We compared Meraki Dashboard and SolarWinds NPM 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. SolarWinds NPM is commended for its adaptability and extensive network surveillance functionalities.
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. SolarWinds NPM needs improvement in edge computing capabilities and data reporting. Users also said the performance could be better and that they would like to see expanded IPAM functionality.
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. While some customers described SolarWinds support as helpful and responsive, others reported delayed responses.
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. Some users said SolarWinds NPM was straightforward to set up, while others perceived it as complex.
Pricing: Opinions on Meraki Dashboard's pricing varied, with some users finding it pricey and others deeming it fair. The cost of SolarWinds NPM varies depending on the customer’s size and requirements. Some users find it costly.
ROI: Meraki Dashboard simplifies IT operations, and some users expect returns within a few years. Some users reported immediate benefits from using SolarWinds NPM in terms of security and business outcomes, while others have not.
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. SolarWinds NPM is a customizable solution that’s easy to deploy and features comprehensive network monitoring capabilities. However, some users consider it costly and voiced concerns about technical support and user experience.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"Easy to configure with great troubleshooting feature."
"It's really user-friendly."
"The dashboard itself is very simplified and easy to navigate."
"Meraki Dashboard does not require a lot of maintenance. Cisco tells communicates through the Meraki Dashboard web client, it will automatically send updates to the equipment. They will send you an email on what day the updates will take place. If you want to proceed, you can click on accept, or you can decline them and schedule the updates at another time."
"I like that Meraki Dashboard is a user-friendly product."
"The initial setup process is quite simple."
"We have found the client dashboard to be very simple to use, especially in our Meraki environment."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use and a single-pane-of-glass that allows us to identify issues across the entire network from one dashboard."
"The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
"Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"SolarWinds is reasonably priced."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers."
"SolarWinds dashboard is very fast. Also, their interface is very good, it looks very user-friendly. The product allows me to see a summary of the network being monitored at a glance."
"It combines and presents information from many different sources, giving a corporate-wide vision on a single pane of glass."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"This solution can be quite complicated to configure and manage, unless you have a technical person with specific knowledge working on it."
"The tool needs to incorporate more integration platforms. Integrating technical support features directly into the dashboard would be highly beneficial. This would allow technicians to troubleshoot issues more efficiently."
"If I am a user and I have a seat on the fourth floor, if I move across the building, the system should be able to track me and should be able to figure out my whereabouts or my position within the building if I'm connected to the wireless. That would make the administrator's life easier in terms of reachability."
"One area that could use improvement in the Meraki Dashboard is user-friendliness when navigating to port configurations."
"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."
"They could offer API functionality for Meraki Dashboard. It will help us develop software immediately using available solutions."
"Lacks an alert notification when there are IP or DNS issues."
"The only real caveat that we have or that I have an issue with is when I go on vacation, it's a little hard for me to go and modify alerts so that I don't get alerted about things when I'm on vacation."
"The only thing that can be improved is to continually add to the existing capabilities of the product."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve the graphics of the interface and more customized reporting."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"Sometimes there are issues when upgrading to a new version of the product."
"Scalability is a bit tricky because it requires more gateways in order to get the performance you may need. It also requires a lot of licensing."
"The dashboards for this solution could be improved. We would like to divide the dashboards to give a clear view to our management team to show what we have and what deficiencies exist in our network."
"My team has had a lot of issues with support."
Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews while SolarWinds NPM is ranked 4th in Network Monitoring Software with 147 reviews. Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6, while SolarWinds NPM is rated 8.2. 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 SolarWinds NPM writes "High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface". Meraki Dashboard is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud, Zabbix and Cisco Secure Network Analytics, whereas SolarWinds NPM is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, ManageEngine OpManager, ThousandEyes and OpsRamp. See our Meraki Dashboard vs. SolarWinds NPM report.
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