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.
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"There is no need to swap the hardware at all the locations, and importing the APs into the Dashboard was a simple and quick process."
"There are some whitelist blacklist capabilities in the MX dashboard, which is very helpful."
"The hardware of Meraki is very good quality."
"The most valuable feature is the single pane of glass that gives you multisite visibility."
"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."
"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."
"It is very stable and we have been using it for five years."
"The initial setup was easy."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
"Dashboard provides monitor of total assets."
"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."
"Nagios Core is stable."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."
"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."
"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"Meraki Dashboard's pricing could be improved."
"The downside to the simplicity is that you can't get as granular as you could with the Cisco APs."
"There needs to be more improvement on the device-connected interface."
"The price could be lower because the license for access points is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup is complex and can be made more straightforward."
"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 is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"There is room for improvement in the graphics."
"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
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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 LogicMonitor, 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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