We performed a comparison between Cisco DNA Center and Meraki Dashboard 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."
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable features were the monitoring, maintenance, and configuration."
"The automation features are significant, reducing configuration time. This means outstanding functionality. By deploying the controller automatically, the rest becomes automated"
"We have many people from the team who manage a lot of devices. By using Cisco DNA Center, it has taken some of that burden away, we are impressed with it. We did the investment in CAPEX, but in the OPEX was very low."
"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."
"Cisco VXLAN is a protocol that has been around for some time, but the practical implementation and operational capability of Cisco DNA Center bring it to life."
"The most valuable features of Cisco DNA Center are wireless assurance and visibility."
"Application Assurance works very well."
"What I found valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the Software-Defined Access Network, so the entire LAN network can be centralized and managed from a single dashboard. Cisco DNA Center is suitable for centralized management and lets you deploy switches in a centralized fashion. You can also do multiple switch port configurations simultaneously and segregate your traffic into multiple fabrics. Another valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is enhanced security through Scalable Group Tags. Cisco DNA Center can be integrated with your Cisco ISE to enhance the port securities, and this paves the way for Software-Defined Networking in the LAN segment, which is the main advantage of Cisco DNA Center. I also like that you can use Cisco DNA Center for data assurance or correlation. The solution shows your network and client health parameters, which I find convenient for troubleshooting."
"The most valuable feature is its simplicity in navigating through the dashboard. It's well set out, and the layout is nice and user friendly. A lot of clients enjoy seeing layer 7 visibility. They get a good indication and insight into what is happening in their network and what applications are being used the most. They can then customize and give preference to business-critical applications."
"The dashboard itself is very simplified and easy to navigate."
"What I found most valuable in Meraki Dashboard is that it's well-organized, easy to use, and practical."
"The initial setup process is quite simple."
"Scalability is one of Meraki Dashboard's strongest features. We have thousands of users if we're counting the end-users on our clients' network, but we have hundreds of clients."
"Everything is in a single pane and you can look at your network in one centralized place."
"There are some whitelist blacklist capabilities in the MX dashboard, which is very helpful."
"It's really user-friendly."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"It seems to be a little bit more centered toward wireless than wired. You've got more options you can do wirelessly than you can with the wired switches, but it works for what we need it to do. We would like to see a little bit more about the traffic, and we're looking at what's out there to see about that. We are looking at something that might give us a bit more insight into the actual traffic. If they had the full functionality on the wired side, as they do on the wireless side in terms of being able to view traffic and everything, it would be good."
"Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable."
"The solution needs to improve the dashboard."
"There are some software problems from version to version. It takes a long time for DNA Center to recognize the video and control access devices."
"In terms of the clustering part, there are some concerns."
"The features of Cisco DNA Center and Cisco Prime could have more parity."
"The task failure reporting or provisioning failure reporting could be a little bit better in the UI, with more information given to the user."
"From the recent DNA point of view, there are some stability challenges with Cisco, but very minor."
"Some features could be added."
"There are some issues with the NAT configuration, it is now impossible to some operations with the solution."
"They could offer API functionality for Meraki Dashboard. It will help us develop software immediately using available solutions."
"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."
"The initial setup is complex and can be made more straightforward."
"There is a bit of a problem when you try to log in and you don't have a fixed IP address. If you're granting access, you need to log in by using the IP address. If your administrator's IP address is not a fixed IP address and it has changed, you might need to update the changed IP address in the interface. For this, you need to log in to the interface to update the IP address. This issue might not have so much to do with Meraki interface."
"I think this product could be improved with a CLI for more directives."
"We would like to be able to test the health of WAN connections."
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Cisco DNA Center is ranked 25th in Network Monitoring Software with 37 reviews while Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews. Cisco DNA Center is rated 7.8, while Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco DNA Center writes "Practical implementation of VXLAN is good and provides centralized control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". Cisco DNA Center is most compared with Cisco Prime, Aruba Airwave, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, Huawei eSight and HPE Intelligent Management Center, whereas Meraki Dashboard is most compared with SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud, Zabbix and Cisco Secure Network Analytics. See our Cisco DNA Center vs. Meraki Dashboard report.
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