Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN vs Cisco Wireless comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 16, 2022

We performed a comparison between Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN and Cisco Wireless based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Both users of Cisco Meraki Wireless Lan and users of Cisco Wireless say that the initial setup is straightforward and simple.
  • Features: Valuable features of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN include scalability, stability, IOT integration, an excellent interface, multiple types of user groupings and access management, good visibility, a comprehensive dashboard, fantastic network security, ease of installation, and a captive portal feature. The drawbacks users mention is that it lacks customization options, could benefit from heat mapping and better cyber security, and that there is a processing limitation when you have more than three or four SSIDs.

    Users of Cisco Wireless mentioned that valuable features include stability, reliability, scalability, solid functionality, security, easy management, good application visibility, control integration for other analysis software, and ease of configuration. Some users of Cisco Wireless state that the software can sometimes be very clunky, and others would like to see cloud-based support and management as well as some AI capabilities and the introduction of a dashboard.
  • Pricing: Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN users feel that the pricing could be better. Users of Cisco Wireless also find that it is expensive, with a rigid pricing model in place.
  • Service and Support: Users of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN have rated service and support to be overall very positive and reliable. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN also has a knowledge base available online. Cisco Wireless reviewers similarly confirm that the service and support they receive is excellent, stating that support is responsive and knowledgeable, and that ample documentation is available online.
  • ROI: Users of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN have expressed that the gap in terms of performance, quality, features, and functionality has decreased significantly compared to what it was five years ago. Cisco Wireless users mention that they have yet to see an ROI.

Comparison Results: While Cisco users across the board feel that both products are very expensive and provide very good customer service and support, users reported a better ROI from Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN vs. Cisco Wireless Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution is stable.""It provides private network access, helping us protect our company’s devices.""You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment.""The most valuable feature of the solution is Marvis, the AI-driven network management system.""In terms of reporting, in terms of all the user reports, it's very rich.""With Mist, every Wednesday they roll out new features.""The simplicity is great.""The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."

More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Pros →

"What I like best about Meraki is that I can change it from anywhere.""The tool's most valuable feature is report generation. Its dashboard helps me a lot with user analytics.""The automatic VMware update is very useful because you don't have to worry about outages and planning for VMware updates. It is very advantageous from a management point of view. The ability to restrict and review the clients connected to each of our segments. Additionally, the solution is easy to use.""The interface is excellent. We've been really happy with it.""This product has allowed us to easily create custom SSIDs for clients and carve out the necessary bandwidth for clients needs.""The most valuable features are the multiple types of user groupings and access management.""It is very handy to have a support number to call.""Integrating with the router, firewall, and Wireless Controller is advantageous."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Pros →

"Wireless connectivity is the main feature. It is also securely integrated with ISE, which is valuable because, in the banking industry, we also cover the security aspect. This Wi-Fi controller integrates with the ISE system that we have. Every user that comes on the wireless needs to log in with the domain. If they don't, it will not allow the user to join the network. This is the key feature of this solution.""Cisco Wireless is quite convenient for mobile and laptop access.""The initial setup is easy. It's fairly quick to deploy.""The most valuable feature for us is management of the systems. We can easily access all features.""There are a lot of valuable features and functions. One example is CleanAir to detect and troubleshoot interference issues. Another is RX-SOP to optimize roaming.""The technical support from Cisco is good.""The CleanAir features and the fast transition.""The most valuable feature of the solution is reliability."

More Cisco Wireless Pros →

Cons
"The pricing is very high in the Indian market.""Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) could improve if the MIST platform had a built-in master key. This would be an advantage.""If you want to do more specific stuff, it's a bit limited.""There is room for improvement in terms of support and installation.""Juniper Wireless AP can improve by continually improving its reporting and integration with other systems.""The pricing should be made cheaper.""I need a bit more time with it before criticizing the features.""They should include SD-WAN features to it."

More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Cons →

"Cisco Meraki must improve the integration between its own family of products.""Technical support can be improved, as well as having more detailed capabilities to go without using an API.""The solution’s pricing could be improved.""The logging sometimes doesn't give us the granularity needed. Some of the rules are a bit more complicated. The switch ports on the routers are not individually addressable, in the sense that with a switch you can tell what MAC address is on what port but with the security appliances, you can't, which would be beneficial for troubleshooting.""The commercial version of the solution could be cheaper.""Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN could improve by having more granularity in terms of the data displayed. However, I understand that with Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, you need to have a compromise point to what are the functions that you're going to provide to the users versus ease of use. More granularity in terms of the data and the things that you can do to the devices would be helpful. For example, when we wanted to make a change, restriction, or segregation within Palo Alto, we can go to the level of detail that we want. The amount of detail provided is amazing, it is very granular. However, it comes with much more difficulty, it requires a technical understanding of the environment compared to Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN.""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.""The initial setup of the solution can be improved and made easier."

More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Cons →

"Room for improvement wise, the wireless coverage of Cisco's equipment could be better for the price position. That is, I think that the radius for the coverage could be better to make it worth the price that we pay for it.""Its licensing model and cost should be improved.""The flexibility on the controllers isn't that great.""The reporting of the product could be improved. When I needed to troubleshoot, I couldn't get sufficient information from the controller.""Improvements can be made to the telemetry. The licensing gets in the way here. It makes it impossible to record the different flows across the wireless network.""Many wireless controllers' firmware have bugs in their new releases, which are not stable, especially in an environment with many wireless AP (WAP) types.""Before deploying a wireless solution, you have to read and plan every role, every windows system, put in your access point, and then make the audit. This solution is not the best one to do this. We use another solution that is called Eko. In the future, if this solution could have better auditing capabilities it would be better.""Sometimes I've seen some issues come up with the interference. That's an issue users face at times. It becomes very complex when you have a lot of wireless interference in the area, or in your office. It's because of the environment of Cisco. Maybe, in the future, they can work on this area, and fix this issue."

More Cisco Wireless Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We pay maybe 1000 SEK per year, per access point."
  • "Juniper Wireless AP's price is a little more expensive than other solutions, but you get what you pay for."
  • "The pricing is something Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) can work on. The pricing is very high compared to the competition."
  • "The pricing is too high."
  • "The solution is expensive."
  • "I rate Juniper Mist's pricing a ten out of ten since it is expensive."
  • "I rate the pricing an eight out of ten."
  • More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Negotiate the deal put in front of you!"
  • "At this price point, I would not mind seeing a four-way channel, instead of a 3x3 or a 4x4, like they do in the Cisco Aironet system with their other brand. For the same price point in this other Cisco brand, it is a lot cheaper, and you can get a slightly better throughput than you can with these."
  • "​If you are wondering if Meraki can work for you, contact one of their representatives because they will do onsite trials where you can set up their system. If it does not work, you can send it back to them for no charge.​​"
  • "The price is negotiable."
  • "It's a pretty good value, but not great. Pricing is on a yearly basis for the Meraki solution."
  • "The price is good, but it could be improved."
  • "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."
  • "The pricing is based on a subscription and is a bit high at the moment."
  • More Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It is an expensive solution."
  • "Expensive."
  • "As far as I know Cisco is very competitive, price-wise. Talk to your third-party vendor. It all depends on the company size - how many employees, how big the building is. If it's wireless, and you have only 50 employees but you're using a large building floor, in that case you need many access points. But if you have 50 employees using two or three rooms, then you probably don't need it and it's going to be high density, so there is a different design. So you need to talk to a subject matter expert. Talk to them and design accordingly."
  • "Cisco is more on the expensive side, as compared to Aruba, but I must say Cisco's quality is unmatched, for sure."
  • "I am not a fan of Cisco's software pricing model. Their management software is far too expensive."
  • "The pricing is high. It could be cheaper."
  • "Never pay the full GPL price."
  • "Pricing is a bit on the high side compared to its competitors but we have to consider the support and usages of the solution. Licensing is now RTU and smart licensing. We need three types of licenses. One for each of the: APs, HA, controller."
  • More Cisco Wireless Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Answers from the Community
    Netanya Carmi
    Aws Al-Dabbagh - PeerSpot reviewerAws Al-Dabbagh
    Real User

    The standard answer to such a question is: it depends.


    The pricing for both solutions is very similar: per-AP, Meraki is more expensive than Cisco Wireless. Cisco APs are cheaper, but the controller raises the solution price to be almost equal to Meraki.


    Meraki is subscription-based and requires constant internet access to manage the system. If the annual license expires, the APs will work, but you can't manage them or read reports of the Meraki portal.


    Cisco Wireless is a one-time payment for the hardware with annual support payments. if you have a small office with only a few APs needed, you can use the Cisco Mobility Express Controller (which uses one of the APs or a Catalyst Switch as the controller) but that has a limit of 100 APs.

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment.
    Top Answer:I rate Juniper Mist's pricing a ten out of ten since it is expensive.
    Top Answer:The pricing is very high in the Indian market. Eight to nine OEMs are also available in the market, giving you their… more »
    Top Answer:Depends.  I have personally used both Cisco and Aruba so I am familiar with them.  Extreme I am not, so unless they have… more »
    Top Answer:Cisco Wireless is very robust, very rugged, and can handle indoor and outdoor coverage extremely well. We found it to be… more »
    Top Answer:Cisco’s Meraki Virtual MX is a virtual instance of the Meraki SD-WAN appliance. We liked the Meraki. The Wifi APs are a… more »
    Top Answer:Ruckus Wireless offers users the benefit of being both easy to set up and get running as well as being very user… more »
    Top Answer:On the most basic level, Cisco Wireless can offer a rather straightforward initial setup. In the span of about three… more »
    Top Answer:The solution is very good at supporting IoT applications.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series), Mist Access Points
    MR18, MR26, MR32, MR34, MR66, MR72, Meraki Wireless LAN, Meraki WLAN
    Cisco WLAN Controller
    Learn More
    Cisco
    Video Not Available
    Overview

    Juniper Wireless Access Points work in conjunction with Juniper Mist Cloud Services and Mist AI to deliver premier wireless access capabilities. The Juniper Mist Edge extends microservices to the campus to bring agility and scale while enabling new applications at the edge.

    Cisco Meraki access points are built from the highest grade components and carefully optimized for a seamless user experience. The outcome: faster connections, greater user capacity, more coverage, and fewer support calls. The Cisco Meraki dashboard gives visibility into the network users, their devices, and their applications. Armed with rich analytics, administrators can quickly create access control and application usage policies, optimizing both the end-user experience and network security.
    With Cisco Wireless you will successfully plan, deploy, monitor, troubleshoot, and report on indoor and outdoor wireless networks - all from a centralized location.
    Sample Customers
    Information Not Available
    Advanced Medical Transport, Banco de Guayaquil, Baylor Scott & White Health, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Calligaris, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Del Papa Distributing, Department of Justice, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Hertz, K&L Gates , LightEdge, Lone Star College System, Management Science Associates, Mindtree, NBC Olympics, Quest, Sony Corporation, The Department of Education in Western Australia, Valley Proteins
    Aegean Motorway, Baylor Scott & White Health, Beachbody, Bellevue, Brunel University London, Bucks County Intermediate Unit , Chartwell School, Children's Hospital Colorado, Cisco Live Milan, City of Biel, City of Mississauga, Dundee Precious Metals, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Erickson Living, Goldcorp, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS)
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    Educational Organization6%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider19%
    Educational Organization10%
    Non Profit8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Government6%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Government11%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise53%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business54%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise25%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise59%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN vs. Cisco Wireless
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN vs. Cisco Wireless and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is ranked 4th in Wireless LAN with 113 reviews while Cisco Wireless is ranked 2nd in Wireless LAN with 143 reviews. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is rated 8.2, while Cisco Wireless is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN writes "Offers good mobility, stability and scalability ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Wireless writes "Allows us to deploy a wide range of wireless products with stable WiFi". Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ubiquiti Wireless, Mist AI and Cloud, Ruckus Wireless and Huawei Wireless, whereas Cisco Wireless is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti WLAN, Mist AI and Cloud and Omada Access Points. See our Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN vs. Cisco Wireless report.

    See our list of best Wireless LAN vendors.

    We monitor all Wireless LAN reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.