Compare Meraki MS Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches
 | Phillip Peerman Supervisor of IT Infrastructure & Cybersecurity at a tech consulting company |
 | Kevin Westcott Network Delivery Architect at a tech services company |
Find out what your peers are saying about Meraki MS Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches and other solutions. Updated: March 2021.
465,339 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:
"This is a sophisticated product with easy configuration that can save time and effort."
"This is an OK solution for small to medium-sized businesses with no IT staff."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the interface because it is very simple and easy to learn, even for somebody who hasn't seen it before."
"The interface is great. It's easy to understand for the customer."
"The management is cloud-based so you do not have to be on-premises to work with it."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You only need two people for deployment and maintenance."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"The product provides a single-pane-of-glass in for management of wireless, security, and switching from multiple devices."
"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."
"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 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."
"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 most valuable feature is definitely the fully functional IGMP snooping and querier, out-of-the-box, that the switch provides. With most if not all switches that we've worked with previously, at a minimum you have to enable a couple of different options... It's really a good feature to have that stuff enabled and fully functional out-of-the-box so that [AV techs] don't have to worry about configuring any of that stuff."
"The big winner for NETGEAR is their modular switch: the 96X version. That is something that you don't see in the market anywhere else, except for Cisco who has it at a high level for a high expense. The ability to customize your own switch with their modules is a big plus for what we do in the market right now. Instead of having to piece together standardized switches, trying to make something work, or fitting the design into the mold, the modular switches are aware that you can make a mark in the industry because you purchased one switch and design with different modules added and removed later on for functionality."
Cons
"The pricing needs to be more competitive with other products on the market."
"This product depends on a cloud connection in order to function. If you have an unstable internet connection or other connectivity issues the product will not function as expected."
"This solution is too simple for some cases, and there should be more configuration options."
"Sometimes there's a problem with the pricing model they use. They should work to fix this."
"There is not much training available for this solution."
"The solution could be simplified a bit."
"It could be easier to use and easier to implement."
"Communication of compliance risk is awkward at best and threatening at worst. It needs to be addressed."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"One thing I have asked for, something that NETGEAR lacks that I would love to see — and from what I understand it's in the works — is a REST API to programmatically interface with multiple switches. That would be a great feature."
"They need to continue moving forward with their consulting in the AV realm to find out what is needed. They are some differences in the M4300 line and the larger M4500 line right now. They could produce a 1 Gigabit variety that could be a bit cheaper that might fit into that, since the majority of the projects that we see are still in that 1 Gigabit bandwidth threshold. Along with that, a great option would be if it would provide the same modular ability on a lower level."
"This product is more than the competition, but you get what you pay for."
"With the solution that we currently have, I think it costs about 1,200 pounds a year. They bill on a yearly basis."
"This is not a cheap solution."
"The DNA subscription is a three-year minimum term."
"The pricing is high and it is where we get the most pushback from customers."
"We paid for our switches outright, at a cost of between $15,000 USD and $18,000 USD."
"Its price is definitely competitive."
"Meraki is a little bit expensive, but when you compare the pricing with others, Meraki is a good option."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"The price-to-performance of the solution is very good. You get very performance for a low cost per port. Compared to standard AV switching, NETGEAR is probably the best value out there."
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Ethernet Switches solutions are best for your needs.
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Top Answer: My favorite aspect of Meraki MS switches is the central cloud management implementation. Meraki doesn’t just add cloud management per device you can make changes to multiple ports across all switched… more »
Top Answer: The ease of use of these switches is very good because of the Cisco CLI. If you are familiar with CLI, then you can configure the switch that way. It also has a relatively straightforward web… more »
Top Answer: The price to performance of the switches is excellent. The price point of these switches is great compared to big brands, like Cisco or Extreme Networks, with approximately the same functionality… more »
Top Answer: I have noticed one thing where we have taken up the multicast group interval time. We have needed to increase that setting. What we found happening were streams would stop until they were… more »
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MS220, MS320, MS420
NETGEAR Insight Managed Switches, NETGEAR GC Series, NETGEAR M Series
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.
Learn more about Meraki MS Switches
Learn more about NETGEAR Switches
Cisco Live Milan, Hyatt
Blaze Networks
Computer Software Company17%
Comms Service Provider17%
Healthcare Company8%
Printing Company8%
Comms Service Provider25%
Computer Software Company21%
Government5%
Construction Company4%
Aerospace/Defense Firm11%
Government11%
Agriculture11%
University11%
Comms Service Provider30%
Computer Software Company15%
Manufacturing Company6%
Government5%
Small Business66%
Midsize Enterprise22%
Large Enterprise13%
Small Business60%
Midsize Enterprise20%
Large Enterprise20%
Find out what your peers are saying about Meraki MS Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches and other solutions. Updated: March 2021.
465,339 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Meraki MS Switches is ranked 6th in Ethernet Switches with 30 reviews while NETGEAR Switches is ranked 2nd in Ethernet Switches with 12 reviews. Meraki MS Switches is rated 8.4, while NETGEAR Switches is rated 8.8. 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, Fortinet FortiSwitch - Secure Access, MikroTik Routers and Switches and Arista Networks Platform, whereas NETGEAR Switches is most compared with Cisco Ethernet Switches, Ubiquiti UniFi Switches, Cisco Linksys Ethernet Switches, D-Link Ethernet Switches and Juniper Ethernet Switches. See our Meraki MS Switches vs. NETGEAR Switches report.
See our list of best Ethernet Switches vendors.
We monitor all Ethernet Switches 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.