MikroTik Routers and Switches Reviews

We use MikroTik Routers and Switches as a router and firewall. We also use it to manage our Hotspot users. 

The MikroTik Hotspot is great. My company uses the Captive Portal as a staff login to access the internet and the company portal. Via the Hotspot, my company connects to the API.  

The overall performance could be improved. The CPU load is too high. This causes the Internet to lag. 

MikroTik should be open source.

I have been using MikroTik Routers and Switches for roughly four to five years.

The MikroTik operating system is not open source. The API is limited. 

Sometimes we consult with the online community, but it's quite limited in Indonesia — there are not many MikroTik users here. 

The initial setup was complex, but not too difficult in the end.

Compared to Cisco, I don't think MikroTik is very good. MikroTik is good for start-ups and small businesses with small budgets. If you have a big budget, I would recommend using 
UniFi, or Cisco.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give MikroTic a rating of seven.

We are using this solution for multiple things.

It provides a hotspot gateway, triple PoE, login ID, authentication, and login tapes.

We use it to provide a connection for our clients.

This is a good solution.

This solution is good, but my network is growing and it is no longer sufficient for us. We are considering a Hybrid model or we will replace MikroTik with another good OEM, such as Cisco, or Juniper.

There are limitations to how many users you have simultaneously. It's a max of 300 users.

I have been using MikroTik Routers and Switches for three years.

We have not had any issues with stability, but we experience some issues later as the box capacity is limited to 300  users. 

This solution is scalable but it has its limitations. The box has a capacity of 300 using it simultaneously.

If my users keep growing, then we have to replace this solution.

Now currently one of our clients has 200 to 250 users.

Technical support is handled by another team.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Pricing is not an issue.

For a small business, MikroTik is good but if you grow, then MikroTik cannot support it. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The routing features are the solution's most valuable aspects.

Next year, we are planning to buy a hardware firewall from Sophos. The firewall and the VPN features in MikroTik are a little bit hard to set and are not user-friendly in terms of configuring those features. 

The protection of the web servers, VPN, and spam mail management, will be better in the Sophos model which we want to buy. We'll still use MikroTik for routing between our objects, however, for the main firewall features and VPN features, we want to use something more specific for this job.

There's a new VPN protocol called WireGuard. It's very good to implement MikroTik in the router as firmware. It is more configurable, with WireGuard. It's very practical.

We've been using the solution maybe for five or six years at this point. 

The solution is extremely stable. We don't have issues with crashing. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's good.

The solution is very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, they can do so easily.

Ultimately, the whole company is using it as it s is the main router for distributing internet services.

We don't use technical support. If we need to troubleshoot, we tend to get our answers from the internet. We have access to forums and we have a lot of local technical support and knowledge. It's not official technical support. It's from the providers.

We didn't previously use a different solution. 

The initial setup can be a bit difficult. The configuration can take a lot of time. We only have one person in our company that can do this. It's somewhat impractical. If he's not at work, we can run into issues.

The pricing is very reasonable. It's not too expensive.

We're currently looking to replace some aspects of MikroTik with Sophos and will use Sophos next year as the main firewall.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

Originally, we had little MikroTik routers installed at first. Afterward, we bought a cloud core router and we've had that at this point for six or seven years.

We use the solution both at our company and for our clients.

I'd advise new users to take some time and learn about the configurations. They need to be prepared for a bit of a learning curve when it comes to implementation. However, after that, it's not a problem to use it.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The main reason we use this solution is for the price — it's very cheap.

Personally, I know that Fortinet, Cisco, and Palo Alto are great products, but my customers are just interested in the lowest price. I can't change their minds, it's up to them.

I have been using this solution for a few years.

MikroTik Routers and Switches are both scalable and stable.

I haven't had to contact technical support. I enjoy studying configuration on my own.

I hope to stop using this solution and switch over to FortiGate soon.

The initial setup is not hard, but it's not necessarily easy either. Upgrading can be difficult with MikroTik. Sometimes, when I need to reboot or change software, MikroTik crashes. When this happens, I need to physically change the configuration. 

We have our own small team that handled deployment.

I would recommend this solution to others who prefer price.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of five.

We mainly use this solution for switch and routing.

This solution is easy to configure and it's very flexible. 

The batch management could be improved. 

I have been using this solution for approximately three to five years.

This solution is both very stable and scalable; we haven't experienced any issues with bugs. 

We haven't had to contact technical support. We have a team of six engineers that handle all maintenance related issues.  

For switches, we use Cisco. We are familiar with them and so are our clients. They are comfortable with the higher price. 

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the client. The deployment can take a few weeks.

MikroTik Routers and Switches are great. If you are having issues understanding how to properly use them, study materials and video lessons are available for a low-cost.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give MikroTik Routers and Switches a rating of eight. 

The price-performance is great. I am sure there is a better solution out there (maybe Cisco ISR), but it would be more expensive. 

I have worked more with the MikroTik Routers, as opposed to their switching products.

We use this solution to route traffic in our network. For example, if one group is experiencing a slow connection then we can re-route the traffic. This is possible because we have multiple links on our premises.

The most valuable features are the versatility and ease of use.

We make use of a script that will automatically re-route traffic when connections are slow.

The manageability of the web-based UI needs to be improved. I still prefer to use the Winbox application.

It would be great if they included some next-generation features in the future.

I have been using MikroTik Routers and Switches for about three years.

We had some trouble with the latest patch that was released. There were issues with high CPU usage, so we reverted back to the previous version.

This is a scalable solution. We have between 1,000 and 1,500 users.

We do not rely on technical support from the vendor. We do our own research, test situations in our lab, and solve our own problems.

The installation is straightforward.

Our in-house team deployed our routers.

This product is cheaper than competing products by other vendors.

I was not the person who selected and deployed this solution.

We have not had any issues with our MikroTik routers and I would definitely recommend them.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I primarily use the solution as a firewall, and for routing purposes, and for multi-band load balancing. 

The load balancing is very good.

The solution offers very good multi-routing.

The firewall is very good.

For the interface, I always use Winbox.

The MikroTik weblog, web user log, was supposed to be remotely accessible. However, it was not as good as I had wanted it to be. I found its functionality disappointing. There's no proper interface. They show only IPs but not the DNS address or complete address. It only shows the IP addresses. Also, they only show real-time data and not the history of the user's log address. We would like to see a history on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

The solution needs to improve its security firewalls and mirror that of, for example, Sophos, or FortiGate.

The solution needs to focus on UTM in its devices.

I have about five years of experience working with this solution.

We've found the stability of the solution to be good enough.

The solution is quite easy to scale. We haven't had any problems expanding the solution when we need to.

I've never contacted technical support. If I have issues with the solution, I try to handle it myself. So far, I've never needed anyone else's assistance.

I've previously used FortiGate and Fortinet devices. They have very good security and firewalls.

The initial setup is a little bit complex for beginners. It's difficult to install the router and for initializing from the beginning all of the configurations we need, like setting up the initial firewall rules, for example.

If a user knows all the basic steps, the deployment only takes about ten to 15 minutes.

I handled the implementation myself. I didn't need the assistance of an integrator or reseller.

I'd warn others that a tutorial or a bit of learning is required before beginning. It helps if a user has a bit of understanding about the solution. There's some complexity in the terminologies and surrounding the initial implementation process.

Overall, it's a good product, but it requires a bit of improvement, especially in relation to UTM and security.

I'd rate it eight out of ten.

We use MikroTik both in our company and clients. Even extended to our household clients. MikroTik devices offer you similar features you'll normally get from high priced devices like Cisco and HP, however at a fraction of the costs. This works very nicely with us since our clients are mainly small and medium. The device price doesn't dictate whether the client gets a solution.

VLANs, L3 Routing, Load Balancing, HotSpot are amongst some of the features we normally use in many of our deployments.

Costs saving and expansion of our product portfolio as a result of those features offered by mikrotik, but would have to pay for licenses from other providers. Dude also improved network management and service, which our re-skilled team enjoy. Many MikroTik devices can be powered from 12VDC and this is also a cost saving on electricity consumption and allow our deployments in areas where solar solutions are offered, extending our footprint.

The pricing is a great selling point.

We find the VLANs, Load Balancing, HotSpot, Traffic Management the most valuable part of the solution.

We're very happy with what we are getting out of the solution in general. The features are good. They're comparable to other brands such as Cisco and HP.

We've had difficulties allocating different hubs with different IPs. At times, some users use it on one range and can access computers on another range. We thought isolation would help, but it hasn't. When you assign IP addresses to ports, people can still access those ports, and that's really frustrating.

The solution doesn't offer very good documentation. When we had questions around isolation and allocating different hubs and IPs, we couldn't find any verifiable answers.

The solution's website isn't that good. When I go to it, I can't find what I'm looking for. However, if I go to a third party's website, I can easily find the information.

We've been using the solution for ten years.

Very stable, not major failures reported at this stage.

It's a very scalable solution. It's not really an issue if companies need to scale. However, the issue of port isolation and the difficulties we have might ultimately affect scaling as we have to maintain security and right now we're struggling with that. When you scale, you compromise security. It's a double-edged sword.

We have about 15 users on the particular solution currently. However, these are solutions that will be deployed across different clients.

I have never contacted technical support directly. I have gone to their support website, which, I feel, doesn't have enough information or documentation. If you compare it to Cisco, Cisco has got more support online; you don't even have to call them.

Much as MicroTik is cheaper than Cisco, and you can see a difference in support quality. Cisco does offer a lot of support on their website. When you go to Cisco, you get answers to all types of issues. With MicroTik, I need to go look at private third-party websites. That's why I feel their technical support is a disappointment.

You can try calling or writing emails, however, you don't get responses. In the end, you have to fiddle around and try things yourself. This is not sustainable. A client will eventually not mind so much if they need to pay a bit more to get proper service.

We've previously used Cisco, which was much more expensive.

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment typically takes about one hour if it's just a basic initial layer that needs to be implemented.

In-house, it was more of a trial and error but finally got it. We still and constantly improving our know how but we will get there.

The costs of hardware reduces the ROI dramatically. Same way the Costs of Ownership does.

The pricing of the solution is quite reasonable.

What we do is we buy Level Four devices, so we don't have to buy license supported versions.

We came across MikroTik and immediately fell in love with it

We use the solution and we provide services to clients as well. It's much cheaper than when we used Cisco and other devices. We're a reseller and solutions provider.

I do advise people to use the solution, because of the price and features. The more you learn is the more you realize how valuable MikroTik devices are.

One thing I would mention to others is that MikroTik is on Linux, but there's nothing like WinBox for Linux, or what you might call a Linux box. You need to do something that looks like WinBox, because if you're using Ubuntu, you will need to use WinBox and there isn't one for Linux. Not everybody uses Windows and many people, especially technical people, are moving away from Windows. 

The solution is a good product and it has improved since the first time we used it. It's just support that is really lacking.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I'd rate it higher if technical support was better.