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 solution is stable."
"You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment."
"In terms of reporting, in terms of all the user reports, it's very rich."
"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."
"The AI capabilities of Mist Wireless are superior to other OEMs."
"The artificial intelligence feature is very good."
"The simplicity is great."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Mist is the Virtual Network Assistant, powered by artificial intelligence."
"For Meraki, the ease of deployment and management is most valuable."
"The solution is very stable. It is a very manageable and secure system."
"The management and upgrades are very simple and straightforward."
"It is easy to set up. You can do everything on the GUI. You don't need to trace cables. You don't need to connect to the switch. Everything is there, right in front of you."
"Cloud management, wireless infrastructure, and implementation are all valuable features."
"What I like best about Meraki is that I can change it from anywhere."
"The solution is easily scalable. There are not really any limits for the customer in terms of expanding if they need to."
"Meraki is a decent solution for a small company, and we use it in a pretty typical way. We need Teams and Zoom to work, and we need a high level of security because we want our business to remain confidential."
"The solution is easy to use and its stable."
"It can provide support for real-time applications, such as VoIP and Video Conferencing over wireless infrastructure."
"Some of the features I find valuable are the FlexConnect and overall it is a good global solution."
"Cisco Wireless is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it can be integrated into other solutions in a particular environment, including where there are wired and wireless connections."
"Good manageability, and stability."
"The tool's most valuable features are security, flexibility, user activity, and high bandwidth."
"The support is very good. Technical support is very helpful."
"The pricing should be made cheaper."
"The price could be better."
"If you want to do more specific stuff, it's a bit limited."
"There is room for improvement in terms of support and installation."
"I need a bit more time with it before criticizing the features."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing is very high in the Indian market."
"Improving third-party integration is key for Juniper Mist's next release."
"The licensing could be a bit better."
"The Meraki platform needs better on-premises management options."
"The product's coverage area could be expanded. It would help ensure better connectivity."
"I'd like better integration with security providers."
"It would be better if they enable full integration with Cisco's cloud-based network in the next release."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"There needs to be some work done on security because, with time, some viruses may emerge that one may not know about."
"Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN could improve by having more granularity in terms of the data displayed. However, I understand that with Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, you need to have a compromise point to what are the functions that you're going to provide to the users versus ease of use. More granularity in terms of the data and the things that you can do to the devices would be helpful. For example, when we wanted to make a change, restriction, or segregation within Palo Alto, we can go to the level of detail that we want. The amount of detail provided is amazing, it is very granular. However, it comes with much more difficulty, it requires a technical understanding of the environment compared to Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN."
"It's very scalable, but when you shift gears sometimes, you have to do more work than people anticipate."
"The solution doesn't have much coverage area."
"There is room for improvement regarding HA issues and Radius integration."
"Their software's really clunky."
"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 solution could improve by having more advanced features, such as AI that is able to do diagnosis on the network or detect incorrect configurations and is able to tell you what is the recommended practice. Additionally, it would be a benefit to have smart antennas that are able to track your movement, Wi-Fi 6 support, better transfer rates, low latency, stronger signals that can penetrate thick walls, and zero packet losses."
"The stability could improve, there are some issues. We were told the version of the software we are using on all of the controllers is best for Cisco IOS, but we might need to update our software, this might fix the stability issues we are experiencing."
"Cisco Wireless is expensive."
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 145 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, Ubiquiti Wireless, Mist AI and Cloud, Ruckus Wireless 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.