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.
"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."
"It provides private network access, helping us protect our company’s devices."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is Marvis, the AI-driven network management system."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Mist is the Virtual Network Assistant, powered by artificial intelligence."
"The AI capabilities of Mist Wireless are superior to other OEMs."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."
"It is cloud-based. It has a GUI rather than a command line, and it just works."
"With Cisco products and third-party products, integration of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is good."
"The most valuable features include key elements like creating SSIDs, networking configurations, and the ability to manage all devices through a single console."
"The solution is trustworthy. I find it easy and secure."
"The user interface is very simple and easy to use — our customers are very satisfied."
"Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is a user-friendly solution that has good performance and stability."
"Its flexibility, ease of management via the portal, and the variety of access points are the most valuable features."
"The primary value lies in the ease of configuration; these products seamlessly integrate, and work well together."
"The customer always feels confident with the solution because of its reliability."
"Cisco's technical support is very good, I've never had an issue with their technical support."
"Cisco Wireless solutions are easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the coverage."
"The product offers educational licenses that are priced very reasonably."
"The tool is mainly improving our productivity."
"Cisco Wireless is one of the more stable products so their products are scalable."
"This increased mobility has helped our organization. We can talk to one another from different locations and stay in constant contact and with employees across the enterprise. Everyone has access to up-to-the-minute communications and all documents and applications on our network."
"The pricing should be made cheaper."
"Improving third-party integration is key for Juniper Mist's next release."
"The product should include adaptive Wi-Fi to show a more accurate location."
"Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) could improve if the MIST platform had a built-in master key. This would be an advantage."
"The price could be better."
"They should include SD-WAN features to it."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing is very high in the Indian market."
"The product's pricing needs improvement."
"I would like to see them improve their support where an assigned engineer can take the case all the way to closure. Usually, you get a different engineer calling regarding the same ticket."
"The licensing could be a bit better."
"We'd like to have better mapping to showcase low-coverage areas."
"There is a processing limitation when you have multiple SSIDs, above three or four."
"Currently, with Meraki, a controller is required to direct guest and user traffic to the internet. Improvement is needed in the portal for enhanced visibility into activities. Additionally, addressing multiple bugs, especially those arising with new releases, is crucial to ensure system stability."
"The error logs need to be much more comprehensive."
"The initial setup was simple. However, the full deployment could be easier."
"In the future, it would be great if the solution had a GPS feature that could have the ability through access points to locate cell phone users inside a local wireless network, for example in a stadium."
"There should be an option for a wireless bridge that can be used to join two access points."
"One of our customers complained about the ripple, that some of the data was incorrect. We opened a ticket and brought it to their attention that maybe some of the data was not correct. As of now, it has been two months since we opened the ticket and the issue still hasn't been resolved."
"Installation is complex."
"Sometimes, in some rooms the signal could be a bit better, a little stronger."
"There is room for improvement regarding HA issues and Radius integration."
"An expensive solution that small companies cannot afford."
"The solution should introduce natural language troubleshooting processes. It will identify possible problems or errors due to the symptoms."
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 146 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, Ubiquiti Wireless, Mist AI and Cloud, Ruckus Wireless 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.