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."
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are that it's easy to use and technically very complete. I can configure, do advanced troubleshooting in the dashboard, and reboot access points remotely."
"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."
"It is a reliable product. It provides a lot of information that is easy to read."
"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."
"The ability to view the entire project stack, including the camera, features, and routers, which I believe are the most important or relevant components."
"Easy to configure with great troubleshooting feature."
"The ability of the product to perform with simplicity of deployment make it a valuable solution."
"Meraki dashboard deserves an Oscar."
"It allows us to directly add individual VMs independently."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The up-to-date graphs and the history are very good."
"We have asked questions of their technical support and they have a very good response time."
"PRTG has improved our visibility and response time to issues related to remote sites."
"I would boldly say that this is the most scalable network monitoring tool that I know of"
"The initial setup is very simple."
"The product is easy to use and the web interface is fantastic."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"The tool is useful for managing devices and monitoring their current state, but it falls short in troubleshooting network issues, particularly with access points. It does not provide a complete understanding of the root causes of the issues. As a result, network engineers have had to use additional tools to complement it and conduct assessments. The only way to improve the tool would be to enhance its capability to identify and resolve network issues effectively."
"I think this product could be improved with a CLI for more directives."
"The one issue that we have had is that the VPN tunnel would go down unless you worked out with the ISP that you would be using a static IP address on the WAN interface."
"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."
"Meraki Dashboard could improve the user interface by making it more user-friendly. The configuring can at times be difficult."
"You can't really clone or replicate a device, that sort of feature would be useful. You can clone the site but you cannot clone the device."
"We would like to be able to test the health of WAN connections."
"One area that could use improvement in the Meraki Dashboard is user-friendliness when navigating to port configurations."
"We would like to monitor certain aspects of the user experience. We should be able to analyze the cause of end user experience, bad or good, so we can do some research and development on our own."
"PRTG Network Monitor needs to show bandwidth utilization in proper graphs. It isn't easy to learn."
"The product could be improved by being cross-platform friendly."
"We would like more cloud native sensors for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc. A lot of businesses are moving in that direction, so having something where we can pull performance stats out of these cloud services would be great for us."
"The free version only gives us 100 free sensors to use. It would be nice if there was double that."
"The technical support service should be improved."
"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,"
"PRTG Network Monitor is okay to use, but you'll need some time to analyze the data. If it can automatically locate or identify the problem area, it would be more helpful to users."
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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 Observium, whereas PRTG Network Monitor is most compared with Zabbix, Centreon, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios XI and ManageEngine OpManager. See our Meraki Dashboard vs. PRTG Network Monitor report.
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