Meraki MS Switches Reviews

We use the solution for our networking.

The most beneficial features of Meraki MS Switches are the visibility and convenience they provide. We have a single-pane-of-glass and a cloud-based management dashboard, so we do not need to manually configure each device. This is the greatest advantage. Additionally, they are easy to deploy with zero-touch provisioning, meaning that even those with limited technical knowledge can connect the devices.

Meraki MS Switches do not offer as many features as their competitors, so we are quite limited in what we can configure on the switches and firewalls. They are meant to be simple, but perhaps they should offer advanced features for more experienced users who would like to opt for them. I would suggest improving the price as well, as Meraki MS Switches are quite expensive due to their Cisco branding.

Perhaps in a future release, we could implement security technologies that are not yet available, such as SAC. To do this, we may need to purchase different types of switches; for example, Cisco has an access switch for data centers that allows for virtual port channeling, which cannot be done with a regular switch. However, this is a different market and use case.

The price of the solution has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for almost four years.

The solution is stable and we have not encountered any issues. Meraki MS Switches have a familiar life cycle, so we are not required to upgrade. Everything can be done automatically as long as we adhere to the most common scenarios; we should be good. We have 150 locations where we use them and we have not experienced any stability issues.

The solution is scalable. The solution is suitable for all organization sizes, except for those that are very large and require a service provider or data center, footage. Meraki should be a good fit as long as a reasonable price can be negotiated and the technology is compatible.

Technical support is quite satisfactory. It may not be as great as Cisco support, but it is much better than other vendors I have had to work with. Response times are still quite fast and we can call someone if we have an urgent problem, with reasonable waiting times. Whenever I have needed help, I either get the answer or am being pointed in the right direction. Overall, it is quite satisfactory.

The pricing varies. If we start with this small eight-plus switch, it is quite inexpensive. However, if we need some ten gig switches, it can be very expensive, ranging up to $10,000 or $18,000. Additionally, we also need to purchase the license, making it more costly than the regular Cisco Catellis.

I evaluated Ubiquiti UniFi.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

It makes sense to purchase Meraki MS Switches if we already have other Meraki devices, such as IPs. Getting the switches is a good choice, or if we plan to use the full Meraki stack, including the firewall, switch, and AP, then we will benefit from visibility in the dashboard. If we mix and match equipment, then it is not ideal as support may not be as good, and we may have difficulty identifying the source of any issues. If we use Meraki, then they will take responsibility for any issues on the network.

Ubiquiti UniFi Switches are the main competitor to Meraki MS Switches because they offer a range of products, including switches, access points, security appliances, cameras, and more. However, Ubiquiti is primarily focused on small-to-middle-sized businesses, and their prices are lower than Meraki's. However, they do not provide the same level of support or documentation as Meraki, and their warranty is much shorter - only one year compared to Meraki's lifetime warranty on data devices.

We use Meraki MS Switches to can the VLANs to a particular port.

The most valuable features of Meraki MS Switches are the GUI mode which is helpful for access and good dashboards.

When we do any changes to the core switch it causes the devices to reboot.

I have been using Meraki MS Switches for approximately one and a half years.

The solution is stable.

We have approximately 1,000 people using the solution.

The support that Meraki MS Switches provides is good.

I rate the support from Meraki MS Switches a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Meraki MS Switches is simple.

I rate the price of Meraki MS Switches a two out of ten.

I did not evaluate other solutions. I have always used Cisco.

I rate Meraki MS Switches a nine out of ten.

I like the portal, it's really interesting.

The pricing can be made cheaper.

I have been using Meraki MS Switches for ten years.

I don't know about stability. But at present seven users are using it.

It is a scalable solution.

I have not contacted the support, my team does.

The setup is very very simple.

It was done with the help of a technical team.

It is very expensive so I want it to be cheaper.

I give it an eight out of ten.

I use Meraki MS Switches for cloud-based management and web visibility, which I can control from a single pane of glass. I have a controller that lets me manage all devices.

I found the cloud-managed dashboard most valuable in Meraki MS Switches.

Management from a single dashboard is what I want to see from Meraki MS Switches.

The level of stability of Meraki MS Switches would depend on the environment.

My rating for Meraki MS Switches is nine out of ten in terms of scalability.

The Meraki MS Switches technical support is good, so I rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup for Meraki MS Switches was straightforward and had no problems. The product is easy to manage and deploy. Deployment only took one week.

My company deployed Meraki MS Switches based on requirements. That was the only deployment strategy.

My company pays for Meraki MS Switches yearly. Pricing-wise, the product is relatively inexpensive.

My company is both a reseller and user of Cisco Meraki solutions, including Meraki MS Switches.

I work on different models of Meraki MS Switches.

My company has multiple clients using Meraki MS Switches.

I recommend the product to others for cloud-based management. You can manage everything from the cloud.

My rating for Meraki MS Switches is nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as a switch.

It's better for small businesses.

The solution is well-managed and easy to deliver.

Its cloud feature and cloud management are great. They are the most valuable aspects.

The setup process is simple.

It is stable. 

We can scale the product.

Cisco gives very good support.

The pricing is very good. 

If they added the option to manage it locally, not in the cloud, it would be better. 

Cisco has to make improvements to the ordering page CCW. If it could be the same as Cisco Switches, it would be way better.

For example, Cisco has a page called CCW where you can put in and order the switches and all other items from Cisco. Meraki has some difficulties in terms of adding its products to this page. You cannot enter it. You can memorize the product number ICQ by name. Other Cisco Switches, without memorization, you can put in them in.

I've been using the solution for five years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

Technical support is very good. Cisco offers the best technical support.

I'm working with Cisco. That's all.

We found the initial setup to be simple and straightforward. It's not overly complex.

This is an easy product to scale. 

We only use it for a small business, for a branch offices and remote workers. There are maybe 50 users at this time. 

The pricing is reasonable. I'd rate it four out of five in terms of affordability.

The licensing and support last up to seven years. You pay for it once, and it lasts for around that long. 

We did not compare the solution with another vendor as we only work with Cisco. 

We're a distributor and reseller.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

It's a cloud-managed, stackable access switch. It has various features, like providing quality of service to prioritize critical traffic, such as voice and video. It has various levels of support for simplified voice deployment. We also use this switch for multicast traffic. In addition, we use the switch for high capacity trunking where we require link aggregations. 

This switch is enabled with network security features. We use it for port security and MAC whitelisting, as well as DHCP snooping to prevent users from adding unauthorized DHCP servers to the network. The switch supports BPDU guard, root guard, and rapid spanning tree protocol for the loop prevention mechanism.

Moreover, now with the advent of automation in our environment, the switch supports various automation testing tools, and it's quite helpful for network troubleshooting as well.

The switch has a good speed and low latency. I will not say it's the market leader of low latency, but it competes with Arista switches in terms of latency. 

It is a compact switch, so there are a limited number of ports, and it needs improvement in terms of scalability. The number of ports should be increased. I would love to see modular capabilities, and various security features, like the ones provided by Palo Alto and various emerging cybersecurity solutions. I would like this switch to match that level of competency.

This switch is robust. It's never, ever gone down. It has not been rebooted during the last two years in my environment. In terms of stability, I don't see any challenges. I haven't seen any bugs associated with the current IOS. 

It is a scalable solution, but compared to competitors' technology, I still see some gaps. There are a lot of scalability improvements needed in this particular model.

There are 500+ on-prem users. Counting business employees altogether though, there are about 2,000. 

The support is quite easy and handy. No one can compete with Cisco's tech support.

The initial setup was very straightforward. I have been in the IT industry for the last 16 years so I didn't have any challenges with the configuration or deployment. It is a plug and play solution, and needs basic configuration during the initial setup. We pushed the configuration and provisioned this switch immediately. 

I see a return on investment in terms of manageability because a single employee can easily manage the switch. I don't need to hire additional resources for taking care of the vulnerability assessment or anything else.

I don't know the exact price, but in terms of comparison, I know that Extreme switches are more cost-effective than Cisco Meraki Switches. Cisco should have some switches that are more cost-effective.

There are some other competitors nowadays, like Extreme switches. They are cost-effective and have many security features embedded in the switches. We want to see that level of competency for modular capabilities in Meraki switches soon. I still see Cisco as the market leader because no one can compete with Cisco's fast tech support.

To someone considering this solution I would say that compared to other switches, like Arista, Meraki switches are quite robust. In terms of performance, we haven't faced any issues or vulnerabilities in the last two years. 

I would rate this solution as a ten out of ten. 

We use this solution as a switch.

The features are great.

It's scalable. The expandability and ease of use are excellent. 

We like how easy the manageability is. 

The evolution of the product was also quite good. It's always getting better and better. 

It's very easy to set up.

This product is stable. The reliability is great.

Its troubleshooting features need work. They could adopt a console approach that could be more helpful.

If they offered more advanced management features, that would be useful. It is a cloud service; for example, if I were about to buy such a product, I would be very concerned about having cloud management for my switches. Anyone can have access from all over the world, and you can reload the switches from everywhere. That's fine. However, security is a bit of a concern for the cloud.

I've used the solution for the last five years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product can scale well. It's not a problem at all. I've seen the evolution, and the scalability potential is one of the things that makes it more competitive than other products.

This product can work for both smaller and quite large organizations. 

I've been working with Cisco for years now, so technical support was always something that turned us on to solutions with Cisco. We are pretty satisfied.

I've also worked with Fortinet as well as Cisco. 

The solution is quite simple and straightforward. It's not hard to set up.

I'm not sure of the pricing. It's not an aspect I deal with directly. 

If I compare it with Fortinet switches or HPE switches. Overall, the benefits that you gain with the ease of use and the manageability with Meraki are good. Also, many products from other companies are more unstable. That's one of the reasons why our first choice was Catalyst Switches.

I've worked with various Meraki solutions - not just switches. I've used access points, firewalls, etc. 

I'd recommend the solution is problem-free for the most part. However, the cost needs to be taken into account, and new users should work to calculate costs before agreeing to buy. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

I'm a customer and end-user. 

The solution is used for different office locations. The client wanted to have central control from their headquarters on wireless across a number of users, traffic, NMS. It was more of a network and switching type of deployment. They have some applications which they want to track, including how much traffic is going to the user and uptime of devices. For that, they wanted more central management.

We like that it can work on a cloud basis. It gives the customer a choice to be operated from a central location and it can be controlled from there. Our customers mostly opted for having a centralized approach.

It's a proactive approach to networking for IT infrastructure. It will bring better uptime and availability to the network.

The initial setup is easy.

They need more variety in terms of models to satisfy different customer requirements. There are very limited models right now. The range of models could expand.  

They need to work on prioritizing different types of data on the network, whether it's voice, data, video, et cetera. Video needs to be prioritized in a much better way, for example.

If there are certain search protocols added to these switches that make for better network trafficking, that would be ideal.

The lack of availability of hardware is causing issues and bottlenecks. 

We'd like interoperability to continue to be improved. 

We've been dealing with the solution for two years.

The stability is okay. 

I understand Cisco has far more stable products. For example, Cisco Catalyst. That is more stable as compared to Cisco Meraki.

I'd rate the stability four out of five overall. 

The scalability is fine. It's not an issue for us. Cisco is always working on scalability.

I'd rate it four out of five in terms of scalability. This is a new product that is still being refined. However, as they are working on the cloud, it's only going to get better. 

We have around 250 to 300 users based on the switches we've deployed. It's in an international organization with many departments and many levels of people working on it. 

Technical support is good. It is good only for certain areas. Their support needs to be improved to level it out for everyone. Even a premier customer may not get answers within the next business day.

We use Cisco Meraki Switches and Cisco Meraki Wireless.

Cisco has a big problem right now. Their availability of hardware is delayed due to high demand. A lot of system integrators and companies are opting for different hardware providers as they understand that deploying Cisco will take a long time. Cisco needs to work on faster deployment. The manufacturing side needs to speed up deploying hardware to meet demand or they will lose market share.

That said, once you have the hardware, the initial setup is not hard at all. 

We have two to three engineers that can help set up the solution. It depends on the kind of project. For example, if there are four or five switches, so it doesn't take more than two days to settle that. IN that case, maybe we need to have two different engineers: one physically installing the hardware switching and doing the basic configuration and then maybe an L2 engineer who configures things on the cloud and brings different switches alive. We have certified Cisco people. We don't get any problems in terms of deployment. We can also easily handle maintenance tasks. 

I'd rate ROI a three out of five as it is costly. The ROI is not very fast. No doubt they are getting ROI with the cloud-based approach. That said, not everything is on the cloud as of now. The transition is happening very slowly. Some departments and customers are partly on the cloud, not fully. If they're deploying anything like Meraki, they're not getting fast ROI as they're not fully on the cloud. They're not fully utilizing the benefits.

The cost is on the higher side if we are comparing it with Catalyst. It's approximately double the cost. Cisco needs to work on licensing if they want the system to be deployed more. They can have the same set of licensing: standard, premium. Premium customers who don't have any budget issues can buy premium license-based hardware. However, if there are customers who want to deploy good hardware like Cisco yet have budget constraints, they should offer a more affordable tier. 

I'd rate it a three out of five in terms of affordability.

We're resellers. We've been dealing with the 300 and 390 series. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.