We compared Centreon and Meraki Dashboard across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Centreon features a user-friendly interface with useful options for customization and manual configuration. Users like the solution’s flexible dashboards and the ability to create plugins. 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.
Room for Improvement: Some Centreon users requested better documentation and more flexibility to customize reporting. Other areas for improvement include auto-scanning efficiency and integration. 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.
Service and Support: Centreon is highly regarded for its prompt and knowledgeable customer service that offers support in multiple languages. However, some customers feel that the lower levels of support are inadequate. 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.
Ease of Deployment: Centreon's initial setup is described as time-consuming and complex. The deployment varies in duration depending on the IT infrastructure. Users said Meraki Dashboard was effortless and intuitive to set up, noting that features like templates and configuration cloning saved time during deployment.
Pricing: Centreon's cost depends on the company's size. It is affordable and suitable for small companies, but it can be costly to scale up. Opinions on Meraki Dashboard's pricing varied, with some users finding it pricey and others deeming it fair.
ROI: Centreon delivers value by helping users identify and resolve critical issues fasters, which could yield large savings. Meraki Dashboard simplifies IT operations, and some users expect returns within a few years.
Comparison Results: Centreon is a flexible solution offering a range of customization options. The solution has earned high marks for support and affordability. At the same time, users say the setup can be complicated and time-consuming. Others said that auto-scanning and integration have room for improvement. 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.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"In addition, the flexibility, customizability, and analytics of Centreon's dashboards are all very good. The dashboards help us see the whole network map, and that is quite valuable for us. In addition, the dashboards have helped to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time... The flexibility has given us the ability to add in our own monitoring metrics and that has been quite interesting and very useful for us."
"The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks."
"I really like the filtering capabilities of it. You can easily tell what's critical next to what's okay, the state of the services. It's very easy to get the whole picture quickly."
"Centreon's most valuable feature is Opsgenie."
"It supports active monitoring so we don't have to use traps. From time to time traps are not very useful because we never know if they are actually working or not. The reporting part is also valuable as are the event logs. Using them we can check right away if something has had a hiccup."
"It is decentralized, which is better, because you can reduce the load from a single system. Also, you get a better view because it's more independent. Then, for the management, it's nice because they have one central system. With that, they can manage all the other systems, as well. This means they don't have to configure each system by system. They can configure it from one single interface."
"The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."
"Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid downtime."
"It has improved my organization in the way that we've got a much better wireless coverage than we had before, and secondly, we have the visibility of all the users."
"What I found most valuable in the Meraki Dashboard is straight monitoring of the different devices, as well as the ability to easily set up VPNs, for example, both Meraki client VPNs and non-Meraki VPNs for different organizations that work with my company. I also like that the tool is a really good firewall."
"The most valuable feature is knowing the wireless and switch are healthy."
"You don't have to be a network engineer to use it."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"The initial setup was easy."
"The most valuable features are that it's easy to use and technically very complete. I can configure, do advanced troubleshooting in the dashboard, and reboot access points remotely."
"The ability of the product to perform with simplicity of deployment make it a valuable solution."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."
"It is necessary to improve service monitoring of database services in the free version."
"Improvements I would like to see include a discovery solution, better reports, and end-to-end monitoring."
"Opening a ticket on the website of Centreon can be difficult for my colleague, but not for me because my English is good. However, my colleague doesn't speak English well, as our company is in Quebec and our first language is French."
"Centreon supports officially 10,000 services per poller. That is not much for larger customers, because this limit is reached very quickly. We use it with three times the limit without any problems, but Centreon says, "Okay, we are only supporting it with 10,000 services." We are aware that increasing the limit has different impacts because they need to support it. However, for most customers, it would be be very good if they could increase the limit of services."
"Centreon is very bad with auto-scanning. It's very monolithic software. It doesn't have microservices and it only has basic clustering. You cannot, for example, have six or seven nodes for Centreon's cloud processes."
"To get it started is a lot of work, since it comes empty. We had to push information into it to make it work."
"There is room for improvement in the area of artificial intelligence. The product gives us a lot of information, but it's only information. We want the product to do more auto-remediation."
"The initial setup is complex and can be made more straightforward."
"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."
"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."
"The wait time to speak with a Meraki support engineer is always long, but they get the job done."
"Some features could be added."
"The MDM, however, is bad. We're using another MDM now because Meraki was so bad."
"Lacks an alert notification when there are IP or DNS issues."
"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."
Centreon is ranked 11th in Network Monitoring Software with 27 reviews while Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews. Centreon is rated 8.6, while Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Centreon writes "Proactive reporting guides our NOC on what needs to be fixed, saving them time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios Core, Icinga and ServiceNow IT Operations Management, whereas Meraki Dashboard is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud and Nagios XI. See our Centreon vs. Meraki Dashboard report.
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