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 most valuable feature of Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) is the ability to troubleshoot ports on the network. Additionally, when there is an update on the APs they are able to reboot quickly reducing downtime. Other solutions have a longer downtime when updates are done."
"The AI capabilities of Mist Wireless are superior to other OEMs."
"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."
"It provides private network access, helping us protect our company’s devices."
"With Mist, every Wednesday they roll out new features."
"The solution is very secure."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is Marvis, the AI-driven network management system."
"The most useful feature of Juniper Wireless AP is the reporting Marvis."
"It's a stable product."
"The solution is trustworthy. I find it easy and secure."
"Cloud managed wireless LAN product that's stable and scalable. It's an easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot solution."
"Integrating with the router, firewall, and Wireless Controller is advantageous."
"The product is super stable. I would rate the stability a ten."
"It enables quick deployment within all branches for the users."
"The solution is fast."
"The management console is valuable."
"I like that Cisco Wireless is easy to implement. If you get stuck with any issues, they have ample documentation on the internet. It's easy to implement, and Cisco documentation is easily accessible."
"Device profiling allows us to have different policies applied by ISE to wireless clients."
"I like that it's a standard wireless solution that can be rolled out throughout the campus. I also like that it is easy to manage. It is a good end-to-end solution."
"The product has valuable features for integration and authentication."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"Cisco Wireless is one of the more stable products so their products are scalable."
"Wireless connectivity is the main feature. It is also securely integrated with ISE, which is valuable because, in the banking industry, we also cover the security aspect. This Wi-Fi controller integrates with the ISE system that we have. Every user that comes on the wireless needs to log in with the domain. If they don't, it will not allow the user to join the network. This is the key feature of this solution."
"The ability to make different types of networks, such as land networks, is the most valuable part of the solution."
"The product should include adaptive Wi-Fi to show a more accurate location."
"Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) could improve if the MIST platform had a built-in master key. This would be an advantage."
"Improvement is needed in the user-friendliness of Juniper Mist, particularly in enhancing the interaction with AI features."
"It would be helpful to have even stronger security features to help protect against interference from other nearby access points that aren't part of our network."
"Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points’ support services need improvement."
"There is room for improvement in terms of support and installation."
"The pricing should be made cheaper."
"Improving third-party integration is key for Juniper Mist's next release."
"Meraki should share their viability roadmap. It is really hard to know which functionality will appear or when they will be available. It is also hard to know which features are available now but are not visible on the dashboard."
"Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN's management tools need enhancement."
"Meraki leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to the technical capabilities in terms of throughput, spectrum, management, higher-level functions, etc"
"The licensing isn't very customer-centric. They may have improved it, but previously, if you forgot to pay on a certain day, your service would be shut off."
"Concern when there are a number of concurrent users."
"There's nothing that special about it."
"The product doesn't effectively do its job anymore since some issues crop up in it once you run out of your subscription licensing...Improvements are needed in the licensing part of the tool."
"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."
"And from an administration point of view, it is a very tedious job to check on each and every control. We have around 30 or 40 controls in our network."
"It requires a few tweaks in order to stabilize it. Its portal is complex. Cisco solutions are complex in general."
"The solution could improve by having an advanced model with a controller. Additionally, the solution could be more secure."
"In Latin America, Cisco is very expensive in comparison to other technologies."
"Cisco won't work with any other vendors. That is a significant problem with Cisco."
"The solution's pricing should be improved."
"In the next release, they should add a better reporting feature. The reporting will tell you if you have a problem. That will make the diagnostics easier."
"Older versions used to be hard to deploy. The latest OS, however, has made things a lot easier. While deployment is much better, it could always be even easier."
More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is ranked 4th in Wireless LAN with 115 reviews while Cisco Wireless is ranked 2nd in Wireless LAN with 147 reviews. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is rated 8.2, while Cisco Wireless is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN writes "Offers good mobility, stability and scalability ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Wireless writes "Allows us to deploy a wide range of wireless products with stable WiFi". Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti Wireless, Mist AI and Cloud and Huawei Wireless, whereas Cisco Wireless is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti WLAN, Mist AI and Cloud and Omada Access Points. 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.