We compared Meraki Dashboard and PRTG Network Monitor across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: 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. PRTG Network Monitor customers like its user-centric approach, straightforward reporting, and customizability.
Room for Improvement: 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. PRTG Network Monitor could improve its performance and resource efficiency. Other pain points include usability and cross-platform compatibility.
Service and Support: 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. PRTG Network Monitor received mixed reviews for its customer service. Some users commended the support team’s prompt service, while others reported slow response times and noted the lack of remote session support.
Ease of Deployment: Users said Meraki Dashboard was effortless and intuitive to set up, noting that features like templates and configuration cloning saved time during deployment. PRTG Network Monitor’s setup isn’t considered to be overly complex. Deployment times may vary depending on the environment's complexity and device count.
Pricing: Opinions on Meraki Dashboard's pricing varied, with some users finding it pricey and others deeming it fair. PRTG Network Monitor is deemed reasonably priced and cheaper than its competitors.
ROI: Meraki Dashboard simplifies IT operations, and some users expect returns within a few years. Users said that PRTG Network Monitor has proven to save time and money through automation and proactive support.
Comparison Results: 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. PRTG Network Monitor is regarded as a simple, user-friendly, and cost-effective solution, but users would like to see improvements in performance, documentation, integration, and technical support.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"What I found most valuable in Meraki Dashboard is that it's well-organized, easy to use, and practical."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki Dashboard is we can manage our switches and access point in one place."
"The ability of the product to perform with simplicity of deployment make it a valuable solution."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use and a single-pane-of-glass that allows us to identify issues across the entire network from one dashboard."
"Meraki dashboard deserves an Oscar."
"The product can scale if you need it to."
"Everything is in a single pane and you can look at your network in one centralized place."
"There are some whitelist blacklist capabilities in the MX dashboard, which is very helpful."
"From a network point of view, we can see the state of the network, as well as bandwidth usage and downtime."
"We can see trends for a lot of different things, such as hard drive space and bandwidth usage. We can see and plan for the future by knowing, "We're sort of at 75% capacity now. In three months time, we know we're going to be up to 90%,so we need to plan ahead for it, getting upgrades booked in place." Since things like this take time and effort, it's handy to see trends into the future of where our company is going."
"The solution provides us with needed feedback on our IT infrastructure. It gives us really good quality of service when it comes to monitoring of available space and available resources. It allows us to preempt issues before they become a problem for the business."
"The solution is easy to manage and the reports are very accurate."
"The alerting is the most valuable feature. I also like the iPhone app. I get alerts in an email on the iPhone app."
"I can create my own program sensor. This means I can add extra monitoring capabilities into the already fundamentally strong foundation."
"It allows us to directly add individual VMs independently."
"The initial setup was easy. We didn't have any issues with the process and everything rolled out smoothly."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The initial setup is complex and can be made more straightforward."
"They can improve the landing page in Meraki Dashboard. When I go into an organization, they can include a lot more infographics. They can also simplify it a bit and consolidate it. For example, if I've got five branches and I go into customer A's profile or organization, I'd like to see an infographic on the landing page providing a snippet of the entire network layout, that is, all branches in one snapshot. From there, I would like to go into the network that I want to work on or view."
"An area for improvement in Meraki Dashboard is licensing management because it's a little complex. Product licensing can be made a little bit easier through license concurrency and a more straightforward approach to applying the license to products and services."
"The solution can be expensive."
"Price could be reduced."
"There is a bit of a problem when you try to log in and you don't have a fixed IP address. If you're granting access, you need to log in by using the IP address. If your administrator's IP address is not a fixed IP address and it has changed, you might need to update the changed IP address in the interface. For this, you need to log in to the interface to update the IP address. This issue might not have so much to do with Meraki interface."
"When users are trying to roam from one location to another location, geographical tracking would be helpful."
"It's a very complex system. Customers have told me that sometimes there are lots of advanced features that are available and that you can change in the dashboard, but sometimes it's very hard to know what they are."
"We're using more cloud services now. It would be useful to be able to get information back from these cloud services in detail, and display any issues within PRTG for the rest of our systems."
"The icons on PRTG's network diagram are hard to find. For example, finding the icons for firewalls and servers is difficult, so we're struggling to create the network topology."
"Mostly, this software has sensors for devices to monitor specs and you can build or develop or modify various sensors, according to your company's needs. But you may need to do that with coding or plugins or with the support of Paessler AG, the manufacturer."
"The automation should be improved."
"It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good."
"The thing that we do struggle with a bit is in the historic data. If I want look over 30 days, because it averages out onto one graph, you can't zoom in and drill down information."
"When using PRTG Network Monitor it is beneficial if you have prior experience with it, the user interface could improve."
"In the next release, PRTG Network Monitor should add a backup solution."
Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews while PRTG Network Monitor is ranked 5th in Network Monitoring Software with 96 reviews. Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6, while PRTG Network Monitor is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". On the other hand, the top reviewer of PRTG Network Monitor writes "It's an all-in-one solution, and net flow is included in the licensing ". Meraki Dashboard is most compared with SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud, Cisco DNA Center and Nagios XI, whereas PRTG Network Monitor is most compared with Zabbix, Centreon, Nagios XI, SolarWinds NPM and ManageEngine OpManager. See our Meraki Dashboard vs. PRTG Network Monitor report.
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