We performed a comparison between Cisco DNA Center and Meraki Dashboard based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."
"Has a good processing feature with a high level of accuracy."
"The solution helps with the management and orchestration of campaigns. It helps with visibility and analytics. I also like its SDA configuration."
"It is very versatile in terms of analytics."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is the AI (Artificial Intelligence) that provides us with valuable information."
"It gives us automation capabilities for pushing out the configuration to branch networks. It also provides visibility into the health of user network devices."
"The product gives a consolidated view."
"Cisco DNA Center is a user-friendly solution."
"We've been spending a lot less time on tickets and deployments, so we have more time to do other things."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki Dashboard is we can manage our switches and access point in one place."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"Great visibility on the dashboard."
"We greatly utilize the network because we can plug it into the DNS, VPN, or equipment. It's very good. Meraki Dashboard enhances wireless network management. We appreciate its flexibility, as it allows for easy suite configuration. We can handle everything on there when there's a policy or any other requirement."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use and a single-pane-of-glass that allows us to identify issues across the entire network from one dashboard."
"Everything is in a single pane and you can look at your network in one centralized place."
"The hardware of Meraki is very good quality."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"An area for improvement in Cisco DNA Center is the latency in data correlation. For example, sometimes, when an issue happens, and I check the logs, I can't find the corresponding log. There's a delay in log replication, so this is what needs improvement in Cisco DNA Center. Reporting in Cisco DNA Center could also be improved because it only has a few templates, and you can't customize it based on your requirements. There aren't many options available in Cisco DNA Center regarding reporting, versus Cisco Prime, which has excellent features for different levels of detailed reports. I'd like to see real-time data replication in the next release of Cisco DNA Center, similar to what's done in Meraki. Data in Meraki is real-time with no delay, so data is immediately replicated in the cloud. Currently, there's a lag in Cisco DNA Center, and addressing that lag is the enhancement I'd like to see in Cisco DNA Center. The solution also needs to be more user-friendly."
"Cisco DNA Center was a new technology for us, at the beginning, it was not easy to do, but Cisco did a lot of training with us to a level we could handle everything. The team is managing itself now without the assistance of Cisco."
"The solution's integration feature can be better."
"There should be an option for automation of template deployment by using the stored data. It is not easy to save configuration information for lots of devices without using other tools. There should be a tighter, better repository of information that can be merged with the templates."
"It seems to be a little bit more centered toward wireless than wired. You've got more options you can do wirelessly than you can with the wired switches, but it works for what we need it to do. We would like to see a little bit more about the traffic, and we're looking at what's out there to see about that. We are looking at something that might give us a bit more insight into the actual traffic. If they had the full functionality on the wired side, as they do on the wireless side in terms of being able to view traffic and everything, it would be good."
"The product has many features that do not work properly."
"Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable."
"The task failure reporting or provisioning failure reporting could be a little bit better in the UI, with more information given to the user."
"This solution can be quite complicated to configure and manage, unless you have a technical person with specific knowledge working on it."
"We would like to be able to test the health of WAN connections."
"I think this product could be improved with a CLI for more directives."
"I would like to see an alert event feature to monitor what users are downloading and how to block some applications."
"It would be helpful to have the ability to create a floor plan based on an existing PDF or JPEG, which is automatically converted into a usable network map."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Cisco DNA Center is ranked 24th in Network Monitoring Software with 37 reviews while Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews. Cisco DNA Center is rated 7.8, while Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco DNA Center writes "Practical implementation of VXLAN is good and provides centralized control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". Cisco DNA Center is most compared with Cisco Prime, Aruba Airwave, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, Juniper Mist Wired Assurance and NetBrain, whereas Meraki Dashboard is most compared with SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud, Zabbix and Cisco Secure Network Analytics. See our Cisco DNA Center vs. Meraki Dashboard report.
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