployed our routers.

This product is cheaper than competing products by other vendors.

I was not the person who selected and deployed this solution.

We have not had any issues with our MikroTik routers and I would definitely recommend them.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I primarily use the solution as a firewall, and for routing purposes, and for multi-band load balancing. 

The load balancing is very good.

The solution offers very good multi-routing.

The firewall is very good.

For the interface, I always use Winbox.

The MikroTik weblog, web user log, was supposed to be remotely accessible. However, it was not as good as I had wanted it to be. I found its functionality disappointing. There's no proper interface. They show only IPs but not the DNS address or complete address. It only shows the IP addresses. Also, they only show real-time data and not the history of the user's log address. We would like to see a history on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

The solution needs to improve its security firewalls and mirror that of, for example, Sophos, or FortiGate.

The solution needs to focus on UTM in its devices.

I have about five years of experience working with this solution.

We've found the stability of the solution to be good enough.

The solution is quite easy to scale. We haven't had any problems expanding the solution when we need to.

I've never contacted technical support. If I have issues with the solution, I try to handle it myself. So far, I've never needed anyone else's assistance.

I've previously used FortiGate and Fortinet devices. They have very good security and firewalls.

The initial setup is a little bit complex for beginners. It's difficult to install the router and for initializing from the beginning all of the configurations we need, like setting up the initial firewall rules, for example.

If a user knows all the basic steps, the deployment only takes about ten to 15 minutes.

I handled the implementation myself. I didn't need the assistance of an integrator or reseller.

I'd warn others that a tutorial or a bit of learning is required before beginning. It helps if a user has a bit of understanding about the solution. There's some complexity in the terminologies and surrounding the initial implementation process.

Overall, it's a good product, but it requires a bit of improvement, especially in relation to UTM and security.

I'd rate it eight out of ten.

We use MikroTik both in our company and clients. Even extended to our household clients. MikroTik devices offer you similar features you'll normally get from high priced devices like Cisco and HP, however at a fraction of the costs. This works very nicely with us since our clients are mainly small and medium. The device price doesn't dictate whether the client gets a solution.

VLANs, L3 Routing, Load Balancing, HotSpot are amongst some of the features we normally use in many of our deployments.

Costs saving and expansion of our product portfolio as a result of those features offered by mikrotik, but would have to pay for licenses from other providers. Dude also improved network management and service, which our re-skilled team enjoy. Many MikroTik devices can be powered from 12VDC and this is also a cost saving on electricity consumption and allow our deployments in areas where solar solutions are offered, extending our footprint.

The pricing is a great selling point.

We find the VLANs, Load Balancing, HotSpot, Traffic Management the most valuable part of the solution.

We're very happy with what we are getting out of the solution in general. The features are good. They're comparable to other brands such as Cisco and HP.

We've had difficulties allocating different hubs with different IPs. At times, some users use it on one range and can access computers on another range. We thought isolation would help, but it hasn't. When you assign IP addresses to ports, people can still access those ports, and that's really frustrating.

The solution doesn't offer very good documentation. When we had questions around isolation and allocating different hubs and IPs, we couldn't find any verifiable answers.

The solution's website isn't that good. When I go to it, I can't find what I'm looking for. However, if I go to a third party's website, I can easily find the information.

We've been using the solution for ten years.

Very stable, not major failures reported at this stage.

It's a very scalable solution. It's not really an issue if companies need to scale. However, the issue of port isolation and the difficulties we have might ultimately affect scaling as we have to maintain security and right now we're struggling with that. When you scale, you compromise security. It's a double-edged sword.

We have about 15 users on the particular solution currently. However, these are solutions that will be deployed across different clients.

I have never contacted technical support directly. I have gone to their support website, which, I feel, doesn't have enough information or documentation. If you compare it to Cisco, Cisco has got more support online; you don't even have to call them.

Much as MicroTik is cheaper than Cisco, and you can see a difference in support quality. Cisco does offer a lot of support on their website. When you go to Cisco, you get answers to all types of issues. With MicroTik, I need to go look at private third-party websites. That's why I feel their technical support is a disappointment.

You can try calling or writing emails, however, you don't get responses. In the end, you have to fiddle around and try things yourself. This is not sustainable. A client will eventually not mind so much if they need to pay a bit more to get proper service.

We've previously used Cisco, which was much more expensive.

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment typically takes about one hour if it's just a basic initial layer that needs to be implemented.

In-house, it was more of a trial and error but finally got it. We still and constantly improving our know how but we will get there.

The costs of hardware reduces the ROI dramatically. Same way the Costs of Ownership does.

The pricing of the solution is quite reasonable.

What we do is we buy Level Four devices, so we don't have to buy license supported versions.

We came across MikroTik and immediately fell in love with it

We use the solution and we provide services to clients as well. It's much cheaper than when we used Cisco and other devices. We're a reseller and solutions provider.

I do advise people to use the solution, because of the price and features. The more you learn is the more you realize how valuable MikroTik devices are.

One thing I would mention to others is that MikroTik is on Linux, but there's nothing like WinBox for Linux, or what you might call a Linux box. You need to do something that looks like WinBox, because if you're using Ubuntu, you will need to use WinBox and there isn't one for Linux. Not everybody uses Windows and many people, especially technical people, are moving away from Windows. 

The solution is a good product and it has improved since the first time we used it. It's just support that is really lacking.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I'd rate it higher if technical support was better.

We primarily use our MikroTik devices as layer three routers.

The best part about MikroTik Routers is the price.

The biggest thing that needs improvement is the support. There are lots of bugs but you can find workarounds for these. However, without support for professional use, you don't know when it fails and why it fails. You have to troubleshoot on your own.

I have been using MikroTik Routers for two or three years.

The stability is poor because it's dropping packets. As you control it through the GUI, the device is starting to drop packets, so it is not stable.

The scalability is hard for me to judge at this point.

Technical support is bad overall. However, when I contacted them last, the answer to that question was straightforward. It was a little bit confusing because they were talking about CPU queues versus hardware queues, and my English is not perfect, but I did get a straightforward answer after the second email.

If you read the manual and the documentation carefully, and also research the Wiki support sites, the setup can be quite straightforward.

The length of time for deployment depends on the type of scenario and what you want to do.

To have a working solution it can take weeks. You have to test all of the limits because if you don't know your limits then you don't know your product area. For example, can a device be placed when serving a 1G internet? Knowing the limits and testing the limits is a time-consuming activity. It can take one to two weeks depending on what you are testing.

The implementation can be done without the help of a consultant. You can do it on your own.

The technical features in MikroTik are not mentionable because it is a low-cost solution. There is no service, support, or proper training. We are using them because our competitors are using them, and we have to stay competitive.

The only real value of MikroTik is the price and I would not recommend this solution for any other reason. If you can get another device from a bigger company at a similar price then I would do that because the support is going to be better. Proper support is important.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

We use this product to route traffic with dynamic routing protocols like BGP. We also use it for filtering traffic and making network translations to provide access to services that are behind it. In this regard, it acts as a firewall.

It hosts a lot of B2B sessions with our internal and external peers.

MikroTik provides us a quick way to give access to internal services from outside of our network, and a way to manage those services.

This solution offers features that make it convenient for debugging.

Traffic classification is a very convenient feature.

The flexible IP firewall and IP network address translation make it very easy to give access to internal services. 

I would like to see a cluster feature added, where multiple devices can be configured and managed as one. One is in a standby state while the other is active, and if one fails then the other takes over.

The stability can be improved.

We have been using a MikroTik router for seven or eight years.

This solution is not very stable. I would rate stability at seven out of ten.

The scalability is good and we have 50 or 60 users, in addition to perhaps five technical staff who can connect devices and configure them.

Technical support responds very quickly. However, we very often catch bugs that they are not aware of, which is bad. MikroTik should be finding these bugs itself.

We are happy with the communication from technical support, but they should improve with respect to testing and releasing updates.

The initial setup is very straightforward and easy. It will take several hours to set up and have it work properly.

The implementation was done by my team.

There is no licensing fee in addition to the hardware, but we do pay an annual fee for support.

I would recommend this solution for those who don't need a very stable solution. You will not have zero-downtime provided by MikroTik. Also, if you need clustered routers then this solution will not work. However, if you are willing to update several times a month with several minutes of downtime while upgrading and rebooting, then it will be fine.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is to write the network plan out before implementing changes. Then, go only by the steps of the plan, and do not deviate.

Overall, it is a very good solution with a lot of features.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.