We compared Meraki Dashboard and PRTG Network Monitor 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. PRTG Network Monitor customers like its user-centric approach, straightforward reporting, and customizability.
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. PRTG Network Monitor could improve its performance and resource efficiency. Other pain points include usability and cross-platform compatibility.
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. PRTG Network Monitor received mixed reviews for its customer service. Some users commended the support team’s prompt service, while others reported slow response times and noted the lack of remote session support.
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. PRTG Network Monitor’s setup isn’t considered to be overly complex. Deployment times may vary depending on the environment's complexity and device count.
Pricing: Opinions on Meraki Dashboard's pricing varied, with some users finding it pricey and others deeming it fair. PRTG Network Monitor is deemed reasonably priced and cheaper than its competitors.
ROI: Meraki Dashboard simplifies IT operations, and some users expect returns within a few years. Users said that PRTG Network Monitor has proven to save time and money through automation and proactive support.
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. PRTG Network Monitor is regarded as a simple, user-friendly, and cost-effective solution, but users would like to see improvements in performance, documentation, integration, and technical support.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"An excellent dashboard that is currently unique in covering both SD-WAN and SD-LAN with built-in security."
"The most valuable feature is their support, they get better every day."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"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."
"We greatly utilize the network because we can plug it into the DNS, VPN, or equipment. It's very good. Meraki Dashboard enhances wireless network management. We appreciate its flexibility, as it allows for easy suite configuration. We can handle everything on there when there's a policy or any other requirement."
"The most valuable feature is knowing the wireless and switch are healthy."
"Great visibility on the dashboard."
"What I found most valuable in Meraki Dashboard is that it's well-organized, easy to use, and practical."
"The product is simple and easy to implement."
"We like the alerting system, the SNMP monitoring and the customization of the bandwidth."
"The solution provides us with needed feedback on our IT infrastructure. It gives us really good quality of service when it comes to monitoring of available space and available resources. It allows us to preempt issues before they become a problem for the business."
"The remote probes are very useful. They allow us to provide a reference across different areas in the network. In trying to localize issues, that's very useful."
"The most valuable feature is the notifications. As long as you spend time and think about what and when you want to be notified, it's always accurate. It is always there. I find things out before my Internet provider."
"Stable solution for monitoring networks and bandwidth, with multiple functions and features such as NetFlow Collector, graphical monitoring, etc."
"Ease of set-up – it is quick and easy to add a probe and start collecting data from a device."
"The installation is not that complex."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Some features could be added."
"For instance, you should be able to see if something has been blocked by a firewall rule by looking at a live log of traffic moving through the device. It helps you troubleshoot issues and understand if your rules are working. You need to ensure the firewall is blocking the right things. That's unavailable in the Meraki Dashboard. You have to send the logs to a log server. We use SolarWinds locally, but it's not natively built into Meraki. We're also using Cisco ISA and another tool called Smoothwall."
"This solution can be quite complicated to configure and manage, unless you have a technical person with specific knowledge working on it."
"The initial setup is complex and can be made more straightforward."
"What needs improvement in Meraki Dashboard is its configuration. It'll also be better if the tool has more functionality, and that is what I'd like to see in its next release."
"The solution can be expensive."
"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."
"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."
"I wouldn't mind better categories for the sensors. When I go to add a new sensor for a new device, there are some categories in there already, and they can be filtered out, but there's quite a large pool of sensors... When I want to go in and find something quite specific, I have got to scroll down and scroll down to find what I'm actually looking for,"
"Needs ability to monitor standard notification time (notify after X time)."
"PRTG access works best from the web GUI. There are dedicated apps on Windows/Android/iOS, but they are slow and don’t work as well as the web GUI."
"PRTG's application monitoring sensor is not strong."
"I would like to see them take their graphing tools and convert them into a collector so that we can point telemetry to them"
"We're using more cloud services now. It would be useful to be able to get information back from these cloud services in detail, and display any issues within PRTG for the rest of our systems."
"It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good."
"The inventory of the device should be improved."
Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews while PRTG Network Monitor is ranked 5th in Network Monitoring Software with 96 reviews. Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6, while PRTG Network Monitor 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 PRTG Network Monitor writes "It's an all-in-one solution, and net flow is included in the licensing ". Meraki Dashboard is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud and Nagios XI, whereas PRTG Network Monitor is most compared with Zabbix, Centreon, Nagios XI, SolarWinds NPM and ManageEngine OpManager. See our Meraki Dashboard vs. PRTG Network Monitor report.
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