We compared Centreon and Meraki Dashboard across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Centreon features a user-friendly interface with useful options for customization and manual configuration. Users like the solution’s flexible dashboards and the ability to create plugins. Meraki Dashboard users like its centralized console, cable testing, firmware updates, and group policy features. The solution is also praised as user-friendly, stable, and scalable.
Room for Improvement: Some Centreon users requested better documentation and more flexibility to customize reporting. Other areas for improvement include auto-scanning efficiency and integration. Users say Meraki Dashboard could improve its client VPN, hardware discovery, and integration with external solutions, Some users mentioned a need for more comprehensive documentation and granular control.
Service and Support: Centreon is highly regarded for its prompt and knowledgeable customer service that offers support in multiple languages. However, some customers feel that the lower levels of support are inadequate. Meraki Dashboard's customer service receives mixed feedback. Some users spoke fondly of the technical support they received, while others expressed frustration over long wait times and had a hard time finding the right person to help them.
Ease of Deployment: Centreon's initial setup is described as time-consuming and complex. The deployment varies in duration depending on the IT infrastructure. Users said Meraki Dashboard was effortless and intuitive to set up, noting that features like templates and configuration cloning saved time during deployment.
Pricing: Centreon's cost depends on the company's size. It is affordable and suitable for small companies, but it can be costly to scale up. Opinions on Meraki Dashboard's pricing varied, with some users finding it pricey and others deeming it fair.
ROI: Centreon delivers value by helping users identify and resolve critical issues fasters, which could yield large savings. Meraki Dashboard simplifies IT operations, and some users expect returns within a few years.
Comparison Results: Centreon is a flexible solution offering a range of customization options. The solution has earned high marks for support and affordability. At the same time, users say the setup can be complicated and time-consuming. Others said that auto-scanning and integration have room for improvement. Meraki Dashboard is a scalable, user-friendly solution with a smooth, painless setup made easy by built-in templates and features like configuration cloning. However, some users complained that the solution is too expensive and needs better integration with non-Cisco platforms.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"What I like most about Centreon is that it is very flexible and customizable, based on the user and/or business needs. Centreon is very flexible when it comes to monitoring parameters. We can use scripts found on the internet or scripts created by our infra/apps team. Also, the data visualization features are very simple and straightforward, yet very informative."
"For servers and for applications, it was very, very efficient."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to build an abstraction of service visualization. You can add services to an entity called Business Activities and you can see the state of these activities."
"The most important feature is that it permits us to receive alarms if there is an incident within the infrastructure. The feature I love the most is the reporting feature, the MBI (Monitoring Business Intelligence) which permits us to send advanced reports to our customers in PDF format or in Doc format. We also deploy Centreon Map which gives our customers intuitive views of their information system."
"Valuable features include the ability to schedule downtime, intensity or depth of monitoring which it does, different plugin packs, Centreon MAP, Centreon BI."
"Centreon's most valuable feature is Opsgenie."
"What we like about it is that, whereas with Nagios, by design, if you have five or six data centers, you have to open five or six web pages to see what's going on, In Centreon, this is all included in one page, a single site, one dashboard. You don't have to jump from one specific dashboard to the other."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of servers and networks, because we have a lot of them and need to maintain control."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"Great visibility on the dashboard."
"An excellent dashboard that is currently unique in covering both SD-WAN and SD-LAN with built-in security."
"We like how Meraki Dashboard lets you manage all the devices in a single pane of glass. The dashboard is intuitive and easy to use. They are constantly updating the functionality. Switches from other vendors have the same features for the life of the device, but Meraki is always improving."
"Some of the features I have found valuable are the ease of access, simple configuration, and monitoring."
"Scalability is one of Meraki Dashboard's strongest features. We have thousands of users if we're counting the end-users on our clients' network, but we have hundreds of clients."
"It's a simple, functional solution."
"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."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Improvements are needed in the area of cloud monitoring, as that's a newer feature."
"The problem with the reporting is you have to configure the report, and after that, you will have the same report every month, every week, every day. You have to sync it in order to have a great report."
"Currently, we have to go through all of the different templates and take a look at how the template is configured, and how specific parameters may change across different templates with different precedents, megatons, etc. It's a lot of work and involves trial and error. I wish they could simplify the process."
"Release management and quality of testing need improvement, because with each major upgrade we have many issues coming in. Then, it takes several minor upgrades to get rid of them."
"The Home view could be improved by adding customization functions that allow users to change the size of the widgets for a more uniform layout."
"I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."
"Centreon is actually missing an easy way to create a trendline for the metrics. Actually it is possible to create it, but you need a good knowledge of math, Centreon, and RRD."
"The most important issue is the capability to interconnect with other systems. It already exists for some of them. For example, the Stream Connector is something we use to populate data in another system. This kind of facility for connecting should exist for all products that it makes sense to have connected to a monitoring solution."
"There are some issues with the NAT configuration, it is now impossible to some operations with the solution."
"What needs improvement in Meraki Dashboard is its configuration. It'll also be better if the tool has more functionality, and that is what I'd like to see in its next release."
"The coverage has been an issue for us."
"It is not appropriate for large, enterprise businesses."
"The cost of the solution is high and can be improved."
"I think this product could be improved with a CLI for more directives."
"Meraki lacks their own software for connecting to the VPN which creates some issues."
"Third-party switches do not necessarily integrate easily with the system and this could be improved to allow for better adaptation."
Centreon is ranked 10th in Network Monitoring Software with 27 reviews while Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews. Centreon is rated 8.6, while Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Centreon writes "Proactive reporting guides our NOC on what needs to be fixed, saving them time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios Core and Icinga, whereas Meraki Dashboard is most compared with SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud, Cisco DNA Center and LogicMonitor. See our Centreon vs. Meraki Dashboard report.
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