We compared Centreon and Meraki Dashboard across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Centreon features a user-friendly interface with useful options for customization and manual configuration. Users like the solution’s flexible dashboards and the ability to create plugins. 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.
Room for Improvement: Some Centreon users requested better documentation and more flexibility to customize reporting. Other areas for improvement include auto-scanning efficiency and integration. 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.
Service and Support: Centreon is highly regarded for its prompt and knowledgeable customer service that offers support in multiple languages. However, some customers feel that the lower levels of support are inadequate. 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.
Ease of Deployment: Centreon's initial setup is described as time-consuming and complex. The deployment varies in duration depending on the IT infrastructure. Users said Meraki Dashboard was effortless and intuitive to set up, noting that features like templates and configuration cloning saved time during deployment.
Pricing: Centreon's cost depends on the company's size. It is affordable and suitable for small companies, but it can be costly to scale up. Opinions on Meraki Dashboard's pricing varied, with some users finding it pricey and others deeming it fair.
ROI: Centreon delivers value by helping users identify and resolve critical issues fasters, which could yield large savings. Meraki Dashboard simplifies IT operations, and some users expect returns within a few years.
Comparison Results: Centreon is a flexible solution offering a range of customization options. The solution has earned high marks for support and affordability. At the same time, users say the setup can be complicated and time-consuming. Others said that auto-scanning and integration have room for improvement. 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.
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."
"You can concentrate and orchestrate several other solutions from other vendors. You can consolidate those solutions all in one place, then maintain and monitor from that single point. This creates ease of use. It is a very powerful solution from this point of view."
"The downtimes feature is helpful. If the ISP is doing some maintenance on its network, we have the option to put downtime on the devices or the services, so we won't get any false alarms."
"I really like the filtering capabilities of it. You can easily tell what's critical next to what's okay, the state of the services. It's very easy to get the whole picture quickly."
"Predetermined templates allow for simple and fast service monitoring configuration."
"We use the remote server functionality on some customer sites, because you can see an independent view and are not dependent on a single connection. If you have branch offices or bigger office outside your headquarters, you can use remote servers because if the connection is broken or disrupted, then remote server will obtain a view of your environment and server availability. This is a good point against using other solutions. Because with other solutions, you don't have this feature. Then, you will be blind if you have this type of a situation."
"I can't point to one valuable feature. All of Centreon is good."
"In addition, the flexibility, customizability, and analytics of Centreon's dashboards are all very good. The dashboards help us see the whole network map, and that is quite valuable for us. In addition, the dashboards have helped to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time... The flexibility has given us the ability to add in our own monitoring metrics and that has been quite interesting and very useful for us."
"It's a simple, functional solution."
"Meraki Dashboard centralizes control of all our equipment into one cloud-based console, so we can manage it from anywhere. We can resolve problems remotely outside of business hours because it is on the cloud. You can use the dashboard to change security settings or configure routers and switches."
"It is very easy to manage. It has good security, and it is working well with our firewall."
"The initial setup process is quite simple."
"We've been spending a lot less time on tickets and deployments, so we have more time to do other things."
"The ability of the product to perform with simplicity of deployment make it a valuable solution."
"There are some whitelist blacklist capabilities in the MX dashboard, which is very helpful."
"The ease-of-use and the analytics are really effective tools."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Centreon supports officially 10,000 services per poller. That is not much for larger customers, because this limit is reached very quickly. We use it with three times the limit without any problems, but Centreon says, "Okay, we are only supporting it with 10,000 services." We are aware that increasing the limit has different impacts because they need to support it. However, for most customers, it would be be very good if they could increase the limit of services."
"This solution lacks service monitoring in the cloud."
"I would like to see an improvement of the communication with big data systems, because Centreon is a monitoring system. In our point of view, Centreon should be a part of a source for a big data system, not a big data system itself. So, it should be easier to add data from the Centreon system to a big data system. For example, it should be able to teach machine learning."
"Release management and quality of testing need improvement, because with each major upgrade we have many issues coming in. Then, it takes several minor upgrades to get rid of them."
"Improvements are needed in the area of cloud monitoring, as that's a newer feature."
"Centreon is actually missing an easy way to create a trendline for the metrics. Actually it is possible to create it, but you need a good knowledge of math, Centreon, and RRD."
"To get it started is a lot of work, since it comes empty. We had to push information into it to make it work."
"Currently, we have to go through all of the different templates and take a look at how the template is configured, and how specific parameters may change across different templates with different precedents, megatons, etc. It's a lot of work and involves trial and error. I wish they could simplify the process."
"The solution has a limited routing table and needs improvement by increasing the numbers as well as providing a summarization for the table."
"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."
"I would like to see an alert event feature to monitor what users are downloading and how to block some applications."
"They could offer API functionality for Meraki Dashboard. It will help us develop software immediately using available solutions."
"There are some issues with the NAT configuration, it is now impossible to some operations with the solution."
"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."
"More integration would be an improvement."
"Meraki Dashboard's pricing could be improved."
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Centreon is ranked 11th in Network Monitoring Software with 27 reviews while Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews. Centreon is rated 8.6, while Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Centreon writes "Proactive reporting guides our NOC on what needs to be fixed, saving them time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios Core and Icinga, whereas Meraki Dashboard is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud and LogicMonitor. See our Centreon vs. Meraki Dashboard report.
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