We performed a comparison between Cisco DNA Center and Meraki Dashboard based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"I like that we can easily configure any new hardware. It's also easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot."
"It does a lot of things automatically, and that's the big thing with it. They're making the software so that you don't need to be as knowledgeable as me on the switching and routing side to get your work done. If you want, you can have DNA troubleshoot your problem for you and give you solutions or fix it itself, if it was something that's just a configuration issue."
"We have many people from the team who manage a lot of devices. By using Cisco DNA Center, it has taken some of that burden away, we are impressed with it. We did the investment in CAPEX, but in the OPEX was very low."
"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."
"It is very versatile in terms of analytics."
"I like the visibility, instant build, network, policies, and the ability to control access. I also like that you can visualize your whole network."
"The most valuable features of the solution are all of its security features...It is a highly scalable solution."
"Cisco DNA Center provides operational support, compliance support, security vulnerability detection, and automatic scheduling."
"You don't have to be a network engineer to use it."
"It can analyze the traffic that it is picking up from what may be a rogue access point, and it is able to identify those and send relevant notifications."
"We've been spending a lot less time on tickets and deployments, so we have more time to do other things."
"There is no need to swap the hardware at all the locations, and importing the APs into the Dashboard was a simple and quick process."
"The dashboard itself is very simplified and easy to navigate."
"The solution scales well."
"Everything is in a single pane and you can look at your network in one centralized place."
"Some of the features I have found valuable are the ease of access, simple configuration, and monitoring."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The solution's integration feature can be better."
"The solution can be quite pricey."
"The tool's IoT integration should be better."
"There is a limitation with the number of VRFs that you can have in your network, and this has caused us problems with some customers."
"I would like is to have a small information pointer available. It could be a plus feature that I want to implement. When I hover my mouse over the user interface, it should provide a brief explanation. It would be helpful to have it incorporated into the UI."
"The product has many features that do not work properly."
"Integration with analytic tools and API integrations would be ideal."
"What could be improved is the licensing cost of Cisco DNA Center. It's a little bit expensive."
"The downside to the simplicity is that you can't get as granular as you could with the Cisco APs."
"For instance, you should be able to see if something has been blocked by a firewall rule by looking at a live log of traffic moving through the device. It helps you troubleshoot issues and understand if your rules are working. You need to ensure the firewall is blocking the right things. That's unavailable in the Meraki Dashboard. You have to send the logs to a log server. We use SolarWinds locally, but it's not natively built into Meraki. We're also using Cisco ISA and another tool called Smoothwall."
"The solution has a limited routing table and needs improvement by increasing the numbers as well as providing a summarization for the table."
"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."
"The MDM, however, is bad. We're using another MDM now because Meraki was so bad."
"They could offer API functionality for Meraki Dashboard. It will help us develop software immediately using available solutions."
"Meraki Dashboard's pricing could be improved."
"If I am a user and I have a seat on the fourth floor, if I move across the building, the system should be able to track me and should be able to figure out my whereabouts or my position within the building if I'm connected to the wireless. That would make the administrator's life easier in terms of reachability."
Cisco DNA Center is ranked 25th in Network Monitoring Software with 37 reviews while Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews. Cisco DNA Center is rated 7.8, while Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco DNA Center writes "Practical implementation of VXLAN is good and provides centralized control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". Cisco DNA Center is most compared with Cisco Prime, Aruba Airwave, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, Huawei eSight and HPE Intelligent Management Center, whereas Meraki Dashboard is most compared with SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud, Zabbix and Cisco Secure Network Analytics. See our Cisco DNA Center vs. Meraki Dashboard report.
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