Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Reviews

We are a solution integrator and this is one of the products that we provide to our customers.

I develop, market, and strategize products.

We have customers in all sorts of market segments including large businesses, government, SMEs, retail, hospitals, hotels, and others. We have a lot of clients who use this product.

Well since we are reselling the Meraki as Partner product, the aim was to choose the vendor for the organization as revenue-generating and enhance customer experience product, Meraki happened to be the best fit in this regard. We marketed this product according to regional market trends, and it generated potential sales leads for the company. 

One of the best features of this solution is that it has enough in-depth visibility for the people who connect to their wireless technology.

This solution is quite flexible and compatible with other devices.

The most amazing part is that their access points have the ability to connect to multiple conference devices at different times, and it shows you the very in-depth Wi-Fi analytics through their dashboard.

This solution is simple and easy to use.

These products are more suitable for SMB rather than an enterprise for one of the listed Access Points like MR-20, Whereas MR-33 and above models covers and target the Enterprise customers.

We would like to see Wi-Fi 6 support for devices sold in the Middle East, however, Meraki has introduced WiFi-6 where we would strategize our GTM plans for WiFi 6, where we would offer WiFi 6 to specific customers with extensive needs of high WiFi availability in KSA.

It's a very stable solution, the stability of wireless networks depends upon a lot of factor like how much and complex the requirement is for the customer, its not always necessary to have bulk Access Point installed on customer site, in case of Meraki as of different model option and feature like high-density broadcasting, few access points would be enough to cover WiFi coverage, The solution itself is stable. As its cloud-based Access Points, The stability in Meraki networks is autonomous. 

This solution is scalable.

The service with them has been amazing. I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten.

We did competitive and comparative analysis while we were in the ideation phase for the company, having said that, after reaching conclusion to our ideation study, we found Meraki as a market leader in WiFi technology from a commercial perspective as well as features and benefits to end customers. Thus we choose to go with Meraki as our Strategic Partner for our standard WiFi product. 

The initial setup of this solution is plug and play and very straightforward.

We never used vendor teams to install or configure rather we have our own certified people working to install the configure the Meraki network at customer premises. In fact, we have our own business processes which the organization follows. 

The setup cost varies from Service Provider to others, how they want to build the cost model. The licensing part for Meraki is extensible, it depends on which model you would choose to offer to the market as SP. Mostly pricing models are yearly contractual fees, but normally you would pay as one time cost as SP. In our case, we followed the international pricing trend for WiFi where you Bundle connectivity Per Access Point on a flat-rate monthly fee, and the customer doesn't want to pay extra charges and want easy to install plug and play solutions. In that specific case, you transfer the ownership of the hardware to the customer, while you charge only for Monitoring and Management which are minimal fees. 

We did look into other options, there are pros and cons, but since the company strategy was to focus on SME's, we found Meraki was the most suitable option. The option that we were looking for the Field Operations for Site Survey, Meraki Access Point had features like Site Survey Mode where Access Point would detect the signal strength and adjust its broadcasting range to premises where it was installed. In other vendors, we did not find that feature. This was important for us to make an easier job for our Field Operations teams who would visit the customer site to install the WiFi Solution, it saved time and efforts and especially the Site Survey cost which was Plus in reducing the Operations Opex for WiFi.

The implementation and suitability of this product depend on the client and the want they want to achieve.

When it comes to Wi-Fi wireless technology, you also have to consider 5G. The 5G is already here and it's the fastest, ever, wireless network. There is going to be a conflict between Wi-Fi and 5G when it comes to what enterprises are using. Wi-Fi 6 will help to keep the technology in the market.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

The dashboard is the solution's most valuable feature. It's very user-friendly. It's a good solution for people that don't have a big technical team.

In many wireless solutions, there are a lot of things that can be added, like WiFi 6. 

Meraki should share its viability roadmap. It is really hard to know which functionality will appear or when they will be available. It is also hard to know which features are available now but are not visible on the dashboard.

In France, there's a law that requires we should keep a log of connection for 1 year, so it would be really nice to have a solution or feature that allows us to keep a log in the cloud during the year with log rotations and secure log authorizations. Right now, in France, it is not possible.

So far, we haven't had issues with stability. 

The solution is easily scalable. There are not really any limits for the customer in terms of expanding if they need to.

The technical support of Meraki is very good. They're always quick to answer. You can create a case on your dashboard and after a maximum of 30 minutes, they contact you. This is a great process. Many other solutions should copy their support model. 

The initial setup is easy; it's not complex at all.

In terms of deployment, depending on the customer, it can be installed rather quickly. A customer can even handle the installation themselves.  Some may need more help with design, and it can take a bit more time to do that, but overall it's rather simple. 

We're a partner with Cisco. We create architecture for customers and design solutions for surveillance products. We also deploy WiFi production engineers from our company.

My advice to others considering implementation is to be aware of Meraki limitations. If you are not sure if the features you need are available, you should verify that with Meraki. It will keep you from having any surprises down the road.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a really good product.

Our primary use case is for business, the end within the business, no guests or anything like that. We use the on-prem deployment model of this solution. 

The most valuable feature is the stability. It works and doesn't stop.

In terms of improvement, we're waiting on is the new standard WiFi 6. That's really where the research comes into. With wifi coming out, we're going to refresh everything. Hence we're going to look at the top three players.

I'd like better integration with security providers. 

It is stable. We've never had any bugs. 

It's scalable. We have between 50-100 users in my company. The users are our general employees. 

We don't require any staff for maintenance. For the deployment, we required four staff members. We have plans for increasing usage. The idea is to double it in size with Wifi 6. 

We were in touch with technical support a while ago. They just said what was in the book.

We previously used Aruba Wireless. We switched because of the price. It wasn't my choice, it was my client's choice. 

The initial setup was complex. It took about 200 hours. 

Our deployment strategy was to get it all in and then get all hardware in, put one service layer at a time. When it's finished, disable all the old stuff. After migrating the clients, disable all the old stuff.

I reached out to Cisco for boilerplate plans and worked on their standard design for a smaller office.

After the third year, because it's Cisco, the prices go higher. 

My advice to someone considering this solution would be to use the white paper comparisons, they're excellent. Particularly not a newspaper review of a product, as it comes out of the box. That does nothing. But it has to really be an installation that is similar to yours. It might match the number of sites or match the number of consumers in the end but it has to be similar in some ways. Not a lab, a lab work doesn't tell you anything. That's like a practice run. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

The primary use case of this solution is to allow access to our guests and to grant our employees Wi-Fi access while at work. Mainly we use Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN as a Wi-Fi solution, occasionally as switches, but primarily as a wireless solution.

The deployment model was on a public cloud.

What I like most about this solution is that it is a fully managed solution. We can deploy it and check in on our customers without having an on-site connection or an on-site infrastructure for elderly customers.

The technical support for Meraki needs improvements made to the waiting times. The explanation when you have problems, and the tools in place to follow the case, are not very good.

They should reconsider the rules under licensing. If you do not pay your subscription within the month of it being due, the use of the product will stop.

This is a stable solution, it's perfect! We have not had any issues with glitches or crashes. Once it's installed, it's running all of the time without problems.

This solution is scalable.

We have more than one thousand users, and we have plans to increase usage in the future.

I have contacted the technical support once or twice but to be honest, the technical support is not very good for Meraki.

I had contacted the technical assistance center for Cisco to order parts, and they have a really good support center.

On the Meraki end, it is not the best part of this solution.

Previously we used other solutions from Cisco, other vendors, and small vendors with local Wi-Fi controllers.

The configuration for our customers was very complex so we switched to Cisco Meraki Wireless.

A person who doesn't have the experience or background will need some assistance in the beginning. They will not be able to open the box without one or two words of explanation, after that, it is very easy.

This solution is very easy to deploy, install, and to manage.

We have an experienced internal team in place that knows the features in the deployment of Meraki products very well. They know how to manage it and we propose this to our customers as well.

We are resellers and we did the implementation ourselves.

You have to renew your contract every year, or for three or for five years. If you do not pay right away they will suspend your subscription.

You only have the option to pay yearly, not monthly.

This solution is expensive, but it's a Cisco product and the solution is really stable. You pay for the quality of the product.

I like this solution, it's really good.

It's a good solution for small to medium-sized businesses or companies. We sell this solution to small businesses here in Belgium.

Meraki is easier to configure than other solutions, which is most likely the reason why Cisco purchased Meraki.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The most valuable features are the management tools, including monitoring and reporting.

It can also be used for monitoring photos for all iPhones. It's an awesome application!

The price is good, but it could be improved.

The camera needs improvement because currently, it only accepts a 128-gigabyte memory card. It's too small to record a video.

In the future, I would like to see IP telephony in Saudi Arabia. It is currently not available.

The stability is very good.

The scalability of this solution is good.

The support for this solution is good. They're brilliant.

The initial setup was very easy to install.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The flexibility, since it's a cloud service, is the most valuable feature of this solution. As well as:  

• The administration 
• Management of the whole platform 
• Development
• Deployment options in the cloud

There is only one particular thing that needs improvement. Sometimes, for example, when you need to open a ticket, although it's under the umbrella of Cisco, you still need to go to the Meraki support. We had issues with Cisco in general. We have multiple platforms from Cisco but when it came to Meraki, we thought to go to another support team to open a case. That's something that might be improved. My opinion and recommendation would be that when you open a case at Cisco, Meraki should be irrelevant. You should have the same support experience just as we have with Cisco.

In the next release, they should improve the way that you engage support. Once you engage them, they are quite knowledgeable and they are okay. There's no issue with that. 

It's stable. In terms of our users, we have guest users and such. It might be that on a particular day we have about a thousand clients and devices connected to the platform.

It's scalable. 

The technical support is good. We never had any particular dispute. From the technical point of view, the technical support is fine. The only thing is the thing that although it's Cisco, you have Meraki dashboards. 

We did have another wireless solution that was made up of bits and pieces from different vendors and obviously Meraki was one of the vendors that integrated everything together. So you had one platform from one supply manufacturer. That's a big plus for them.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. As always in technology, you have difficulties. It was normal on the second deployment because it was in phases. You will always have failures but that's normal.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten and would recommend it. 

We primarily use the solution for our customers.

The solution is easy for deployments. As we are an integrator, we sometimes have several levels separating the customer and our work. With this solution, the customer can look at his environment, and we also have the right to monitor it and to configure it if we need to from our end.

The functionalities are quite professional and complete. It offers good integration with other Meraki products, like switches and the firewall. You can get an overview of all networks and the host. It's really great; nobody else can do that.

Some operations can be quicker within the solution. When it is deployed and registered on Meraki cloud, when you move, for example, a device from one customer to another, you need to un-claim the device from Customer A, and then claim it to Customer B. This process can take one hour. If they could shorten this time to about 10 minutes or so, that would be ideal.

The commercial version of the solution could be cheaper.

The stability of the solution is good. It's stable almost all of the time. We haven't experienced any crashes or anything of that nature.

The solution is scalable. It's very easy. If a company grows, we just have to do a few clicks and it's ready.

Technical support is good. We're satisfied with them so far. They're very interactive, knowledgable, and quick. 

The initial setup was straightforward.

We're an integrator. We handle the implementation ourselves. Sometimes we may need support from Meraki directly for very specific keys and some expertise, but it's very rare.

The price is quite high, but it does have higher functionalities as well. You pay a lot, but you get a good product. Still, it could potentially be 10-15% cheaper than it is.

We pay a yearly subscription. It's my understanding that you can pay for one, two, three or five-year subscriptions. There aren't any fees above that.

We use the public cloud deployment model. 

I'd recommend the solution. It does depend on what the organization needs, however.

I'd rate it nine out of ten.

We primarily create outdoor usage of city-wide networks. It's mostly for visitors to the city and students at the university.

Multiple access ID capabilities, meshing, and the quality of the product itself are all valuable features.  

Unfortunately, we have to deal with European privacy laws and as far as we can see, the solution is not compliant with these. It's why we're not able to continue with Cisco Meraki. They need to become compliant with GDPR laws.

They should make the solution more transparent so we can better see what the system does.

The solution is stable. We haven't had issues with the hardware.

The solution is scalable.

Sometimes it takes a while for technical support to get back to you and their suggestions have been inaccurate occasionally. However, largely we're satisfied with technical support. The time they gave us inaccurate information, the situation was related to an HD problem of GDPR security. The answers provided were not accurate for countries in Europe.

The initial setup is straightforward but we've had a lot of experience with the solution. An installation of an average of five to 10 units takes half a day to a full day.

We handled the implementation ourselves.

We work mainly with small and medium enterprises. We deploy the MR72 and 73 versions of the solution.

In general, the solution performs well in Europe, but it doesn't comply with the GDPR, so we're not allowed to use it.

I'd rate it eight out of ten.