We performed a comparison between Cisco DNA Center and Meraki Dashboard based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"It is a stable solution."
"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
"The most valuable features of Cisco DNA Center are wireless assurance and visibility."
"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."
"Cisco VXLAN is a protocol that has been around for some time, but the practical implementation and operational capability of Cisco DNA Center bring it to life."
"The automation features are significant, reducing configuration time. This means outstanding functionality. By deploying the controller automatically, the rest becomes automated"
"Cisco DNA Center provides operational support, compliance support, security vulnerability detection, and automatic scheduling."
"What's most valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the ability to manage any Cisco infrastructure and device through it. Setup was straightforward."
"The feature I find most valuable is the single pane of glass where you can configure a monitor view, all from one dashboard. For example, on the wireless side, you can configure it under the configuration panel, and then view statistics like location analytics, user analytics, etc."
"The product can scale if you need it to."
"I would say the ease of use is the most valuable feature. It's very easy to set up and get up and running."
"What I found most valuable in the Meraki Dashboard is straight monitoring of the different devices, as well as the ability to easily set up VPNs, for example, both Meraki client VPNs and non-Meraki VPNs for different organizations that work with my company. I also like that the tool is a really good firewall."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"What I found most valuable in Meraki Dashboard is that it's well-organized, easy to use, and practical."
"Scalability is one of Meraki Dashboard's strongest features. We have thousands of users if we're counting the end-users on our clients' network, but we have hundreds of clients."
"It is a reliable product. It provides a lot of information that is easy to read."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Cisco could improve the security side of their solutions."
"We encountered issues with their response times, which had a big impact on our workflow."
"An area for improvement in Cisco DNA Center is the latency in data correlation. For example, sometimes, when an issue happens, and I check the logs, I can't find the corresponding log. There's a delay in log replication, so this is what needs improvement in Cisco DNA Center. Reporting in Cisco DNA Center could also be improved because it only has a few templates, and you can't customize it based on your requirements. There aren't many options available in Cisco DNA Center regarding reporting, versus Cisco Prime, which has excellent features for different levels of detailed reports. I'd like to see real-time data replication in the next release of Cisco DNA Center, similar to what's done in Meraki. Data in Meraki is real-time with no delay, so data is immediately replicated in the cloud. Currently, there's a lag in Cisco DNA Center, and addressing that lag is the enhancement I'd like to see in Cisco DNA Center. The solution also needs to be more user-friendly."
"Requires more focus on the digital side of things."
"What I want to see in Cisco DNA Center in the future is more support for other platforms so that you can manage third-party products, such as Fortinet."
"Integration with analytic tools and API integrations would be ideal."
"The network, data center, and SD-WAN are all being treated as different services, but I would like to have only one solution to manage all of them."
"The product has many features that do not work properly."
"I am concerned about the fact that once your licensing expires the devices stop working and become a brick."
"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."
"The coverage has been an issue for us."
"It's a very complex system. Customers have told me that sometimes there are lots of advanced features that are available and that you can change in the dashboard, but sometimes it's very hard to know what they are."
"The downside to the simplicity is that you can't get as granular as you could with the Cisco APs."
"They could offer API functionality for Meraki Dashboard. It will help us develop software immediately using available solutions."
"Not a lot of training is available."
"What we would like from the IT perspective is a lot more granular control, more visibility into the packets, into the routing, and things of that nature."
Cisco DNA Center is ranked 25th in Network Monitoring Software with 37 reviews while Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews. Cisco DNA Center is rated 7.8, while Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco DNA Center writes "Practical implementation of VXLAN is good and provides centralized control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". Cisco DNA Center is most compared with Cisco Prime, Aruba Airwave, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, Huawei eSight and HPE Intelligent Management Center, whereas Meraki Dashboard is most compared with SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud, Zabbix and Cisco Secure Network Analytics. See our Cisco DNA Center vs. Meraki Dashboard report.
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