What is our primary use case?
It is used in an office environment. We had an incorrect deployment. Office Ubiquiti access points were deployed in the warehouse, and they start to fail when you reach above 90 degrees. In the warehouse ceiling, it's well over 90 degrees, so four of them failed. Rather than just replace them, I decided to use outdoor access points inside the warehouse. They can survive extreme temperatures.
It's more my preference that I prefer Ruckus. There are only three big top names: Cisco, Aruba, and Ruckus. Cisco is only there because of brand recognition, but I've always appreciated Ruckus for Wi-Fi over any other brand because they truly sell a "set it and forget it" system. If you're the IT guy and you're a one-man operation, you look for things that can heal themselves and provide their own maintenance.
Other systems require a lot of heavy lifting. Ruckus doesn't. It costs more, but you get what you pay for. So, that's one of the reasons I would have replaced it with Ruckus down the road anyway. It was just convenient that these failures are taking place now.
What is most valuable?
Money. Ubiquiti is about money. If you don't have the budget for IT, you go with Ubiquiti because you can get a Ubiquiti access point for about a third of the price of Ruckus, maybe even less. It's a solid system, but it has horrible support. I would call it no support. I could not recommend Ubiquiti on a general scale to anybody that needs support because you're not going to get it.
What needs improvement?
The biggest downfall is support.
For how long have I used the solution?
It's been in operation for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability is pretty rock solid. I mean, there are things that you do, like you don't run updates on your access points during the day. If you do a handful of things and you run your maintenance on weekends after hours, then you're fine. They're stable. They just won't run when you get above a certain temperature, and that's part of their specs. So it's not like they're hiding that these things aren't meant to go in warehouses. They know that.
But who's going to do that research? You're not going to really dig that far into it. So, I don't blame the people who didn't realize this before me. But it is what it is.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It scales just fine. There's nothing wrong with the product itself. In fact, ours would still be running if they had just done the research and deployed this properly and realized that the temperatures in the warehouse are too high. It's really easy. There's nothing complicated about it.
How are customer service and support?
I would give them the lowest number. That's what they've earned, and that's what they deserve. That has nothing to do with the product itself, but they have decided they wanted to be the worst-supporting company in the history of IT. That's on them. I still love their products. I still use some of their products, but I know going in, I'm not gonna get any help.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I'm moving from Ubiquiti to Ruckus. I'm actually doing that right now, but I'm very familiar with both.
The main difference is the technology used. Ubiquiti access points create a circular beam, and anything in that area can upload and download.
Ruckus does things differently. They have this direct connection concept, which is quite amazing in operation. Their technology is so advanced that you can deploy a Ruckus system in a highly congested network. I've deployed it in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and other major cities because they have a direct connection. So, every endpoint that connects to a Ruckus access point has a direct connection to the AP. If you open up a Ruckus access point, you would actually see a bunch of what look like upside-down Christmas trees. Each one of those ends is where one endpoint connects directly to it.
The way it was described, it almost looks like that one connection stays connected to your computer as you're walking around. And if you have that type of technology, you can increase the throughput to the endpoints. So, Ruckus wireless configuration is just about as fast as Ethernet because the technology is that much more advanced. It's not a blanket; it's a direct connection to your device. You really see that when you're actually running it. It's very nice. You get what you pay for. That's why they cost so much.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is actually pretty straightforward. Where you get into complexity is if you're trying to migrate from an older system to a newer system.
But the initial setup is so easy you don't even have to have any kind of experience. You could deploy a Ubiquiti network on your own. It's very intuitive.
But if you have any problems, you're on your own. Even with that, the private support community around Ubiquiti is pretty big. You more or less will find your answers, but you'll have to look for them and work for them because you're not getting anybody on the phone.
What was our ROI?
If I hadn't had these failures with my use cases, I would still be running them, and I could guarantee at least ten years, so that's not bad. They don't have the habit of deploying firmware that's destructive. So it's not a lot of maintenance, and it's not a hard system to live with. But then again, you better know what it is before you get into it because nobody's going to help you.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive.
What other advice do I have?
The biggest downfall is support. But everything else is great. The products are quality products. There's no way around it. So, it's up there. I wouldn't put it in the top three, but I would put it in the top twenty. If ten is the best overall, I would put it at a six out of ten.