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.
"The most valuable feature of the solution is Marvis, the AI-driven network management system."
"With Mist, every Wednesday they roll out new features."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Mist is the Virtual Network Assistant, powered by artificial intelligence."
"In terms of reporting, in terms of all the user reports, it's very rich."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Wireless Access Points (AP Series) is the ability to troubleshoot ports on the network. Additionally, when there is an update on the APs they are able to reboot quickly reducing downtime. Other solutions have a longer downtime when updates are done."
"Overall, we've been very pleased with the performance."
"It provides private network access, helping us protect our company’s devices."
"You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment."
"The interface is excellent. We've been really happy with it."
"Cisco's technical support is very good and better than other vendors."
"Provided reliability and a good price."
"The solution has worked very well in our campus environment."
"Its management is most valuable. It is the major feature of Meraki."
"The most amazing part is that their Access Points have the ability to connect to multiple conference devices at different times, and it shows you the very in-depth Wi-Fi analytics through their dashboard."
"It's a stable product."
"Allows for cloud-based management of your Wi-Fi network."
"The ability to disable RRM or set hybrid RRM provides a more granular design of RF in the environment."
"The product offers educational licenses that are priced very reasonably."
"This product has a long life and you don't have any issues with it."
"The technical support is excellent."
"The initial setup is easy. It's fairly quick to deploy."
"The installation process is very easy."
"Support is fantastic. They are helpful and responsive."
"The product enables mobility and centralized control."
"Improving third-party integration is key for Juniper Mist's next release."
"The price could be better."
"I need a bit more time with it before criticizing the features."
"Improvement is needed in the user-friendliness of Juniper Mist, particularly in enhancing the interaction with AI features."
"Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points’ support services need improvement."
"It would be helpful to have even stronger security features to help protect against interference from other nearby access points that aren't part of our network."
"Juniper Wireless AP can improve by continually improving its reporting and integration with other systems."
"The solution is expensive."
"If they could work on the Meraki firewall hardware, and add SSL decryption as well as more application control and deep packet inspection, that would be ideal."
"if there is a better feature, they write it as beta so you have to be careful."
"Meraki is still very much a small office type of solution. It is not a fit for large enterprise networks, as it doesn't have tunneling functionalities."
"They should introduce a grace period of 60 days after license expiry because as it is now, it automatically goes down and there is no grace period."
"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 initial setup was simple. However, the full deployment could be easier."
"Its pricing could be better."
"In some cases, they could include enhanced features in the product, such as a firewall console and traffic analysis."
"It would be better if some utility lets us know the best place to install the system. Every time we install it, we have to change it, and we have to add more access points. This is a problem we have all the time. It would be better if it integrated seamlessly with products from other vendors. It'll also help if they included a device diagnostics feature in the next release."
"The security must be improved."
"Their software's really clunky."
"Assurance capabilities must be improved."
"The internet speed is high within environments. As you move further away from the access point, there is a decline in speed. Omada or Ruckus don’t have the speed degradation as you move away from the access point."
"The solution is stable but it could be improved. However, this could be because there are not enough APs."
"There are some features I would like to have in Cisco Wireless, such as Telemetry and other IoT. However, they are available in the new version of the solution."
"The pricing of Brazil is very expensive. When you look at other options, they are much cheaper."
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, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti Wireless, Mist AI and Cloud 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.