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."
"Overall, we've been very pleased with the performance."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Mist is the Virtual Network Assistant, powered by artificial intelligence."
"It provides private network access, helping us protect our company’s devices."
"The artificial intelligence feature is very good."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is Marvis, the AI-driven network management system."
"You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment."
"In terms of reporting, in terms of all the user reports, it's very rich."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Provided reliability and a good price."
"The big draw is the ease of installation. It's easy to manage, and it's easy to implement."
"I really don't have any problems with the stability of the product."
"Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is a user-friendly solution that has good performance and stability."
"The single dashboard of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is the most valuable feature for me."
"The stability of the Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is very good."
"I like the record that is being kept and multiple SSDs."
"Some of the features I find valuable are the FlexConnect and overall it is a good global solution."
"The ability to disable RRM or set hybrid RRM provides a more granular design of RF in the environment."
"The solution offers very good stability."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"It gave us the ability to view wireless traffic, unwanted devices on the network, and how they affected overall network performance."
"I find this solution easy to configure and use."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Wireless are security and the ability to manage everything easily. Other solutions, such as Aruba are not as simple."
"It is a stable solution. The performance was good."
"Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) could improve if the MIST platform had a built-in master key. This would be an advantage."
"They should include SD-WAN features to it."
"If you want to do more specific stuff, it's a bit limited."
"The product should include adaptive Wi-Fi to show a more accurate location."
"Juniper Wireless AP can improve by continually improving its reporting and integration with other systems."
"The price could be better."
"I need a bit more time with it before criticizing the features."
"Enrolling into the tool is a tedious process."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"Quality of technical support varies."
"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."
"Its pricing could be better."
"The price could be slightly lowered to make it more competitive in the market."
"It's performing well, really well. We don't have any issues. We only have issues if there is a lot of rogue APs in the neighborhood and that not Meraki's fault."
"I'd like better integration with security providers."
"They're great. If there's anything that they need to change, it is just simplifying the site to which you go to make changes on the admin side."
"If they could offer better coverage, we'd be much happier."
"Code stability is something that needs to be improved."
"The solution is stable but it could be improved. However, this could be because there are not enough APs."
"The new licensing has no added value and seems to be Cisco's effort to take advantage of customers."
"The internet speed is high within environments. As you move further away from the access point, there is a decline in speed. Omada or Ruckus don’t have the speed degradation as you move away from the access point."
"There is a problem with the controller. When we have to restart the controller, it does not show the time. We have to manually configure the time when we restart it. I have read about this issue, to get some information, and all answers are about having to connect it with a time server, which is very difficult."
"The price could be better. The configuration is also complex. It would be better if there's an NEC solution. That's one of the things we really want to have. It should also be as fast as possible."
"Cisco is costlier relative to other solutions."
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.