Meraki Dashboard Reviews

We use most of the features, even the filtering, and layer three level filtering, and we are pulling to the wireless. Our whole network is wireless. The notification feature for detection is very good.

When users are trying to roam from one location to another location, geographical tracking would be helpful. When the administrator can arrange a locking feature it will be handy for others from a security perspective. I would like to see more communication, integration, and visibility.

I have been working with Meraki Dashboard for around five years now.

It is very stable and we have been using it for five years. We are not a twenty-four-seven operation but in that context, we have not had any downtime. 

The scalability is of a high level and is flexible.

The setup is not complex. The Meraki Dashboard has more competitive pricing because almost everybody has a Cisco dealer. They can play around with the margins.

We compared Meraki Dashboard with Aruba and both products are good.

I would rate Meraki Dashboard an eight out of ten.

We use a private cloud that is owned by Cisco. We create an account and we can add devices via their MAC address. We then can configure them even before we take them out of the box or when they are on site. It saves a lot of time.

The main use for the Meraki Dashboard is instead of the traditional Cisco way of configuring things where you need a common line, with the Cisco Meraki Dashboard you can configure them through the web. You only need to configure it by doing some checkmarks and typing some IP addresses. It becomes a lot easier when configuring the whole equipment. You can also know the device locations of where they are installed. It will give you a Google Maps location of where the devices are.

Meraki Dashboard has improved organizations because the configuration of the solution is very easy. It has saved a lot of time.

Meraki Dashboard does not require a lot of maintenance. Cisco tells communicates through the Meraki Dashboard web client, it will automatically send updates to the equipment. They will send you an email on what day the updates will take place. If you want to proceed, you can click on accept, or you can decline them and schedule the updates at another time.

I have been happy with all the features that Meraki Dashboard provides.

Meraki Dashboard could improve the user interface by making it more user-friendly. The configuration can at times be difficult.

Also their support team could be better with response times.

I have been using Meraki Dashboard for approximately eight months.

The stability is very good in the Meraki Dashboard. 

For example, when something is about to break, it will give you a warning, such as "There is a problem that I think will be happening. Let's fix them before it happens." 

The support itself, it´s not been great. Long times waiting for them to pickup a phone call (1h30min) long or even more!

Cisco provides a 24x7 support if you are on an enterprise license.

Negative

The initial setup of Meraki Dashboard is straightforward. You only need to click on add a new device, insert its MAC address, and then it is almost done. You have to type the name you want to give to the equipment, and the IP address, and you are finished.

The deployment takes approximately 10 to 15 minutes.

We used an integrator which was the vendor's support.

The price of Meraki Dashboard is kinda expensive because knowing that it is a cloud-based solution has its benefits. 

Meraki Dashboard is a great solution for every company. 

If you want ease and peace of mind throughout and especially if you are starting out with networking. This is a great solution to learn.

Where I see the real potential for today's networking, would be for the healthcare services.

I rate Meraki Dashboard a nine out of ten.

I'm a consultant. When a customer moves buildings, I help them understand what they're going to need for the new building. We put them in touch with all the right companies that can help put that together.

This solution is usually deployed in the cloud.

Meraki provides the most features. It's helpful to be able to see that your network is online. Something I love about Meraki is on all the Meraki switches in the dashboard, you can see what their current data transfer rates are, and you can run cable tests from it. We've used the cable test function numerous times. It's fantastic.

One of the things we love about Meraki is that we work a lot with audio visual systems for new buildings. We find that Meraki has all the features you need to be able to enable complex network protocols for AV equipment. We deal with a streaming product over IP, and Meraki is fantastic at that. With wireless presentation, you can set Bonjour and mDNS replication really easily on your wireless network and have it traverse different VLANs and different wireless servers. It's fabulous, but you have to know how to do it.

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. It would be very helpful if next to a lot of the settings, they had a button you could click on, and it would explain what that setting actually does and how it affects your network.

Particularly when you're in the dashboard and particularly when you're looking at wireless networks, they have so many advanced options and they're hard to understand. A lot of people don't know what beacon intervalling is or even basic things like channels. 

Meraki has good documentation on their website, but if it was better linked with the dashboard, it would make it a lot simpler. Small businesses that we deal with use Ubiquiti. In their dashboard, next to every setting you can see what that setting does, which is really helpful. DrayTek is like that as well.

We always employ a third party who knows the system inside and out. If you apply it yourself, it would take you forever. From my perspective, that would be the number one thing I would want to see improved as a high-level person, because it would save us a lot of money if we didn't have to employ a third party.

I have been using this solution since before it was purchased by Cisco.

I would give technical support an 8 out of 10. It's very good. We're very lucky. There are a couple of people who are based in Australia who are part of Meraki support, and they're easy to get a hold of and very helpful.

The reason I would mark them down by two points is that sometimes the system is a little bit automated, so it's hard to get to the person you want to talk to. They probably need more support staff, like with most companies. The response time can be a little bit slow sometimes.

Initial setup is very complex.

Every time we've deployed it, we've had to employ third parties to do it for us.

My view is that it's expensive, but it's the best.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

Every time we've deployed it, it's fantastic. It works great. You just have to understand that it's complex, but all systems are complex. Palo Alto is complex, Arista is complex, Extreme Networks is complex.

I would never recommend Meraki to someone who only has 100 users. They would need to have 300 users. For a small number of users, it's expensive, it's complex, and you really need to be able to afford to pay someone who knows how to use it. If you have 300 users, you can have a full-time network engineer.

If you want the best and you have the money, then get it.

The primary use is to have centralized control over all the Meraki devices and services on your network. Primarily I use it for security configuration and reporting.  

Very intuitive, complete overview of entire network including branch offices. Ability to drill down into events and alerts and lookup in the knowledge-base. Create tickets and track them.

I think that the most valuable part about the dashboard is the analytics. A firm that I was doing some IT consulting work for was hit with a ransomware attack and this thing was amazing. After we got things cleaned up, we found that the actors had some IP numbers somewhere on the West Coast. They started to try to get back into the network and Meraki was there to say, "You know what? This same malicious IP number is knocking at your door again." We were able to take care of that and block them off so they could not access the network and that problem was put to rest.

The biggest problem is the absence of a VPN client like AnyConnect with the device. The Meraki rep that I dealt with actually agreed. He said a lot of people are complaining about the fact that they had to work with a separate VPN.  

Here is the problem. Let's say you have got to deploy and install a VPN client on 50 workstations. You physically have to go to every one of the 50 workstations and do the VPN deployment manually. You can not just push it out through an email or a group policy. That means you have to touch every machine and configure it based on the type of network card it has and make a whole bunch of other settings.  

Manually deploying the VPN is about a 20-minute procedure and that is after you learn how to do it. By comparison, if I wanted to roll out 1000 VPN clients with a normal Cisco device, the Cisco AnyConnect software can be just pushed out with some easy instructions and away you go.  

I think the VPN client is really the only true issue I had with the product itself. The connection that I get from home is sometimes a little shaky when I have to use it remotely, but it is impossible to put the blame on that connection as due to Meraki.  

I have been using this product for about a year.  

We never had any issues at all with the stability of Meraki. It is self-healing. If the power goes out or whatever, it is very good at handling that kind of issue. It is easy to learn, easy to read the reports, and it is easy to use the dashboard.  

I had worked with Fortinet and some other firewalls — Linksys of course, going all the way back to the old WatchGuard. I think Meraki really kicked off the whole cloud-based managed device movement and everyone else is just hopping on to do the same kind of thing. SonicWall and Fortinet and all the other newer competitors just followed along when they figured it was something valuable. If Meraki could get their VPN sorted out, I think they would have themselves a flagship product that was really the leader of the pack.  

I have not really had the opportunity to test the scalability first-hand. We were are a small office, so I never really got a chance to try and add hundreds of users. If that had been the case, Meraki probably would have suggested that we go to the next model up because we needed a more robust system.

The configuration of the VPN between branche offices was wonderful. You just click on the address and it basically does everything itself. For a non-engineer type person, pretty much anybody in IT can configure these things once you do the webinar. It is easy and intuitive and as far as I have been able to work with the scalability, I think a lot of the product.  

When I did get to engage the technical support people at Meraki, I would give them a 10-out-of-10. The technical support was great.  

I have been working with firewalls for a long time. I worked with the Cisco 5500 series. I worked with a lot of their older stuff back in the day. Mostly my job for the previous 10 years was not to be the supplier and was not the implementer. Rather I was more of a consultant, so I never really had the opportunity to get the hands-on experience I have now.  

The setup had a few different stages to take care of. The first step was to create a VPN, a branch office connection, and then a better sister location. I bought another MX to act as a backup, so we had that configured as a hot spot or a failover. Then I configured the VPN so that users would be able to work from home. That VPN configuration is probably the one thing that I did not much like about the product. It almost makes no sense that it does not have its own VPN client. You have to use the Microsoft VPN client, which is a bit of a pain. If it has to be that way there surely has to be a better way to integrate it.  

With the main Cisco stuff, you just download the VPN client and it has got your anti-virus component and your VPN client. That is just not the case with Meraki. I know they have been talking about trying to work that out and get that installed. Right now it is a sorta major glitching point.  

I did not configure the product originally. Somebody else did it and they did not configure it very well. For example, there is a feature to protect against ransomware and that feature was not even turned on in the device. After I realized it was not working optimally, I got together with the Meraki folks and they got in there and reconfigured it. It became a true AI device at that point. There were really a lot of things wrong with the initial configuration, but that ransomware piece was a pretty major feature to miss.  

After Meraki helped me reconfigure everything, I felt much more comfortable after that. It was done by one of their resellers and I guess I should have gone that way out of the gate.  

For a small MX 64, it is maybe $300 to $400 a year. It is nothing really outrageous. I was originally put off that you had to pay for a subscription, but I am a veteran thinking back 10 years ago when there was no such thing as subscriptions. Now just about everything seems to be going that route.  

I could see a firewall device and that is sort of comforting. I do not agree with the solution being like a switch and virtually invisible. Like you could have a switch-up in the ceiling somewhere that nobody knows is there. Then all of a sudden it gets tripped and just stops working. You don't see a device go down. But again, it is not just Meraki that is going with the subscription scheme. It is also other companies like SonicWall. They are all going to subscription-based licensing.  

For small businesses, I would recommend Meraki over pretty much anything else on the market.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is worst and ten is the best, I would rate Meraki Dashboard as an eight-out-of-ten.  

Meraki is a networking device which is cloud managed. It's a kind of software defined networking device. You connect to it via the cloud and then you have some dashboard services available from the cloud provider, from Meraki. We have traditional networking devices and we use Meraki for other purposes. I'm the company manager of network services for Europe, India, and Africa and we're a customer of Meraki. 

I like that there is great visibility on the dashboard and you immediately see when something is going down. If you want to dive deeper and get more details you can. Because this is a cloud solution, you have everything configured and there's nothing we really need to configure ourselves to get the information we need.

I've been using this solution for six years. 

I find the solution very scalable. We have both internal and external users. Internally, we have five admins and externally we have about 1,000 users. Because it's outsourced, we probably have around 40 administrators who can log into the system, due to our 24/7 support model. We have approximately 20 locations here in Europe and Russia which are my responsibility, and there are probably maybe 200 end users behind that.

technical support? Are you satisfied? Not satisfied with anything?

Alexander: Yes, I'm satisfied.

The initial setup is very straightforward, it probably took a few hours to set up the first devices. After that it goes very quickly. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

The tool's main use case for our logistics company is to manage our global network infrastructure. Employees can connect from any part of the world.

We greatly utilize the network because we can plug it into the DNS, VPN, or equipment. It's very good. Meraki Dashboard enhances wireless network management. We appreciate its flexibility, as it allows for easy suite configuration. We can handle everything on there when there's a policy or any other requirement.

The tool's real-time monitoring capabilities are good. My experience with the mobile application management features of the Meraki Dashboard has been positive. Recently, a customer raised concerns about excessive bandwidth consumption in their network due to equipment connected to the Meraki dashboard. We quickly identified a new MAC address consuming bandwidth by enabling monitoring within the Meraki dashboard. Within minutes, we could pinpoint the issue and take necessary actions, such as limiting bandwidth or blocking the IP or MAC address from the network.

The tool needs to incorporate more integration platforms. Integrating technical support features directly into the dashboard would be highly beneficial. This would allow technicians to troubleshoot issues more efficiently. 

I have been using the product for seven years. 

I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten. 

The tool's deployment is not complex. The deployment process involved assessing the requirements, obtaining necessary permissions for network access, and proceeding with the installation and configuration.

Meraki Dashboard's pricing is reasonable. It is sold yearly, typically for one, three, or five years. I rate its pricing a five out of ten. 

I rate the overall product a ten out of ten. I recommend considering Meraki Dashboard as it offers high security, stability, flexibility, and reasonable pricing.

We use Meraki Dashboard to manage all our Cisco Meraki network equipment, SD-WAN, firewalls, DHCP, routers, switches, etc. We have firewalls at three locations, and each site has about 200 users.  

Meraki Dashboard centralizes control of all our equipment into one cloud-based console, so we can manage it from anywhere. We can resolve problems remotely outside of business hours because it is on the cloud. You can use the dashboard to change security settings or configure routers and switches. 

Meraki Dashboard could improve integration with non-Cisco platforms. 

I have used Meraki Dashboard for about seven years.

Meraki Dashboard is stable. 

It isn't hard to set up Meraki Dashboard if you have some experience with Cisco solutions. You need some knowledge about networks and firewall rules. We just followed the manual. 

I rate Meraki Dashboard 10 out of 10. It's the best solution. 

We primarily use the solution as a dashboard. We use it for configuring switches, routers, access points, or whatever we have in the network.

We like that it is cloud-based.

It offers a lot of great features. 

The solution scales well.

Sometimes the system crashes. We need them to offer better stability. When this happens, we cannot access some of the switches in the network. We can only reach them after multiple attempts. 

It would be nicer if the dashboard was lighter. They need to reduce the CPU usage. 

We'd like it if the dashboard showed everything on the network, even things from other vendors, like HP or Dell.

I've been using the solution for six months or less. 

The stability could be better. It does crash sometimes. I'd rate the stability seven out of ten overall. 

The scalability is quite good. I'd rate it nine out of ten.

The solution can be used in both SMBs and enterprises. 

I have not used technical support yet. I haven't had to contact them. 

The initial setup is not complex. it is pretty straightforward. The steps are simple to follow, and the devices are configured very easily. 

The pricing is okay. I'd rate it seven out of ten It could be cheaper. 

I have not had the chance to compare the solution to other products. 

I'm a Cisco partner. I offer Cisco products to customers. We are IT solutions providers. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I would rate it seven out of ten.