We performed a comparison between Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN and Cisco Wireless based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: While Cisco users across the board feel that both products are very expensive and provide very good customer service and support, users reported a better ROI from Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN.
"The solution is pretty generic and easy to use."
"Overall, we've been very pleased with the performance."
"The most valuable feature of Juniper Mist is the Virtual Network Assistant, powered by artificial intelligence."
"With Mist, every Wednesday they roll out new features."
"The solution is very secure."
"You can easily monitor, manage, and cover all your IT equipment."
"Juniper Mist offers valuable features like comprehensive network insight, granular policy control, fast device setup, strong security, and efficient SSL traffic management."
"It provides private network access, helping us protect our company’s devices."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is the single pane of glass management and reliability."
"The most valuable feature is that the solution is friendly to manage."
"The settings of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN can be very granular. You can lock down and block devices with the controls. For example, we have four different wireless settings, such as guest, employee, security, and backup. For example, the settings for the employees, if they use laptops, they're required to have certain settings, such as an antivirus installed. If they do not then Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN will not let them connect. This is very good protection because the network works on the bringing your own device(BYOD) principle. It's a BYOD environment now, and you also don't want them to bring infection into the environment because these people are connecting to the LAN via wireless connections. We have to be careful because we're managing it, we have to be very strict with regards to the rules and policies."
"It is easy to manage and configure. The dashboard of Meraki is easy to use."
"The most amazing part is that their Access Points have the ability to connect to multiple conference devices at different times, and it shows you the very in-depth Wi-Fi analytics through their dashboard."
"The user interface is very simple and easy to use — our customers are very satisfied."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the application visibility, which is one of the main features."
"It is easy to set up. You can do everything on the GUI. You don't need to trace cables. You don't need to connect to the switch. Everything is there, right in front of you."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it can be integrated into other solutions in a particular environment, including where there are wired and wireless connections."
"This is a very stable solution that solves complex issues."
"Stable and scalable with good technical support."
"Some of the valuable features of this solution are security, the controller is simple to configure, devices are easy to install, and we use the software to administrate all the APs."
"The integration with Cisco ISE is good, and together we use them to provide services."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It gave us the ability to view wireless traffic, unwanted devices on the network, and how they affected overall network performance."
"The most valuable feature is the coverage."
"Improving third-party integration is key for Juniper Mist's next release."
"The pricing is very high in the Indian market."
"It would be helpful to have even stronger security features to help protect against interference from other nearby access points that aren't part of our network."
"The solution is expensive."
"They should include SD-WAN features to it."
"Enrolling into the tool is a tedious process."
"If you want to do more specific stuff, it's a bit limited."
"The product should include adaptive Wi-Fi to show a more accurate location."
"Some of their first level support staff does not seem to be well-versed in the solution, so support for Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN needs improvement."
"The biggest pain point is that they limit you through firewall throughput. I understand why they do it, but that really grates me. For instance, for 450 Mbps throughput, you're looking at £800 for a router, whereas if you look at the one gig connection, for some of us are lucky enough to have a gig connection, you could almost be spending £3,000 for the option to have one gig connectivity. That's one of the pain points I've got. I don't mind paying for throughput, but I should at least have the option to be able to update that throughput, maybe through extra licensing or something else. It is crazy expensive to jump through to the next one."
"The customization needs to be improved because it's pretty locked down."
"It is super expensive for what you get. I just wish it was less expensive."
"They could also add some more controls for guest access. For example, when you have a captive portal, it would be nice to limit the amount of time users can stay connected per day. Right now, you can only configure the splash frequency. And you can set the connection for one hour, but you have to use the billing feature."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"We would like the solution to work on the pricing of the solution. It would be ideal if it could bring the overall costs down."
"In the future, I would like to see IP telephony in Saudi Arabia."
"Cisco's architecture is becoming complex."
"Controllers could be improved."
"There should be an option for a wireless bridge that can be used to join two access points."
"For all products on the market, the availability of the products may not be ideal. We're waiting on a lot of products simply due to the fact that there's a material shortage. We've ordered products and have had to wait three or four months for anything to get delivered. This is not just Cisco. It's a problem on the market for all components which include semiconductors."
"The price could be improved."
"The bind configuration between a physical port and an IP address is missing."
"There's a delay in equipment that comes to Columbia, to our country, and that lasts almost six months."
"The price could be better."
More Juniper Mist Wireless Access Points Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is ranked 4th in Wireless LAN with 115 reviews while Cisco Wireless is ranked 2nd in Wireless LAN with 146 reviews. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is rated 8.2, while Cisco Wireless is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN writes "Offers good mobility, stability and scalability ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Wireless writes "Allows us to deploy a wide range of wireless products with stable WiFi". Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti Wireless, Mist AI and Cloud and Huawei Wireless, whereas Cisco Wireless is most compared with Aruba Wireless, Ruckus Wireless, Ubiquiti WLAN, Mist AI and Cloud and Omada Access Points. See our Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN vs. Cisco Wireless report.
See our list of best Wireless LAN vendors.
We monitor all Wireless LAN 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.
Cisco Wireless is very robust, very rugged, and can handle indoor and outdoor coverage extremely well. We found it to be very reliable and to consistently run very efficiently. Cisco Wireless helped us get more network access to more people wirelessly across some very large spaces.
It is expensive, though. The Cisco Wireless portal, like many Cisco products, can be very complex. The flexibility of the controllers needs fixing and Cisco Wireless requires a bit of tweaking to get the stability right. We would also like to see the reporting improved - this would help make troubleshooting easier.
Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is very user-friendly. You don’t have to be a wireless engineer to set it up. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is cloud-based, which is very convenient as you don’t have to have a physical controller, saving valuable space, power, and redundancy. This solution offers advanced configurations that are a great fit for small to medium-sized businesses that can’t employ an advanced tech team. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is high-performance, stable, scalable, and very easy to deploy, and offers a dashboard that makes managing the solution very easy.
Some of the built-in capabilities and filtering with Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN needs to be made easier to use. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN needs to better identify devices, and the TAC reading and interpretation capabilities are not always accurate. There are also some processing limitations when you have multiple SSIDs.
Conclusion
As these are both Cisco products, they offer brand recognition you can trust, great quality, and good durability.
We found that Cisco Wireless offered slightly better access points and improved coverage, allowing the creation of better networks. Cisco Wireless takes a one-time payment for the hardware, and then annual payments. If you employ Cisco’s knowledgeable team members, this will be a good fit for you.
The huge selling point for Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is its ease of use. You don’t need to have a lot of knowledge to deploy or manage processes, which makes this a great product for smaller businesses with a less tech-savvy team.
The standard answer to such a question is: it depends.
The pricing for both solutions is very similar: per-AP, Meraki is more expensive than Cisco Wireless. Cisco APs are cheaper, but the controller raises the solution price to be almost equal to Meraki.
Meraki is subscription-based and requires constant internet access to manage the system. If the annual license expires, the APs will work, but you can't manage them or read reports of the Meraki portal.
Cisco Wireless is a one-time payment for the hardware with annual support payments. if you have a small office with only a few APs needed, you can use the Cisco Mobility Express Controller (which uses one of the APs or a Catalyst Switch as the controller) but that has a limit of 100 APs.