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.
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.
"The simplicity is great."
"The most useful feature of Juniper Wireless AP is the reporting Marvis."
"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."
"It is very stable, very resilient, and very robust."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The solution is trustworthy. I find it easy and secure."
"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 most valuable features in Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN are that we were able to see all the registered users for each particular WAP, which is a big help. The roaming allows us to have continuous wireless throughout the building. The signal can carry over from one WAP to another. Which is probably the most important feature."
"The solution is easy to install."
"From a security perspective, this product has several advantages."
"I like the status page Cisco added that shows you the health of the wireless connection."
"The stability of the solution is good."
"The stability is great. It's very reliable."
"Some of the features I find valuable are the FlexConnect and overall it is a good global solution."
"The solution offers very good stability."
"We are using Cisco access point 2802, and they are very reliable."
"The most important thing for me is that all the access points are in one group and use one access code. So, when you move from one area to another, you don't disconnect and reconnect again. The device is also very easy to install and control."
"The initial setup is easy. It's fairly quick to deploy."
"Cisco Wireless is quite convenient for mobile and laptop access."
"If you want to do more specific stuff, it's a bit limited."
"I need a bit more time with it before criticizing the features."
"Juniper Wireless AP can improve by continually improving its reporting and integration with other systems."
"If you lose connectivity with the controller, your Wi-Fi network is immediately impacted."
"The throughput of the switches for wireless could be improved."
"It is super expensive for what you get. I just wish it was less expensive."
"Currently, only a limited number of clients can connect to these devices."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"The licensing could be a bit better."
"They could also add some more controls for guest access. For example, when you have a captive portal, it would be nice to limit the amount of time users can stay connected per day. Right now, you can only configure the splash frequency. And you can set the connection for one hour, but you have to use the billing feature."
"Our only concern at this stage is how it's licensed."
"It's very scalable, but when you shift gears sometimes, you have to do more work than people anticipate."
"The installation is not too difficult but the solution could improve by making the configuration easier."
"The pricing could be reduced."
"Cisco Wireless does not have a dashboard that would make it easier for people to manage the solution, such as Cisco Meraki where you are able to monitor the network through the dashboard and everything is visible making it easier."
"There is no technology without room for improvement. The main setback with Cisco solutions, not only with Cisco Wireless, is having to update the OS manually. We are now migrating to Miraki, so we've been able to work that out."
"Older versions are complex to configure and implement."
"We use a Cisco product called Room Kit for meetings. It would be nice if Cisco could improve that. I would also like a cloud solution."
"If they could offer better coverage, we'd be much happier."
More Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is ranked 2nd in Wireless LAN with 60 reviews while Cisco Wireless is ranked 3rd in Wireless LAN with 70 reviews. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is rated 8.0, while Cisco Wireless is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN writes "Highly reliable, effective site blocking, and beneficial reports". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Wireless writes "Robust with a good level of performance and very helpful technical support". Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ubiquiti Wireless, Mist AI and Cloud, Ruckus Wireless and Fortinet FortiWLM, whereas Cisco Wireless is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti WLAN, Huawei Wireless and Mist AI and Cloud. 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.
Cisco Wireless is very robust, very rugged, and can handle indoor and outdoor coverage extremely well. We found it to be very reliable and to consistently run very efficiently. Cisco Wireless helped us get more network access to more people wirelessly across some very large spaces.
It is expensive, though. The Cisco Wireless portal, like many Cisco products, can be very complex. The flexibility of the controllers needs fixing and Cisco Wireless requires a bit of tweaking to get the stability right. We would also like to see the reporting improved - this would help make troubleshooting easier.
Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is very user-friendly. You don’t have to be a wireless engineer to set it up. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is cloud-based, which is very convenient as you don’t have to have a physical controller, saving valuable space, power, and redundancy. This solution offers advanced configurations that are a great fit for small to medium-sized businesses that can’t employ an advanced tech team. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is high-performance, stable, scalable, and very easy to deploy, and offers a dashboard that makes managing the solution very easy.
Some of the built-in capabilities and filtering with Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN needs to be made easier to use. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN needs to better identify devices, and the TAC reading and interpretation capabilities are not always accurate. There are also some processing limitations when you have multiple SSIDs.
Conclusion
As these are both Cisco products, they offer brand recognition you can trust, great quality, and good durability.
We found that Cisco Wireless offered slightly better access points and improved coverage, allowing the creation of better networks. Cisco Wireless takes a one-time payment for the hardware, and then annual payments. If you employ Cisco’s knowledgeable team members, this will be a good fit for you.
The huge selling point for Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is its ease of use. You don’t need to have a lot of knowledge to deploy or manage processes, which makes this a great product for smaller businesses with a less tech-savvy team.
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.