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Cisco ACI vs Meraki SD-WAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco ACI
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (5th)
Meraki SD-WAN
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 15.3%, up from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Meraki SD-WAN is 22.8%, down from 25.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides scalability, ease of migration for future DC moves, multi-tenancy and programmability
Cisco's MSO (Multi-Site Orchestrator) or NDO has room for improvement. Cisco monitors ACI through a product called NDI. I find it very frustrating that Cisco has multiple monitoring platforms. It has DNAC for monitoring Cisco NX-OS, campus switches, and any other routers and switches you would have in the environment. That same thing does not work for Cisco ACI monitoring. MEraki cloudbasd platform for Meraki which will get extended to Campus monitoring, to be honest Cisco never got Monitoring 100% right from days of CiscoWorks to Prime to current platforms. To monitor and manage Cisco ACI, you need to have another platform called NDI and Cisco Dashboard Insights. What frustrates me about Cisco is that it never has a central, single pane of glass platform for all its solutions. It has one thing for Cisco ACI and another thing for campus switches. I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything. I haven't thought about anything since the Cisco NDO is quite advanced, and you can deploy your cloud networking through it. I don't know how many people use it. I might explore it as my cloud orchestration tool in the future. We do a lot of cloud automation using our scripts like TerraForm, but I would like to see people using NDO more. We could have more case studies on how many people use NDO for their cloud orchestration. That might be a much easier journey for people when they move from an on-premises data center into a cloud and move from one cloud to another cloud. That is where I personally see an orchestrator being effectively used for multiple deployments.
Premnath Jaganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage enterprise network traffic seamlessly but security features need enhancement
The security integration in Meraki SD-WAN is not as good as the competition, such as Fortinet. Customers are moving away due to this reason, as Meraki lacks in offering advanced security features, which is crucial for many enterprise clients. Cisco's AI capabilities and Meraki are about seventy percent caught up with competitors like Juniper Mist in terms of AI integration.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cisco ACI can separate networks with a buoy interface. That is the most valuable feature."
"Their technical support is very good. We had a problem and Cisco gave us the best engineer to resolve the issue."
"The most important aspect of Cisco ACI in my opinion is the ease of management. Other solutions, like traditional solutions and pricier solutions—or even fabric and PAT—you have to do many configurations on a box-to-box basis, With Cisco ACI, you go on the AP and do some "next, next finish" installer."
"It has benefited my organization by saving us a lot of time."
"The stability is perfect. We have had no problems with Cisco ACI."
"The routing of traffic is one of our main focuses when utilizing Cisco ACI."
"The most valuable features include microsegmentation, L3 Out features, and the common tenant and tenancy model."
"The centralized configuration is its most valuable feature."
"What I found most valuable in Meraki SD-WAN is its simplicity. I also like its manageability."
"The dashboard is user-friendly. It's very simple to use."
"The solution is scalable."
"We have found the scalability to be good."
"SD-WAN is a complete enterprise solution for securing traffic."
"The solution is stable."
"Meraki Solutions setups make it one of the best products I have ever worked with."
"This product contributed to a huge benefit in our bottom line on operational costs."
 

Cons

"Cisco ACI, segmentation-wise, could be more flexible, which is an area for improvement. The solution could be improved in terms of macro or micro-segmentation for many access lists and contracts. The process becomes very messy in the end."
"Cisco needs to enhance their technical support and pay more attention to regional support."
"Cisco needs to enhance their technical support and pay more attention to regional support."
"My complaint about this is: We purchased the ACI gear, but to do monitoring, to do stats, to do telemetry statistics, etc. we have to purchase another product from Cisco."
"It needs more integration with public clouds, like Azure and AWS."
"From my point of view, troubleshooting issues relating to ACI can be a little bit complicated to perform."
"It could benefit from an orchestration tool that makes deploying services easier."
"Cisco ACI would be improved by providing a cloud offering; otherwise, it risks becoming a niche product."
"Meraki SD-WAN had trouble prioritizing traffic for VoIP calls."
"I think they should enhance the security."
"The granularity could be improved."
"When there is an issue, I find it difficult to figure out what is going wrong because the logs do not provide as much information as solutions from HP."
"They stopped doing WAN optimization as a feature set, which is lacking. They need to relook at that and consider WAN optimization as an option."
"The only problem occurs when users are not paying attention and turn on the wrong switches, like power switches, in places they should not."
"There are literally things you cannot do at this point in a graphical user interface that can be done from a command line."
"I would like improved stability in Meraki SD-WAN."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."
"A big company can automate it themselves or spend a lot of money and buy it."
"Once you sign for the start kit implementation, you have to go all the way through to the implementation, even if you are experiences issues."
"The cost is fine."
"It saves time and resources."
"If you compare the licensing and total cost of ACI, it's cheaper than NSX because of the licensing fees. If you are going for full NSX features it will be too expensive, especially the next-generation firewalling feature."
"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The license model may need improvement."
"The licensing model is a fair one, although having the hardware means nothing without the license. You need to continue to pay licensing fees."
"The licensing fees are approximately $1,000 USD annually."
"This solution is more expensive than competitors."
"They have a baseline software license, and then they've got an SD-WAN software license, and then they've got an advanced security software license. They're low cost, and they'll provide any amount of flexibility that you want from a modeling perspective for payment. Typically, it's either annually or multi-year, but they are a lower-cost company. They're not the most expensive by far."
"The pricing is reasonable and we can choose the software or the feature."
"The product is not very expensive."
"Meraki's pricing is on the higher side, which may limit who can afford to use them."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What do you like most about Cisco ACI?
The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution.
What do you like most about Meraki SD-WAN?
The auto VPN feature is important because it automates many tasks, making things simpler and faster. It helps with setting up devices and changing configurations without manual effort.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Meraki SD-WAN?
The price is a little bit higher than local vendors, for example, Huawei ZTE or H3C. However, some customers require the best quality and performance, thus needing solutions and products from Cisco.
What needs improvement with Meraki SD-WAN?
They have to ask us many questions about configurations. It could be improved with some automation to trigger, for example, telemetry data, so we can determine the state of the deployment as of day...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
École Jeannine Manuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Meraki SD-WAN and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.