We performed a comparison between Meraki Dashboard and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer 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."We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"What I found most valuable in Meraki Dashboard is that it's well-organized, easy to use, and practical."
"The most valuable feature is knowing the wireless and switch are healthy."
"It is very easy to manage. It has good security, and it is working well with our firewall."
"Great visibility on the dashboard."
"The feature I find most valuable is the single pane of glass where you can configure a monitor view, all from one dashboard. For example, on the wireless side, you can configure it under the configuration panel, and then view statistics like location analytics, user analytics, etc."
"An excellent dashboard that is currently unique in covering both SD-WAN and SD-LAN with built-in security."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"We like the visibility this solution gives us of the infrastructure."
"This solution gives us important information about the utilization of protocols, particularly in terms of how often they are used."
"I would rate NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's stability ten out of ten."
"SolarWinds has improved our organization because whenever a device is down, we get an alert."
"The performance analysis is a valuable feature. With the performance analyzer, we can see the realtime monitoring, the realtime performance, and historical performance on specific components like virtualization storage, CPU, servers and network equipment."
"The program is scalable enough for our usage."
"It helps us know when a branch is down because it has a graphic presentation of all the locations a node represents."
"What the network team found most valuable in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it helps them to troubleshoot or analyze the issue. For example, traffic that comes from our location: India, goes to the US, so for the network team to analyze where the traffic comes from and where it is directed, and whether the packets are being dropped, they use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. The network team also likes that through the solution, they can analyze the complete traffic utilization and how they're going to use it. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is user-friendly. The team finds it comfortable to use."
"The most valuable features are the bandwidth analyzer, the monitoring, the network analyzer, it has overall good performance, and an easy deployment."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"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."
"It would be nicer if the dashboard was lighter."
"The solution has a limited routing table and needs improvement by increasing the numbers as well as providing a summarization for the table."
"Price could be reduced."
"I think this product could be improved with a CLI for more directives."
"For my purposes, I don't need to see any other features added to the Meraki Dashboard. I have no criticisms and I do like the tool. If I had a criticism for it, it would be about the pricing because it could be a little less, but again, for the service that you get, I won't complain about that too much."
"There needs to be more improvement on the device-connected interface."
"They can improve the landing page in Meraki Dashboard. When I go into an organization, they can include a lot more infographics. They can also simplify it a bit and consolidate it. For example, if I've got five branches and I go into customer A's profile or organization, I'd like to see an infographic on the landing page providing a snippet of the entire network layout, that is, all branches in one snapshot. From there, I would like to go into the network that I want to work on or view."
"What needs improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is performance because sometimes, my team struggles too much for the solution to perform correctly for a specific deployment in my organization. Having a more detailed view in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is another area for improvement, but that's more part of the protocol than the actual solution."
"It is a scalable solution, but it is costly to scale. Therefore, I would rate scalability at eight out of ten."
"I would like to see better customization capabilities."
"Customer Support is quite complex."
"If your network is on SolarWinds, and you notice that the traffic is bad because it says "user downloading a heavy file," it doesn't indicate which endpoint is downloading those heavy files. SolarWinds doesn't have the tools to be able to handle this kind of situation. You can just notice through your network device that the traffic is becoming overwhelming or heavy, but you cannot go inside and get more details related to the endpoint where it is happening. We would like SolarWinds to be able to handle this kind of situation and even manage the traffic inside a network from the endpoint to the network device. These would be good enhancements. It is mostly stable. The problem comes only when we want to add another SolarWinds model. SolarWinds has so many models, and sometimes when we want to add other models on the platforms that are reserved for our firm, it freezes. When this happens, we have to create a new VM for that model."
"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is application visibility because some applications aren't being recognized correctly. You can see applications such as Facebook and YouTube, but SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer needs to have more visibility into more applications. Currently, SolarWinds fails to detect more powerful applications, such as Zoom and Teams. If SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can recognize every application and be able to report on each in terms of bandwidth, then that would be good. This is what I'd like to see in the next release of the solution."
"The problem is that SolarWinds is trying to bolt in too much and that can leave bugs, which you have to then sort out, leaving the product unstable. SolarWinds needs to try and slow down and improve the stability of the product, as opposed to bringing out more and more features."
"The price of the solution is a bit high for our clients. They should consider adjusting their price model."
More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Pricing and Cost Advice →
Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews while SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is ranked 6th in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) with 34 reviews. Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6, while SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is rated 7.6. 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 SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer writes "Displays traffic visibility and efficient traffic flows". Meraki Dashboard is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes and Mist AI and Cloud, whereas SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is most compared with Cisco Secure Network Analytics, Zabbix, ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, SolarWinds NPM and Darktrace. See our Meraki Dashboard vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer report.
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