Compare Meraki MS Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches
Meraki MS Switches is ranked 3rd in Ethernet Switches with 11 reviews while NETGEAR Switches is ranked 2nd in Ethernet Switches with 14 reviews. Meraki MS Switches is rated 7.8, while NETGEAR Switches is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Meraki MS Switches writes "Pushing out policies from a single location is an easy way of leveraging utilities and resources ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NETGEAR Switches writes "You can stack different models of switches which makes the scalability great". Meraki MS Switches is most compared with Aruba Switches, HPE Ethernet Switches and Fortinet FortiSwitch - Secure Access, whereas NETGEAR Switches is most compared with Cisco Ethernet Switches, D-Link Ethernet Switches and Cisco Linksys Ethernet Switches. See our Meraki MS Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches report.
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 Find out what your peers are saying about Meraki MS Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches and other solutions. Updated: January 2020. 391,616 professionals have used our research since 2012. | |||||
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros | |
The solution's most valuable aspect is the ease of stacking. The configuration on the MS Switches is very good, as well as its ability to assign the LANs. The technical support is very good. They offer some of the best support on the market. The most valuable features are the cloud management, the monitoring, and the visibility available on the report's facts on the cloud controller. The product provides a single-pane-of-glass in for management of wireless, security, and switching from multiple devices. The solution has been very stable so far. The initial setup is straightforward. You only need two people for deployment and maintenance. The management is cloud-based so you do not have to be on-premises to work with it. The interface is great. It's easy to understand for the customer. | Since it has a web interface, it is easy to set up. You don't have to take three years of training somewhere for a lot of money. The ability to mix and match is invaluable. So, we didn't have to run massive super extensive switches in the data closets where it wasn't necessary. Being able to manage it all from one place, as all your network configuration settings went live across your entire building from one management console was really handy. You are not limited in terms of stacking ports, and especially, if you're using the 96X as a core switch, the scalability, I could see this being very large. If you're using a type of a hybrid topology with a core switch going out to multiple switch stacks, or something like that, I could see the scalability of this being very good, especially considering the kind of backplane switching capacity on the 96X. The cloud management has just been huge for us. We have 80 clients and they all have switches... With the cloud-managed Insight ones... we know more information without having to do complicated SNMP traps. We get nice emails, we get a web interface, and we're not having to wait for our RMM tools to get SNMP traffic to notify us. We don't have to do complicated configurations. With this, you literally just log in to a website, see all your clients, all your NETGEAR switches, and you can manage them all right there: the VLANs, powering on and off individual ports, rebooting the whole device, the firmware updates. Everything can be done remotely... The remote management tools are fantastic. The combination of the webpage as well as the app makes life so much easier. I don't need to go and visit sites to do upgrades or any sorts of changes. The firmware can all be deployed remotely. I can see the traffic on each of the switch ports remotely as well, so I can see if we've got problems, down to an individual port. It's very granular. It's nice, if there is an issue, to be able to go in through the remote. The fact that the remote doesn't require a static IP... is nice. They initiate the contact to the outside world, without requiring a static to get in. The most valuable feature to me is the modular side of things, being able to replace a module and a transceiver at our beck and call. If something goes down, or a piece of equipment is broken, I don't have to replace the whole switch. I can just replace the part that's broken or the part that is no longer working. I can get them back up and working within a matter of minutes, versus having to replace everything and reprogram everything. It's a huge time-saver. |
Cons | |
The solution needs to improve its ability to back up the auto-configuration. The solution needs to improve its scalability. The quote-building process is challenging and it needs to be simplified. Communication of compliance risk is awkward at best and threatening at worst. It needs to be addressed. It could be easier to use and easier to implement. The solution could be simplified a bit. There is not much training available for this solution. Sometimes there's a problem with the pricing model they use. They should work to fix this. | The ‘how-to’ guides could do with some improvements. We got in trouble following the stacking and Dante set-up guides. If these would have been accurate, we would not have lost three days. I would like an email notification in case of errors or failures. If it was possible for the switch to email out an error log or notification note, especially in cases where we have the switches offsite (on the other side of town), then if something was to go wrong, it would be great to know about it before our client goes to use it for a big event, and it doesn't work. While I know that it does do SNMP, which is sort of standard, in the AV world, that is not always an option for us. We are usually running our own little network box and don't always have access to an SNMP server. We may just have simple Internet access or something similar. The IGMP specifics of the web management console could use a bit of clarification. I'd like to see a little bit of slowdown on the firmware updates. They've been doing a lot of them. I don't know if that's just because it's such a new product line, but the firmware updates have been a little annoying because they've been coming once a week. For a switch, that's a little extreme. It's worked for the most part, but we've had to power cycle a few devices. We've had to ask customers to manually power cycle them with the power cord, after some of the firmware updates. Their updating needs a little improvement. My one issue with it is that not all the features of the switch can currently be managed via the portal. For some of the more advanced features, you still have to configure the switch. There are some design issues on which they really missed the boat. The problem has to do with rack mounting them because the lights and jacks should all be on the front, and the power on the back. The way they did it makes it really difficult to use them in a rack environment, because when the lights are on the opposite side of the jacks... you usually can't see the back side of a rack. You can't get back there to see, so it's just crazy. When the power does go out, or if we do a soft shutdown, some of the transceivers or the monitor don't recognize when it turns back on, so I have to physically unplug it and plug it back in and then it works. We're working with NETGEAR's engineers to figure out why that's happening. |
Pricing and Cost Advice | |
The DNA subscription is a three-year minimum term. This is not a cheap solution. With the solution that we currently have, I think it costs about 1,200 pounds a year. They bill on a yearly basis. This product is more than the competition, but you get what you pay for. | For its price, it scales well. The pricing is very good for 10GbE switches and you get a lot of throughput. It is about 60 percent of the costs of other switches from competitive manufacturers, which is really good. It was an initial, single purchase for us. For the three switches, because I had the 96X and the two 48 port single gigabyte ones, then all the cards, etc. The total price on it, which may be a little on the low side, for the client was around $16,000 or $17,000. In terms of the NETGEAR stuff, there weren't any surprises. The costs were definitely fair, especially considering what we were replacing. For the equivalent performance from a non-AV over IP solution, it would have been easily been in the $40,000 range. Comparing it to standard AV video switching, the price was very good, especially considering now they can add-on without any massive additional costs. For the price, they're good. If you look at Ubiquity switches (which have cloud features too) or even the regular NETGEAR GS switches, these are still price-competitive and come with the cloud features, which is just amazing. I sold someone a SonicWall and they had to redo their subscription every year. It was a $300 or $400 subscription they had to pay every year... With NETGEAR... it's only a $10 or $20 subscription per device for the whole year... and you have your license and you have all your support. They're good value. They're good entry-level switches. I know Cisco generally has a lot more capability. But, for an organization this size, we don't need that. So they're good value for the cost and what we need. NETGEAR's new product is definitely more expensive than their standard product line. It's a new product line for them, so I'm hoping with the maturity of the product that those costs will come down. The standard product line is considerably cheaper. |
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Ranking  | |
Views 3,147 Comparisons 2,781 Reviews 10 Average Words per Review 549 Avg. Rating 7.8 | Views 10,346 Comparisons 7,425 Reviews 10 Average Words per Review 1,947 Avg. Rating 8.3 |
Top Comparisons | |
 Compared 31% of the time.  Compared 13% of the time.  Compared 10% of the time. |  Compared 39% of the time.  Compared 21% of the time. Compared 10% of the time. |
Also Known As | |
| MS220, MS320, MS420 | NETGEAR Insight Managed Switches, NETGEAR GC Series, NETGEAR M Series |
Learn | |
| Cisco | Netgear |
Overview | |
| The Cisco Meraki MS brings the benefits of the cloud to networks of all sizes: simplified management, reduced complexity, network wide visibility and control, with lower operational cost for campus and branch deployments. Cisco Meraki access switching is available in both Layer 2 and powerful Layer 3 models. Mission-critical features like deep, Layer 7 application visibility, network topology, virtual stacking, QoS for business critical applications, 802.1X access control, and more are present in all models. | NETGEAR Ethernet Switches, branded as NETGEAR ProSafe Switches, comes in all shapes and sizes, so you are sure to find the right solution to fit your business requirements. If you're a small to medium sized company, you'll have three switching options NETGEAR Unmanaged, Plus, and Smart Switch solutions. If you're managing a large enterprise network or a campus network, then NETGEAR Fully Managed Infrastructures is the solution for you. All the NETGEAR Ethernet Switches and solutions are innovative, easy to install and use, reliable, and very cost-effective. |
Offer | |
Learn more about Meraki MS Switches | Learn more about NETGEAR Switches |
Sample Customers | |
| Cisco Live Milan, Hyatt | Blaze Networks |
Top Industries | |
Software R&D Company27% Comms Service Provider15% Government8% Real Estate/Law Firm7% | Agriculture14% University14% Media Company14% Manufacturing Company14% Software R&D Company22% Comms Service Provider14% Manufacturing Company11% Media Company9% |
Find out what your peers are saying about Meraki MS Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches and other solutions. Updated: January 2020.
391,616 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See also Meraki MS Switches Reviews, NETGEAR Switches Reviews, and our list of Best Ethernet Switches Companies.
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