Meraki SD-WAN Reviews

I work for a carrier, and we consume, resell, and integrate Cisco products. I'm a product manager, and I have a couple of products that are built around Cisco Meraki's offerings. One of them is a managed business wifi solution, and the other one is an SD-WAN solution. I own both of these products. 

Meraki is really big in retail and education, and that's where we see a lot of use cases. It is a low-cost or entry product. It is not a sophisticated, complete solution. People who are very concerned about the total cost of ownership will look at a Meraki solution more. 

The deployment is a combination. The orchestration is on a public cloud, and then the customer locations are all premise-based Meraki devices.

They're known for their ease of use and ubiquitous management platform that covers everything. Meraki really excels in plug-and-play solutions. You just plug it up, and everything works. All of the components—the firewall/router, the switches, the access points, the cameras—work very nicely together, and they all can be managed from one platform. That is probably their biggest selling point. Everything comes in one ubiquitous package, and you don't have to manage different components from different platforms. You can see everything from one platform.

From the vice perspective, they just are not as robust as some of the other vendors. They have limitations in throughput and the number of circuits that they can support on a wide area network. Their higher-end security is all cloud-based. They have some capability with the premise-based solutions, but the higher ends are all cloud-based, and that's via Cisco Umbrella.

Their support can be better. They do not offer a lot of hands-on support for their products.

I have probably been using this solution for three years.

From the stability perspective, everybody is pretty much on the same level playing field. I don't really see anybody standing out more than anybody else. Meraki is a low-cost equipment provider, so they're not offering big metal devices that plug into racks and a data center. They're more along the lines of the hard plastic desktop type of units. They have the same meantime between failure as most other products, so it's difficult to put them above or below anybody else. They all are pretty much on the same level playing field.

Scalability is good as long as you're doing a simple task. If you're just deploying SD-WAN and you're not putting in cameras, wifi access points, and a lot of different components, scalability is really good. From that perspective, they do well. Their niche is retail and education, and both of these areas can be very large networks depending on the provider.

We do not have plans to increase its usage. They are really premise-based solutions that are managed from the network, and we are not staying with that same type of approach in our product lines. We are moving to a fully-integrated network approach to security, connectivity, and management.

I would rate them one out of five. They do not offer a lot of hands-on support for their products.

We use three or four other SD-WAN providers to offer the same type of product. We have VeloCloud, Fortinet, and Versa. The main differences are more capabilities, more functionality, better support, better value, and a better total cost of ownership.

Everything is plug-and-play. If you're using all Meraki components, it is very easy to deploy.

The deployment duration is very short. There are not a lot of design concerns. There is not a lot of configuration. Everything can be done over the air from a network-based platform. So, it is very easy and very fast to deploy.

We've created a lot of things internally to compare different vendors and different technologies. From a customer perspective, I don't really do ROIs for evaluating vendors, but I'm familiar with the ROI. It really varies. There are other vendors that are also considered low-cost that technically perform better than Meraki. So, from a comparison perspective, it's difficult to know if you've got a better ROI with one vendor versus another without really understanding what it is that you're trying to accomplish.

Some customers may put a high value on ease of management, ease of deployment, and ease of managing and monitoring. Meraki does a decent job at all of that, whereas other companies may put a higher value on the features and functionality, security, and other things that are inherent to other products. Therefore, it is difficult to put them into a single bucket or category. From a low-cost provider perspective, their ROI for a customer is probably in line with that category of vendors.

They have a baseline software license, and then they've got an SD-WAN software license, and then they've got an advanced security software license. 

They're low cost, and they'll provide any amount of flexibility that you want from a modeling perspective for payment. Typically, it's either annually or multi-year, but they are a lower-cost company. They're not the most expensive by far.

There is an additional cost of the equipment that doesn't tend to be high.

Meraki is known as a lower-end SD-WAN solution. It has limitations from the hardware and the software perspective. They've gotten better over the years, but they were always viewed as a low-cost or entry type of product. They don't do a lot of the more sophisticated features and functionality of some of the other SD-WAN providers.

From a customer perspective, it really depends on:

• What are they looking for?
• What are they concerned about?
• Do they have any other products?
• Are they using any other security mechanism and is it network-based or premise-based?

It is just about what fits into their network and what they're currently using.

I would advise having a good understanding of the physical requirements for the facility that it's being deployed. You should have a good understanding of what you need from a component perspective, such as extra switches or extra access points. That's probably the biggest thing. There are other products for which you may have to pay a little bit more, but they are going to be better performing, and they will give you better service. So, you need to understand, especially if you're going with a low-cost vendor, that you might end up having to pay more because you had to add more components to the solution.

I would put it a little bit over halfway. I would rate it a six out of 10. It is certainly a good product. They have a lot of basic features and functionality. They can provide a good solution, but you may end up having to pay more than what you anticipated to get everything that you want because they don't include as much as some of the other vendors.

We primarily use the access points and switches for remote locations for a client. We have 100 or more remote offices, and we connect those together to a data center in Florida.

We like that it is cloud-enabled.

The solution is easy to use. It's so simple to set up and connect the connection points. We don't require any static IPs or anything like that on our ISPs. It's very quick and easy.

It is stable and reliable.

The solution can scale so long as you are scaling Meraki products together. 

It offers a very good "single pane of glass," which helps with management and visibility.

I don't have any notes for improvement. 

Technical support could be more knowledgeable and responsive. 

You do have to pay for the solution in perpetuity. 

I've used the solution for six or seven years. 

The stability is pretty good. I'd rate it an eight or nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is very scalable as long as it is a Meraki-to-Meraki environment. 

I'd rate the scalability eight out of ten. 

Technical support isn't the best. They aren't as responsive as we would like. The quality of the techs needs to be better. They need to be more knowledgeable. 

Neutral

The solution is very simple to set up, and we don't need any static IPs from our ISPs. This simplifies things. 

I'd give the ease of setup a ten out of ten. 

Meraki's a subscription service. You "pay forever," and in that sense, it can be a little expensive. That said, I'd rate it seven out of ten in terms of affordability. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

Other than warning people that it is a subscription, this does offer a single pane of glass which makes it easy to manage if you have multiple sites.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

The solution has the ability to jump from one ISP to another with minimum downtime.

The speed at which we can change from one provider to another has been great.  

The added security has been useful. However, we are barely using all the capabilities of SD-WAN.

It's easy to set up. 

The solution is stable.

The scalability has been good.

The feature that we are interested in is working perfectly. It's a matter of cost and expenses that we may take some issue with.

We've used the solution for a while.

As far as we can tell, the stability's great. The speed is great. We didn't experiment with it that much to have the opportunity to really see any faults. We've just come in and tried to catch up with everything that was going on.

The solution can scale well. 

We plan to increase it as much as can once we feel comfortable with the features of the product.

We did not previously use a different product. We tried Meraki first.

It is very straightforward to set up. We have two firewalls connected to the device. We're using Meraki since we're a Meraki user, and it makes sense to start with what we have. Basically, we take it from there. We have all our sites on Meraki, so it's the basic starting point.

The licensing is very expensive. 

The fact that it does not recognize our cost from the previous licenses is a big drawback. The price covers the licensing and the box itself. 

We are looking at other options right now. 

We deal with a reseller. We have 58 different networks. However, none of them has a particular server. We're using it to interconnect. We're using it all over the state. 

I'd advise potential new users to understand the costs that are likely involved first. 

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

We mainly use Meraki SD-WAN for connecting sites.

The most valuable feature of Meraki SD-WAN is the Auto VPN.

Meraki SD-WAN could improve by adding wireless access time-scheduled and overall capabilities.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for approximately six years.

The price of Meraki SD-WAN could improve, it is expensive when compared to other solutions on the market, such as Aruba.

We have approximately 50 customers using this solution.

Meraki SD-WAN is connected to branches and the data center. You can also connect branches or connect remote users to their respective offices. It enables users working in hybrid environments, whether from the office or home, to access their applications on the cloud.

Firstly, the solution manages other market products on the same dashboard. It is very simple and can be managed in three clicks. Secondly, There are many device models on Meraki MX devices. Also, it has a license with variable duration from one year to five years.

The product supports small and medium business solutions. It could be improved to support more enterprise use cases.

The solution can support more security features like the Cisco firewall.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for three years.

The product’s stability is very perfect.

The solution’s scalability is awesome. You can scale it up.

We recommend this solution to small and medium-sized businesses.

The initial setup is simple and common.

I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

Meraki SD-WAN is a combination of two products: Firewall and router. When you compare these options with other vendors, you will not find the same as Meraki. Meraki is best for small and medium business solutions.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It's for enterprise networking. So some of the customers are from the BFSA domain, and some of the customers are from manufacturing. It's a distributed customer base.

Any customer looking for a single solution that can serve them for network security, which can serve them for the SD-Branch all branch networking. We use it for this purpose. It's used for a combination of SD-WAN and SD-Branch plus security.

Everything is under one umbrella. The Meraki dashboard is one of the valuable features which I use. I can control the devices across walls and across the landscape.

It's not difficult to set up the solution. 

The solution is stable.

It can scale well. 

The cloud area and the security area can be improved. Meraki has a limitation, especially on the cloud. If I deploy the services on the cloud and I want to make a site-to-site connection or maybe I have to do some sort of routing, inbound routing, it is not properly working with the Cisco Meraki. It needs to be matured a bit.

They need to offer proper integration of the security features. They talk about the next-gen technology, the next-gen UTM feature. It's not a complete security solution, however. 

I've used the solution for about five years now. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We can easily scale the solution. 

We are supporting multiple customers that use this solution. There are approximately 5,000 people using the access. 

We are well connected with the RR account manager. He is based out of Australia. Every time, whenever we have some sort of need, he is the go-to guy for us.

Positive

We use a variety of SD-WAN technologies. 

The solution is very easy to deploy.

How long it takes depends on the kind of site you are setting up. If I'm tiering the site, and have 20 users or 30 users and have a couple of links and the security postures are not very complex, maybe I can do the deployment in a week's time. 

I can do two or three cuts over a week if it is small. You can bifurcate. I don't have any ready-made answer as to how long it will take as every setup is different. 

We do look into ROI and show clients possible ROI if they decide to go with Meraki. 

The price of the solution varies. It depends on the customer. For most of the customer deployments, we tend to do either three or five years of licensing. Having a longer-term give us some discounting in terms compared to one year.

We are partners. 

We use the MX64 deployment, although it goes all the way up to 300.

I don't want to be Meraki biased, however, if anyone is looking for the kind of solution that can include the branch office or the network security or even a Cisco Umbrella kind of solution, Meraki is the right choice.

From an SD-WAN perspective, I would rate the solution seven out of ten. I'm just cutting down three numbers due to the lacking of cloud networking and the weaker security posture.

Our use cases are mostly in the financial sector. 

The classifying of the applications, for example, has been a very useful feature. It helps in contract service, in traffic shaping, and in controlling the balancing between the links that they have over the internet. They have the intention of DI, the direct internet access, as the agencies on the remote side have direct internet access to be able to consume some applications in the cloud.

The product does have a variety of features we can work with.

There's a good balance between 4G and LTE. There are backups to keep the connection going. The MPLS link we had, for example, is just for a backup in case one of the two links goes down.

We have had some problems doing the implementation. We had to open a case with Cisco. The deployment was solved with Cisco's tech help. 

In terms of the applications, the policies that we configured didn't work as expected. However, Cisco's tech also helped us deal with this as well. 

Meraki has a limitation in the number of links that it can work. For example, in Cisco, we can work with many, many links if you link with Viptela, however, in Meraki, we just get to work with two links or a maximum number of three links including the LAN link. It was a problem. When clients need many links and you have just two links it's a problem.

I've worked with the solution for a while. I've done POCs with five or six different clients.

Technical support is quite helpful in general.

I have worked for the last 15 years, more or less, with Cisco. For the last eight years, I have worked with Cisco and Aruba, especially with Cisco in data center technologies, in SDN technologies like ACI, like SD-Access, or SD-WAN, for example. I have worked in design as well. For example, in the design of data centers, in the designs of WAN networks, LAN networks, and Wi-Fi networks.

I have experience with Cisco Viptela, and Cisco Meraki with the MX series, which I have basically worked with within Cisco Meraki.

In wireless, I have worked in Cisco with the Cisco Ethernet, for example, and in Meraki as well, and I have worked with the MR series in the Cisco in Meraki.

We implemented, for example, Meraki in eight places in a banking environment. We implemented the MX series and we did approach the provisioning that has the solution to develop the implementation in many places. We implemented it in more than 2,000 places - wherever they have services.

We struggled a bit with the implementation, however, we did reach out to Cisco and they were able to help us get back on track.

Cisco technical support did end up helping us with the implementation, however, we mostly did it ourselves. 

I work in a company that is a partner of Cisco and we sell the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN solution.

We have implementations both on-premises and in the cloud. 

I'd rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We implemented Meraki SD-WAN to replace our traditional WAN infrastructure, particularly for our email and messaging system (referred to as MLSP).

We have successfully transitioned to SD-WAN. So, it's primarily used for connecting our remote sites.

I like it because it works. Moreover, the solution is pretty easy to configure.

Meraki SD-WAN had trouble prioritizing traffic for VoIP calls, specifically for Microsoft Teams. They faced challenges for sometime when you set up QoS on Meraki's access points. There are profiles available for different services, such as Microsoft Teams, which effectively put all the rules in place for you. During their SD-WAN deployment, these profiles were not accessible to them. It's possible that Meraki has since introduced them. Therefore, having profiles for different services would be beneficial.

Meraki SD-WAN could make the license cheaper; the licenses cost a fortune.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for a year. 

We've had a few minor things where it's gone down, but it has been stable most of the time.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Meraki SD-WAN is pretty easy to scale. You just buy more devices; it is easy.

I rate the solution’ scalability a ten out of ten. We have about 150 users using this solution.

The customer support has been very good. The Cisco account manager named, Luke Brennan was really very helpful. If you ring him, he'll answer, and he'll tell you what you need to know. They are good.

The initial setup was pretty simple. We were able to do it in a day.

We did have an integrator to help while setting up.

We've got one person in the team doing the maintenance, although we have somebody else who knows quite well that we do lean on external parties quite heavily, a company called Lixcel. Overall, we have a team of two people for maintenance. 

The solution is expensive. I rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.