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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki Dashboard is we can manage our switches and access point in one place."
"Meraki Dashboard centralizes control of all our equipment into one cloud-based console, so we can manage it from anywhere. We can resolve problems remotely outside of business hours because it is on the cloud. You can use the dashboard to change security settings or configure routers and switches."
"Meraki Dashboard does not require a lot of maintenance. Cisco tells communicates through the Meraki Dashboard web client, it will automatically send updates to the equipment. They will send you an email on what day the updates will take place. If you want to proceed, you can click on accept, or you can decline them and schedule the updates at another time."
"The most valuable feature is their support, they get better every day."
"I like that Meraki Dashboard is a user-friendly product."
"The initial setup was easy."
"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."
"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."
"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."
"The solution is quite efficient."
"Provides timely notifications."
"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Some features could be added."
"What needs improvement in Meraki Dashboard is its configuration. It'll also be better if the tool has more functionality, and that is what I'd like to see in its next release."
"We would like to be able to test the health of WAN connections."
"The one issue that we have had is that the VPN tunnel would go down unless you worked out with the ISP that you would be using a static IP address on the WAN interface."
"For instance, you should be able to see if something has been blocked by a firewall rule by looking at a live log of traffic moving through the device. It helps you troubleshoot issues and understand if your rules are working. You need to ensure the firewall is blocking the right things. That's unavailable in the Meraki Dashboard. You have to send the logs to a log server. We use SolarWinds locally, but it's not natively built into Meraki. We're also using Cisco ISA and another tool called Smoothwall."
"You can't really clone or replicate a device, that sort of feature would be useful. You can clone the site but you cannot clone the device."
"There needs to be more improvement on the device-connected interface."
"The cost of the solution is high and can be improved."
"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"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."
"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
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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