We compared Meraki Dashboard and Nagios Core across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: 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. Nagios Core is an adaptable solution praised for its integration, customizability, and ability to effectively monitor server availability and network connectivity.
Room for Improvement: 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. Nagios Core users have requested better documentation, improved scalability, and a more user-friendly configuration process.
Service and Support: 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. Nagios Core lacks direct customer service, but users can generally find help from a supportive open-source community and large knowledge base.
Ease of Deployment: Users said Meraki Dashboard was effortless and intuitive to set up, noting that features like templates and configuration cloning saved time during deployment. Nagios Core's setup is generally seen as well-documented and straightforward.
Pricing: Opinions on Meraki Dashboard's pricing varied, with some users finding it pricey and others deeming it fair. Nagios Core is free, but users may incur costs for installation and configuration.
ROI: Meraki Dashboard simplifies IT operations, and some users expect returns within a few years. Nagios Core users say they have saved money by replacing paid monitoring tools with this open-source solution.
Comparison Results: 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. Nagios Core is a flexible open-source solution that is highly customizable and offers robust functionality commonly found in paid enterprise solutions. However, some users have said that Nagios Core becomes unwieldy when used at a large scale and that the documentation could be more thorough.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"Everything is in a single pane and you can look at your network in one centralized place."
"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 hardware of Meraki is very good quality."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki Dashboard is we can manage our switches and access point in one place."
"Meraki Dashboard centralizes control of all our equipment into one cloud-based console, so we can manage it from anywhere. We can resolve problems remotely outside of business hours because it is on the cloud. You can use the dashboard to change security settings or configure routers and switches."
"Great visibility on the dashboard."
"An excellent dashboard that is currently unique in covering both SD-WAN and SD-LAN with built-in security."
"I like that Meraki Dashboard is a user-friendly product."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."
"I like that it's very simple to install, easy to manage and deploy, and easy to use for monitoring."
"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
"What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services."
"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."
"Nagios Core is stable."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The tool is useful for managing devices and monitoring their current state, but it falls short in troubleshooting network issues, particularly with access points. It does not provide a complete understanding of the root causes of the issues. As a result, network engineers have had to use additional tools to complement it and conduct assessments. The only way to improve the tool would be to enhance its capability to identify and resolve network issues effectively."
"The coverage has been an issue for us."
"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."
"I would like to see an alert event feature to monitor what users are downloading and how to block some applications."
"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."
"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."
"Not a lot of training is available."
"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."
"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."
"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews while Nagios Core is ranked 7th in Network Monitoring Software with 46 reviews. Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6, while Nagios Core is rated 8.0. 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 Nagios Core writes "An Open Source Fully Featured Data Centre Monitoring Tool". Meraki Dashboard is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, whereas Nagios Core is most compared with Zabbix, Nagios XI, Icinga, Centreon and Spiceworks. See our Meraki Dashboard vs. Nagios Core report.
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