Meraki Dashboard Reviews

My organization runs a global business across retail and mining/manufacturing, with around two and a half thousand sites in Meraki Dashboard.

My teams structure and govern configuration templates across our distributed branch locations within Meraki Dashboard by utilizing templates across almost all of our branches. We have some sites which deviate substantially from what the templates dictate, so we have broken those out, but for the most part, most of our sites are on templates. We are planning to exit templates in the next 12 months, as I believe that functionality is going away and is inhibiting our ability to use some of the newer features in Meraki Dashboard.

My organization has seen significant benefits from having Meraki Dashboard, with time savings, configuration consistency, and the ability to troubleshoot issues from a single pane of glass. It is a fantastic product for our retail use case in particular.

I have observed differences when diagnosing remote client connectivity issues using Meraki Dashboard's remote tools compared to dispatching on-site technicians. The visibility that we get in Meraki Dashboard compared to historical tooling with either unmanaged switches or manually managed switches allows us to get everything in one place. We can often identify the root cause of an issue or talk a branch non-technical user through a resolution quite quickly, which saves a lot of frustration for our users and for us.

What I appreciate most about Meraki Dashboard is that we can manage multiple aspects of our network from a single pane of glass. It has come a long way even in the seven years I have been using it. There are all sorts of new features and functionality that we get access to, including new products. I am particularly disappointed that Meraki Sensors are leaving the product, but having all of our routing, switching, and wireless for our retail branches in one dashboard is fantastic.

Meraki Dashboard's automated alerts and event logs have altered how my team handles configuration drift across multiple site deployments. Configuration drift is a big challenge for us at the moment, particularly with people making individual network-level changes. We are looking to utilize other automation technologies to help with that, such as NetBox and Terraform to detect and enforce configuration drift. The alerting that has been developed over the last year or so is proving extremely valuable and beneficial.

My teams incorporate AI assistant insights and root cause recommendations within Meraki Dashboard into our day-to-day triage workflows, making the AI assistant functionality in Meraki Dashboard one of our first go-to troubleshooting tools.

Particularly with more complex issues, the deep reasoning functionality that is available in it has saved a huge amount of time and provides considerable value.

I am disappointed that Meraki Sensors feature is leaving Meraki Dashboard because we use Meraki Sensors heavily across our Australian retail branches for a number of different use cases, and Meraki has discontinued the MT sensor product range, which will be getting sunset at some point. We are disappointed about that.

I do not know yet if they are replacing it with something else, but I believe it may be going out to third-party manufacturers to offer that as a service that integrates.

If I could improve the product in any way, I want to add that there are a number of functions in Meraki Dashboard that you can only do from the dashboard that are not available to us in the API. My role focuses heavily on automation, and that is a real pain point for us as new features come out. We really want to push Meraki to have API parity with every aspect of Meraki Dashboard.

Configuration templates influence policy consistency across my distributed branches and are a big pain point for us with local site exceptions. If something needs to change for a local site requirement, then we end up having to break that site out of the template and manage it separately.

The number of sites that we have had to do that for in the last couple of years has increased, which dramatically increases the management overhead for those broken-out networks, and it is slowly eroding the value that we get from templates. That is why we are looking to transition to more Terraform automation-driven configuration management and get rid of templates.

I rate Meraki Dashboard a seven and not higher because templates cause us a lot of grief, and the lack of API parity is a real challenge for us. We would really appreciate seeing the API rate limit increased as well.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for about seven years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Meraki Dashboard overall as generally pretty good, considering we run a considerable amount of Meraki networks in our dashboard across the globe. Occasionally, we have had performance problems when new features get added or turned on that can grind things to a halt. I can see the team has done an extensive amount of work over the last year or so improving that performance, and generally, it is not an issue for us.

Meraki Dashboard does grow with the needs of my organization.

I have worked with customer support on and off for various issues.

I would evaluate customer support as generally pretty good, but some of the more painful experiences I have had have been around bugs in Meraki Dashboard that I have had to fight to prove were actually bugs in the dashboard. I was frustrated by the time it took both to have the bug accepted as an issue and then have it resolved. It took approximately six months to get something I consider fairly simple fixed.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I rate customer support overall as a seven.

I previously used VeloCloud in my previous organization before a merger. That was only for the SD-WAN side of things, not on routing or switching.

I do not have any metrics from before I joined this organization via a merger. However, we used VeloCloud, which is a competing SD-WAN product in the previous organization, and there were elements of VeloCloud that I really missed coming across. The benefits we got from having switching and routing and wireless all together far outweigh the things that I have missed.

Regarding pricing and licensing, we are covered under a Meraki EA from a licensing perspective, which covers all the licensing. The pricing of the hardware is not terrible, but some of the switching and wireless components can be quite expensive without pushing our accounts team for steeper discounts.

I have looked into other solutions, and that seems to be the way that Meraki is going via Network as Code, Net to Code, and the Cisco DevNet pathways. That seems to be what they are recommending.

I have not looked at other solutions outside of Cisco because we are very heavily invested in Meraki and would not, short of a major issue, consider transitioning away from that.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I rate Meraki Dashboard overall as a seven.

My main use case for Meraki Dashboard is troubleshooting and assisting users. When someone complains about network latency or intermittent issues, I can access the dashboard and identify what could be down or what errors are occurring.

I also use Meraki Dashboard to set up VPN for users.

Meraki Dashboard has positively impacted my organization because I can train someone using the same model. The setups for all of our customers are identical, so I can train a new hire or an existing person transitioning into the role, and the way I approach it can be easily relayed to the person learning how to do it.

This approach has reduced training time for new people, especially for new hires within the IT team, since the procedure is consistent with how I approach it. They don't get access instantaneously, but once they start to get access, it is easier to show them since it's the same for everyone.

The best features Meraki Dashboard offers are its simplicity and the ease with which I can switch between different domains because I manage dealers across the country, making it straightforward to switch between different hubs and set up VPNs.

That feature saves me time because if I have a user from Queensland and a user from New South Wales, it's straightforward to switch and set up the same configuration if they need the same kind of setup, which makes my day easier. The fact that it's the same layout everywhere means I'm never going to get lost.

Adding new equipment, such as access points, is straightforward. It's easy to claim them, and once I know how to do it once, it's something I can retain and move forward from there.

I would probably have different layers for different people in different fields regarding how Meraki Dashboard can be improved. For example, someone who is a systems administrator versus someone who is level one or a field engineer would benefit from restricted access. They could still assist with seeing errors that come up, but because they don't have the knowledge, they wouldn't get confused between adding access points and adding VPNs, allowing them to see if there's a latency problem or a connectivity problem.

Having something for our higher-level manager people within the business would be beneficial regarding analytics and high-level information because they don't need to know the technical aspects, but knowing what access points are having problems and other relevant information would be very helpful. For example, their user count, how many people connect to the guest network, and how many people are within the vicinity of the network would help them and their marketing team.

Meraki Dashboard analytics could provide level one triage functionality by sending a ticket to the IT help desk for a possible outage or downtime, specifying whether it's a Meraki-specific issue or a network provider issue.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for about four years.

Meraki Dashboard is stable. I have never had an issue connecting to the dashboard and using it in four and a half years, and I've never had Meraki Dashboard be offline or down.

Meraki Dashboard is scalable because we have a lot of remote dealers, allowing us to have zero-touch devices that we can send pre-provisioned. Once they're plugged in, they pick up all the configuration they need, which is probably one of the biggest advantages.

I would say customer support is good when needed, but honestly, I don't need to seek external support from my position.

I have only previously used Ubiquity before, and it was on a much smaller scale, so I don't have much else to contribute regarding that question.

Since having the user account, we've probably reduced the need for two or three network engineers. However, having Meraki Dashboard has allowed us to get away with just one engineer and spread the knowledge among the entire IT team, whether it pertains to development or system administration, to help manage the workload. Being able to reduce the headcount to one user who is comfortable with the workload has probably been the biggest benefit and return on investment.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate Meraki Dashboard a seven.

I chose 7 out of 10 because I think some of the reporting and initial triage perspectives could be improved, but overall, it's a really good platform and pretty easy for most people to pick up.

That's probably something we're wanting to move towards in the not-too-distant future, especially concerning some of the analytics side, though I may not be ready from an infrastructure point of view to have it actually make or maintain changes.

I haven't used the AI dashboard extensively, but it has been helpful for some troubleshooting when I can't quite remember where to go within Meraki Dashboard. It's very helpful in that sense for documentation, but beyond that, I haven't explored it yet.

My advice to others looking into using Meraki Dashboard is to go in with open eyes. Ensure you get a good price depending on the size of what you're trying to implement, and make sure that you're getting what is necessary so you don't get undersold or oversold on anything.

I use Meraki Dashboard for configuration, troubleshooting, and monitoring as the primary use cases.

The features I have found most valuable are that Meraki Dashboard itself is fairly easy to navigate. There is a health or insurance tool that allows me to check quickly if there is any misconfiguration or anything unusual in the system, which is quite convenient for quick troubleshooting.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco is that they are improving this, but it is quite interesting if I have the same brand like Meraki switches, firewalls, and so on, because everything is on the same console. However, if I use heterogeneous devices like Catalyst plus Meraki plus other devices, I also have API, Nexus, and so on, so it is a bit harder. I know there are some initiatives for that, but there is no consolidated tool or console that allows me to manage globally all the devices I have. Even if there are some efforts, such as Catalyst Center or Nexus Dashboard, I still have to jump from one console to another if I want to have the global picture.

What I would like to improve in Meraki Dashboard is the template part, which is really helping me to manage at large scale. Integration with AI or native AI functionality would be interesting depending on the price, how far it goes, and how far it shares the information I have. For the rest, it is quite straightforward. The next tool maybe to be integrated, which I do not know if it exists today within Meraki, is IPAM management for IP address management. I do not know if it is part of the roadmap, but it is something I have to use on a dedicated platform, so integrating this would be interesting as well.

Finally, I would rate Meraki Dashboard overall as a 9 out of 10. There are still some missing features, but there are also some considerations. I am familiar with the Chinese situation where there is a dedicated portal for China, so if I need to deploy access points in China, I have to connect to a dedicated portal due to the regulations in that country. However, this is not due to Cisco or company policy.

I have been familiar with Meraki Dashboard for approximately one and a half years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Meraki Dashboard as having no major issues so far, which I would rate as a 9.

I would rate the technical support by Cisco from 1 to 10 as really good, between 8 and 9, so I would put it at 9.

Prior to Meraki Dashboard, I was using, and I am still using, the regular Cisco wireless controller, so I can really see the difference between both. I have offices spread across countries; I am based in Europe with data centers in Europe, but I have some offices in India, China, and other countries. It was quite painful when I had connectivity issues between the data center and the remote side because all the access points lost their connectivity and there was no Wi-Fi anymore. The fact that Meraki Dashboard is cloud-based makes it easier for me. I have less traffic going through the data center, it is more stable, and Adecco has access because the main account or main management is done by Adecco. I am just a user of the solution, and it makes my life easier.

I did not deploy Meraki Dashboard myself; I am just a user, so I just connect to the dashboard and do the configuration there.

Regarding their pricing, the company I work for, Akkodis, was acquired by Adecco in 2022, so I am using the same technologies and I am somehow on the contract regarding Meraki purchase and so on. Prices are good compared to the equivalent from competitors. Features are quite good. The hardware is maybe a bit more expensive than the other ones, but it is reliable, so I pay for the brand more or less. I know that I can use the hardware for years and years without much issues; at least the hardware part is really stable.

I am definitely working with Cisco products, or more accurately, working with Cisco products. I am working not only with Cisco ISE but other products as well, such as wireless, switches, and servers. I am mostly working with Cisco products such as Catalyst, and mostly Catalyst and Meraki. For Meraki switches and firewalls, I mostly work with switches and access points, focusing mostly on access points and some of the switches. Regarding MS switches, I only have a bunch of them, and I am starting to use them, so mostly I use Meraki access points and Cisco Catalyst switches. I am not working with Cisco Meraki MX. I am just starting to work with Meraki MS switches, and I have not installed them yet. I am dealing with Meraki Dashboard. Overall, I rate this product a 9 out of 10.

My use case for Meraki Dashboard is to provide simplicity and manage our networking devices such as wireless access points, switches, and everything through Meraki Dashboard. If we managed devices manually through the legacy, traditional way, we would have to open many things and go to specific devices to check the access points and other equipment. With Meraki Dashboard, we can manage everything from one centralized dashboard.

Using Meraki Dashboard saves my company a significant amount of time. Before implementing this solution, if we assigned an IP to an access point and then found that access point in the Cisco wireless controller, we had to manage it through a time-consuming mechanism using the traditional method. With Meraki Dashboard, the process is very simple. I just turn on the access point and scan the QR code, and it appears in Meraki Dashboard.

The configuration templates I use influence our policy consistencies across distributed branches. When we have templates, we can push them through the branches wherever we want to implement them. We have seven branches: two in Melbourne, two in Sydney, and two in other cities. Once one template is ready, we can deploy it to other devices without creating the templates again from the beginning. This saves us a lot of time and energy, and the chances of mistakes are very low because we are not doing everything repeatedly. The templates help us tremendously.

What I like most specifically in terms of features is the simplicity. Whatever I want to do, whether I want to see the alerts and logs or configure a wireless access point, I can access that from the dashboard. To set up an access point, I just plug in the cable, and the access point comes into Meraki Dashboard by scanning the QR code. This makes life very easy.

I have used Meraki Dashboard for structuring and governing templates. We have templates for Wi-Fi, SSID, and wireless configurations. We use those templates when we have to provide any specific SSID on the wireless access points. In our environment, we have an IT department and finance department. When we have to broadcast the SSID specifically to our IT department, we use that pre-defined template. We just apply those templates to broadcast the SSIDs into our organization.

Meraki Dashboard has helped with automated alerts and event logs. I can see the logs through the dashboard, so it is all automated. I don't have to specifically open the device and check which access point is connected to which switch. I can check everything through the dashboard as everything is displayed there.

My team has structured alerting thresholds and automated workflows in Meraki Dashboard to handle configuration drifts. We have baseline templates that I created for our configuration. Whenever a new access point or new switch comes into our organization, we use those baseline templates and push them to configure the switches and access points through them.

The simplicity of Meraki Dashboard is already very good. I have been working in the industry for seven years, and I have not encountered any issues with Meraki Dashboard. It is very good and straightforward.

Meraki Dashboard already has SD-WAN capabilities, and it would be beneficial if we could integrate Catalyst switches with Meraki Dashboard. Cisco is already doing this through Cloud D, integrating a lot of separate functionalities together into a unified platform. I think Meraki Dashboard will eventually be consolidated into Cloud D in the future. I like that direction.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for five or more years.

Meraki Dashboard is very stable. I have been working in the industry for seven years, and I have not faced any single issue with Meraki Dashboard. It is very straightforward. When people ask me in interviews whether I have seen any problems or troubleshot any issues with Meraki Dashboard, I respond honestly that I have not encountered any problems. Meraki Dashboard is very simple and straightforward.

I have worked directly with Meraki Dashboard customer support. My experience with them was positive. There was one wireless access point that was not getting scanned into Meraki Dashboard and kept experiencing issues. After getting in touch with the support team, they mentioned that the issue was on our internal side, specifically with the DHCP configuration. It was not related to their wireless access point or equipment. We checked the DHCP side after that and found it was a lease scope and IP address issue. The support team was correct. They guided us to the point where the problem was located. I would rate the support team 10 out of 10.

Before adopting Meraki Dashboard, we were using wireless LAN controllers. Now we avoid wireless LAN controllers, and our access points connect directly to Meraki Dashboard.

The previous solution was costly, and Meraki Dashboard is less costly and easier to manage. We don't have to go through a lot of different devices. I can handle all networking management through Meraki Dashboard.

The prices for Meraki Dashboard are quite high. If our organization were moving and we were prior customers of Cisco, we should receive a discount on our license because the licensing is very costly. I remember that if we even add one or two extra access points, after two or three days we get an alert stating that we have to get a license or pay for that. There should be more leniency regarding the cost associated with Meraki Dashboard.

My main use cases for Meraki Dashboard are wireless, wide visibility, and troubleshooting.

Configuration templates influence policy consistency across my distributed branches in a way that we haven't used a lot of templates, making it probably not relevant to our use case.

Meraki Dashboard's automated alerts and event logs probably do not alter my team's handling of configuration drifts significantly, but they provide information that helps us identify issues, particularly user impact. For example, if the client faces a DHCP issue, we can see that on the dashboard now, whereas before, the client would have to tell us there's an issue. This helps by giving us user impact information that is causing the problem.

My teams incorporate AI-assisted insights and root cause recommendations within Meraki Dashboard into our day-to-day triage workflows in a way that even staff who are not at a higher technical level can use it to resolve issues and get back to users, which helps avoid escalating it to our IT partners and saves costs.

I have not observed differences when diagnosing remote client connectivity issues using the dashboard's remote tools compared to dispatching on-site technicians. It comes down to time and cost to send a technician on-site since a lot of information is now provided in the dashboard. For example, packet captures and similar data are available in the dashboard rather than having an engineer there doing it manually.

Recently, the feature I find most valuable in Meraki Dashboard is the AI Assistant because it makes the time spent on troubleshooting and root cause analysis significantly faster. That's the main benefit, and that's what our customers are looking for: they want to reduce the time people spend on troubleshooting and getting to the bottom of the issues.

I can quantify this improvement: for something like a wireless issue for a client that would take a wireless engineer a couple of hours to troubleshoot using manual means, asking the agent today on Meraki Dashboard gives us a more detailed outcome and the root cause for it in five minutes using deep reasoning.

Meraki Dashboard could improve in areas where there is a bit of a delay when trying to load certain pages. The time it takes for an event to appear in the dashboard, especially for the wired network, is not as prompt as it is for the wireless network. If there is a user connectivity event, it's visible in the dashboard very quickly with the wireless, but the wired network has a delay before it shows up.

One of the reasons that would make it a 10 for me is definitely the tech support.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for six or seven years.

I would assess the reliability of this dashboard as not having experienced any crashes. When it is unavailable, we receive an alert about maintenance, but other than that, it's been fine. One thing we probably didn't comprehend is that the way Meraki is set up requires each site to be upgraded all at once, which differs from Prime Infrastructure, where individual AP and switch upgrades can be done separately. This was a surprise for us, more of a knowledge thing than a limitation.

Meraki Dashboard grows well with the needs of my organization because it's cloud-managed, so we don't have to worry about any on-premises expansion or expanding our virtual environment. New APs just require licensing and hardware.

My experience with Cisco support has been inconsistent and depends on which tech I reach. Sometimes they resolve issues quickly within minutes or hours, but at other times, I end up with techs who drag things on without timely responses.

If I were to rate Meraki Dashboard support on a scale of one to ten, I would say maybe a six or seven.

Before using Meraki Dashboard, I was not using another dashboard to address these needs.

The factors that led me to consider Meraki Dashboard specifically include moving to a cloud-first approach. Before this, everything was managed locally per device. We used a Cisco dashboard for switching and a different vendor product for wireless, so we went to Meraki because our switching and wireless could all be in the same portal.

My experience deploying this dashboard is that it was straightforward and simple. In fact, during a hospital cutover, we did it all in one weekend without any major issues.

For this deployment, we have used Meraki Dashboard for just over six months, and we have seen a significant increase in our operational efficiency, especially with user troubleshooting. I estimate this to be about 50% in terms of the effort or time that people are spending trying to troubleshoot. It's considerably faster.

I have seen a lot of visibility into the network with Meraki Dashboard because we have the wireless and wired all in one. There are issues external to Meraki, but because of the logs and packet captures available on the dashboard, we can sometimes identify that this is outside of the network. We point it out to the business that this is not a network issue, which gets escalated to the right team.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing of this product includes some issues when requesting the trial licenses, which weren't as straightforward as I thought they would be. We had some issues getting the trial APs on-site in time. Once we decided to buy the license, everything was fine. It was only the trial side that had issues.

I considered the Access Manager before selecting Meraki, but it is built into Meraki Dashboard.

I would rate Meraki Dashboard as a solution overall at about an eight or nine on a scale of one to ten, especially in comparison to other vendor cloud solutions.

We use Meraki Dashboard, which is a network monitoring software for Cisco Meraki, primarily to monitor Meraki activities, and we also have other monitoring devices across the network. We build a layer interface to extract reporting from Meraki Dashboard, from Datadog for our laptops and other devices, and from Splunk. We have a consolidated dashboard interface where all those reports are being consolidated. My own work is to review performance metrics to ensure that things are happening based on the SLAs that we have with the business. It is the function of my IT group to ensure that these things are working as expected, and we have several dashboards.

We use Datadog, we use ThousandEyes, and we use various other monitoring tools in our system. There are different use cases to monitor Meraki; Meraki Dashboard is specific to Meraki devices. Datadog is specific to all our VMs and other activities within a network, while ThousandEyes is specific to some server services and Cisco devices. We extract all this information into a consolidated interface to have visibility of what is happening across the network without necessarily moving from one dashboard to another. Meraki Dashboard is meant for Meraki devices, including switches, routers, Wi-Fi devices, and any other Meraki-based devices.

I am satisfied with the performance of Meraki Dashboard; it is adequate. We get more than enough information that really helps us to identify issues as they come. If there is any problem, we identify it as fast as possible. We are now building an intelligent, proactive notification system around those incidents. We do not necessarily need to go into the dashboard to be notified; we get the report as and when there is an issue right from our email or from our mobile devices.

There will always be room for improvement. The AI capabilities will surely create a more proactive approach to incident reporting. AI capabilities present a significant opportunity for improvement for Meraki Dashboard as well; anything that has to do with incident and reporting needs a proactive approach, not just a reactive one. Waiting until an incident happens before being notified is not sufficient.

Proactiveness is what I expect. Meraki Dashboard needs to build in proactiveness in incident management reporting. I do not necessarily need to be in front of my dashboard to know what is happening; I should be notified. The functionality is there, but they need to improve on it. Before a problem happens, there should be a diagnostic notification telling me that something is about to fail, and they need to build that into the system. These are things that Meraki is also aware of and will surely happen within the next few months.

I am getting the right technical support from Meraki, so I would give them eight out of ten for all of the Meraki products.

I find the licensing model of Cisco Meraki acceptable; it seems reasonable to me.

There are improvements that I still expect, so I would rate my experience with Meraki Dashboard as seven out of ten. I have mentioned that the AI capabilities regarding incident management will surely reshape the dashboard's functionality in the next few months.

Maraki Dashboard's visibility in Cisco Meraki's marketing strategy is strong, and the competition is very explosive now. Huawei products and HP products are also present in the market. However, because of how easy it is to support Cisco, considering the fact that most of our professional certified people are actually certified on Cisco products, it is the most acceptable infrastructure that any organization would want to deploy for a seamless and easily manageable environment. There are on-ground certified engineers up to the CCIE level for various aspects, whether it is voice, video, base level infrastructure, or ordinary network infrastructure. There are all kinds of professional people that can easily manage the infrastructure. Therefore, Cisco is quite popular and well-accepted across the board, even though price-wise, it is a bit more expensive than competitors.

I manage sites and control wireless by shipping devices to a location and then configuring them. I use Meraki Dashboard to monitor wireless or internet traffic to see clients, find IP addresses, find MAC addresses, understand a vendor or maybe a port that's being used too much or has a third-party device in front of it. There are many uses I have for Meraki Dashboard.

In my opinion, the best features Meraki Dashboard offers include having one place to look and the way it is cloud-managed. We can add old Cisco gear that is compatible to be monitored. I find myself using the cloud management aspect the most, being able to access Meraki Dashboard from any device at any time, not having it dependent on any type of infrastructure at our location, but always being available.

Meraki Dashboard has impacted my organization positively by making management of the large number of networks that we have much easier. We don't have to search extensively or log into each device individually. We can go into the dashboard and use one login and see every device and every network that we've set up, which makes it easier to manage because we also use Meraki products for wireless and switching. It creates a topology for us, and that's beneficial.

Meraki Dashboard helps cut down on time because we're troubleshooting in a single pane of glass. You don't have to look far. You can see traffic and analytics from the dashboard.

I think Meraki Dashboard can be improved by taking into consideration what users are struggling with and trying to implement that into the dashboard in whatever way that is for that individual. For me, it's pretty good as it is right now. I don't have any qualms with it.

I give it a seven because it's not perfect by any means. There are times where I'm not able to get the information I need. It's not a fault of Meraki, it's just the nature of the situation. Sometimes, I have devices that can't find their way back to the dashboard and they get stuck in limbo and you have to do a lot of factory resetting. Making it easier for devices to find their way back to the dashboard would be helpful. I can't give it a ten because sometimes that is a very long process.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for nine years.

Meraki Dashboard is stable.

Meraki Dashboard's scalability is awesome. You can put whatever you need in there, take whatever you need out, and it scales automatically.

Customer support for Meraki Dashboard is awesome and much better than Cisco. I can always reliably get someone to talk to at Meraki. With Cisco, there is a lot of unnecessary complexity and not being very helpful. I would rate the customer support an eight on a scale of one to ten.

Previously, we used Cisco routers and Cisco switches. We had SolarWinds to do the monitoring, but to actually make any changes to the device, you had to log into each one individually. It wasn't a portal that had the collection of all sites. It was going to each one, knowing the IP from SolarWinds, then going to that device, logging into it, and then troubleshooting.

Meraki Dashboard gives my whole team visibility into seeing what a network is doing or what devices they have.

Before choosing Meraki Dashboard, I did not evaluate other options. Meraki was already in place and was just playing a smaller role.

My advice to others looking into using Meraki Dashboard is that if you are looking for a solution that lets you cloud-manage multiple devices in a single environment, this is for you. If you want to get away from having two or three portals to manage your network infrastructure, this is for you. If you have older Cisco gear and want to monitor it, this is for you. I give Meraki Dashboard an overall rating of seven.

My main use case for Meraki Dashboard is for business operations, including monitoring the license, inventory, firmware, and network links. I use it for managing Wi-Fi users and SSIDs, enabling DHCP, and managing administrators. I check the client issues as well, focusing on operational tasks.

A recent specific example of using Meraki Dashboard for operational tasks occurred while I was at the Cisco Live event. During one of the sessions, I scheduled a firmware upgrade for the weekend, which included our MX, switches, APs, and video devices.

Aside from that, my main use case for Meraki Dashboard is managing users, applying policies per device, and troubleshooting wireless issues. I manage wireless access points, change the frequencies, and maintain the SSIDs we have in the office.

I use Meraki Dashboard logs more for notification if there are links that are down, but not for changes. I use it as a history tracker, not a notification system.

My teams have not yet incorporated AI-assisted insights and root cause recommendations within Meraki Dashboard into our day-to-day triage workflows, but I am interested in doing this, including the ARR or AMM for the wireless. This is something I am looking forward to checking and playing with to understand and implement.

I have not implemented configuration templates, but I assume it would be easier to manage using templates.

I find that diagnosing remote client connectivity issues using Meraki Dashboard's remote tools will be easier because all the tools are available on the dashboard. However, I still have to work remotely with the user to understand the issue and investigate while using the dashboard in front of the support team.

Meraki Dashboard has positively impacted my organization. Initially, I used it by myself, but I implemented it and have direct reports taking care of troubleshooting or assignments now, which makes it easier for them to use rather than learning CLI to do things. The great aspect of this dashboard is that it is all in one; all the switches, the MX, and the access points are integrated into the devices I have deployed, making it easier for everyone or new hires to get adopted to this interface.

Meraki Dashboard has helped my team onboard new hires and improved efficiency by saving time and simplifying learning the trade, doing BA tasks, and learning the steps to troubleshoot because it is easy. There is also an AI assistant built into Meraki, which I appreciate.

The best features Meraki Dashboard offers are that it is very user-friendly; the interface is easy to manage. I have used command-line interfaces extensively in the past when I was a lead network engineer, and now I am accustomed to this graphical interface, which does not take a lot of time. The metrics and insights are really helpful, especially for reports for our stakeholders.

The metrics and insights help my team by allowing me to normally send a weekly report for bandwidth. I have access to Telstra Connect for the exact view of bandwidth from the service provider's perspective or the circuit side perspective, but in Meraki, I can also have that kind of reporting. The bandwidth for each link is included in the report, along with the top 10 users and top applications used by each user or by each group or group policy that I created.

I just started integrating ThousandEyes and I am looking into how I can monitor traffic to Microsoft, which is something I have not mentioned yet.

Regarding improvements for Meraki Dashboard, I heard about the MCP, which I am interested in as I know it is more about AI. I really want to learn about MCP in Meraki. The tools are great, and I know they have also embedded CLI for the switches, which is good for those of us who prefer the traditional approach and can still go into Meraki CLI and look into it.

I am happy so far with the needed improvements, and I have not noticed any major gaps.

I feel it is almost perfect but not quite a 10 because Cisco also has the new Cisco Call Control Center, which has better feature integration to Cisco switches and Meraki, ThousandEyes, and other tools. I think that adds to Meraki's existing offerings.

The AI tool, the AI agent that is built into it, is somewhat slow; when I ask a question, it takes time to respond or to show the response compared to other normal AI LLMs available in the market. What I realize is that I have to refresh the page for the output to come out, which is frustrating, but if I know the workaround, it will work. That is probably some feedback I could provide.

I first implemented Meraki equipment to say BCP network or backup or ad hoc network in our enterprise network in our office around 2016, and I continue to use Meraki equipment and have expanded it. If I have new sites, I have installed Meraki equipment including MX, switches, MR or access points, sensors, and cameras, so I really appreciate the Meraki solution.

Meraki Dashboard is stable; I have not had any occurrence of issues.

The scalability of Meraki Dashboard is quite good; it is very scalable.

The customer support from Meraki has been excellent. I have tried customer support from Cisco's Meraki TAC, and they are reliable. I commend them for ensuring that any issue is resolved or handed over properly if they are off duty.

I would rate the customer support a perfect 10.

I have not previously used a different solution because I have been using Meraki in my previous company, so it is something that I introduced when I moved.

I have seen a return on investment primarily in time saved because troubleshooting takes less time. I have minimal IT support doing troubleshooting for our on-site staff using Meraki Dashboard, which probably saves us around half a day of work doing initial troubleshooting if I use that dashboard.

I have not handled pricing, setup cost, and licensing myself, but I know I am doing the licensing for three-year terms. I have not yet renewed my subscription, or I might have for the last three years, but it is not yet time for renewal.

I would rate Meraki Dashboard a nine. I think nine is a good gauge as I have not thought of any improvement; it is not perfect, but I am happy with that.

Meraki Dashboard is deployed in my organization as a public cloud.

For our public cloud deployment, I have local providers in the Philippines, including Telstra. I also have PLDT, Globe, and Converge, which gives me a lot of options.

My advice for others looking into using Meraki Dashboard is that it would simplify business operations, providing a lot of insights that would essentially make support faster and more excellent, so it is something I would recommend.

My main use case for Meraki Dashboard is to manage our switches, access points, and MX, along with a few sensors.

A specific example of how I use Meraki Dashboard day-to-day is to monitor how our Wi-Fi is performing, identify any Wi-Fi issues, check if our access point has dropped, and respond to client requests about internet connectivity problems for both wired and wireless clients. I also keep a general eye on whether all our switches are functioning properly and ensure our MX is not getting overloaded.

I look after our clients, switches, and event logs related to our MX to identify and troubleshoot any issues clients report.

We structure and govern configuration templates across our distributed branch locations within Meraki Dashboard by having different networks in the organization, using Meraki-based VPN to manage different organizations through a mesh setup.

We do not use configuration templates. While we understand that Meraki provides this feature for use across different branches, we do not utilize it because our sites are unique to each other, so we configure each site and branch individually.

Meraki Dashboard has positively impacted my organization. Before we switched to Meraki and Cisco, we were using a different provider that did not have a dashboard and relied entirely on CLI-based management. After we migrated to Meraki with its user interface and dashboard-based approach, it has made our life significantly easier and troubleshooting much quicker.

Troubleshooting time has reduced considerably since tracing clients is easier and all of our switches and access points are visible on the dashboard. If anything on our side goes offline, it is very easy for us to trace it and work on it. Before Meraki, we were experiencing many Wi-Fi issues, but after we migrated to Meraki and implemented Meraki access points, outages have decreased significantly compared to the past.

The difference I have observed when diagnosing remote client connectivity issues using the dashboard's remote tools compared to dispatching on-site technicians is substantial. It is far more effective and saves us considerable time because all of our sites are very far from each other. Without on-site technicians at all sites, being able to see all the problems on the dashboard and resolve them remotely using the VPN services provided by Meraki has saved us significant time on troubleshooting.

Meraki Dashboard's best features include a client finder tool where I can search for a client using an IP address or MAC address, which is particularly helpful for my organization because we have many switches, making it difficult to find clients manually. Being able to use information from users about their client ID, MAC address, or IP address to trace the client is very beneficial, allowing me to investigate the switch or client itself to identify the issue. The event log feature is also very good.

The client finding feature has helped me solve issues faster on almost a daily basis. Our wide clients are not connected 24 hours; we have many different switches where clients are only connected for a few hours and only on a few days a week, which results in clients dropping and not coming back online. When a client goes offline and comes back online, this feature helps us identify what went wrong and why those clients were not accessible.

Meraki Dashboard's automated alerts and event logs have positively altered how my team handles configuration drift across multi-site deployments. We do use alerts and have set several on our dashboard for various issues. Whenever those issues arise, Meraki sends us an email, which is helpful when we are occupied with other tasks, either during working hours or off-hours. These notifications give us awareness of what is happening so we can log back into the dashboard, review the issue, and attempt to fix it as quickly as possible.

Meraki Dashboard can be improved in terms of performance. With so many switches and access points on our dashboard—there are hundreds of both—the dashboard sometimes feels slow, lags, and takes minutes to load information. If that could be resolved, it would be greatly appreciated.

The biggest concern I have is dashboard speed, as all the other features are quite functional.

Regarding Meraki Dashboard's AI capabilities, the governance and security aspect of the AI assistant is quite good, but I have used it in the past and I am not always satisfied with the answers I receive from the AI assistant. I would say the accuracy and reliability of output from Meraki Dashboard's AI capabilities is around 65%.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for around three years.

Meraki Dashboard is stable.

Meraki Dashboard's scalability is good.

The customer support for Meraki Dashboard is good.

Previously, we were using allied telesis but we switched to Meraki because it did not have a dashboard and only used CLI, while the allied telesis was too old for our needs. We appreciated everything that Meraki and Cisco were providing.

I cannot comment on whether we needed fewer employees or the money saved, but we have saved considerable time because of Meraki.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is positive. We are satisfied with it and do not have any concerns.

Before choosing Meraki Dashboard, we did not evaluate other options.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Meraki Dashboard an eight. I chose eight out of ten because I deducted two points due to the dashboard speed. Other than that, I am very satisfied with how the dashboard performs. I would advise others looking into using Meraki Dashboard to proceed with it because we really appreciate it.

My main use case for Meraki Dashboard is managing our networks. I use it to manage all three of those: Wi-Fi, switches, and security appliances.

One example of a task my team handles more easily in the dashboard is checking an outage, updating a switch, or troubleshooting Wi-Fi. When diagnosing remote client connectivity issues, we don't have onsite technicians. Sometimes we need to contact Cisco support instead of sending an onsite technician.

Meraki Dashboard has positively impacted my organization by managing multiple sites at scale and adding the ability for novice users to do the same. I can share a specific outcome: we can roll out a site without being onsite. This has saved my team about 300 onsite visits.

Meraki Dashboard's best features are ease of use and templates. What stands out most for me is the easy configuration. The most useful aspect of access point configuration for my team is consistency across sites.

My network engineering teams structure and govern configuration templates across our distributed branch locations within Meraki Dashboard by using the same template across all sites. Configuration templates influence policy consistency across our distributed branches, and we don't have single-site exceptions when trade-offs come up.

I believe Meraki Dashboard could be improved, particularly in reporting. What specifically would make the reporting better for me are easier exports and easier ways to set the data up.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for five years.

I find Meraki Dashboard stable, but it can be slow.

Meraki Dashboard's scalability is fine.

I find the customer support adequate. The customer support is helpful and responsive, but complex issues require escalation. I would rate the customer support a seven on a scale of one to 10.

I estimate Meraki Dashboard saves about 50 hours of staff time in a typical month.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that pricing is interesting given that there are many differences with different licenses needed.

I would rate Meraki Dashboard a seven on a scale of 1 to 10. I rate it a seven because it does what it does really well, but there's a lot that could be improved.

Meraki Dashboard's automated alerts and event logs haven't really changed how my team handles configuration drift across multiple sites because we don't have that big of a team. We are not incorporating AI-assisted insights and root cause recommendations from Meraki Dashboard into our day-to-day triage workflows.

My advice to others looking into using Meraki Dashboard is to make sure you're aware of its limitations.