We compared Meraki Dashboard and Nagios Core 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. Nagios Core is an adaptable solution praised for its integration, customizability, and ability to effectively monitor server availability and network connectivity.
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. Nagios Core users have requested better documentation, improved scalability, and a more user-friendly configuration process.
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. Nagios Core lacks direct customer service, but users can generally find help from a supportive open-source community and large knowledge base.
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. Nagios Core's setup is generally seen as well-documented and straightforward.
Pricing: Opinions on Meraki Dashboard's pricing varied, with some users finding it pricey and others deeming it fair. Nagios Core is free, but users may incur costs for installation and configuration.
ROI: Meraki Dashboard simplifies IT operations, and some users expect returns within a few years. Nagios Core users say they have saved money by replacing paid monitoring tools with this open-source solution.
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. Nagios Core is a flexible open-source solution that is highly customizable and offers robust functionality commonly found in paid enterprise solutions. However, some users have said that Nagios Core becomes unwieldy when used at a large scale and that the documentation could be more thorough.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"Some of the features I have found valuable are the ease of access, simple configuration, and monitoring."
"Meraki dashboard deserves an Oscar."
"There are some whitelist blacklist capabilities in the MX dashboard, which is very helpful."
"We like how Meraki Dashboard lets you manage all the devices in a single pane of glass. The dashboard is intuitive and easy to use. They are constantly updating the functionality. Switches from other vendors have the same features for the life of the device, but Meraki is always improving."
"It is a reliable product. It provides a lot of information that is easy to read."
"The solution scales well."
"Easy to configure with great troubleshooting feature."
"Scalability is one of Meraki Dashboard's strongest features. We have thousands of users if we're counting the end-users on our clients' network, but we have hundreds of clients."
"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
"The solution is quite efficient."
"Provides timely notifications."
"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."
"We use the product to monitor server applications."
"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."
"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"What we would like from the IT perspective is a lot more granular control, more visibility into the packets, into the routing, and things of that nature."
"Meraki Dashboard could improve integration with non-Cisco platforms."
"There needs to be more improvement on the device-connected interface."
"The downside to the simplicity is that you can't get as granular as you could with the Cisco APs."
"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."
"One area that could use improvement in the Meraki Dashboard is user-friendliness when navigating to port configurations."
"The solution can be expensive."
"Meraki lacks their own software for connecting to the VPN which creates some issues."
"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."
"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."
"The tool needs to improve the integrations."
"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews while Nagios Core is ranked 7th in Network Monitoring Software with 46 reviews. Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6, while Nagios Core is rated 8.0. 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 Nagios Core writes "An Open Source Fully Featured Data Centre Monitoring Tool". Meraki Dashboard is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud and New Relic, whereas Nagios Core is most compared with Zabbix, Nagios XI, Icinga, Centreon and Spiceworks. See our Meraki Dashboard vs. Nagios Core report.
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