Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points vs. Ubiquiti WLAN

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Cisco's Meraki MR Series is a wireless LAN solution.N/A
Ubiquiti WLAN
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Ubiquiti offers a family of WLAN products, namely the UniFi line of products.
$89
one-time fee
Pricing
Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access PointsUbiquiti WLAN
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access PointsUbiquiti WLAN
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access PointsUbiquiti WLAN
Considered Both Products
Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Chose Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
All tests and studies we found provided the trust on the capabilities of the Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points. The existing relationship with Cisco that provided assurance to top management that the evaluation made to the product by the IT team would actually provide the …
Chose Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
I would personally always recommend Meraki over the above for ease of deployment and management. My only reservation is you feel like you never really own the equipment... its more like you're leasing it and that the end it all just stops working. Where with the above products, …
Chose Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Meraki is in a different class, much more expensive and a better UI and large scale manageability
Chose Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
I believe UniFi has a great product line and has very similar management capabilities to Cisco Meraki MR. What UniFi does not provide, however, is technical support. That business is essentially outsourced to other businesses willing to do that. Depending on the deployment, …
Ubiquiti WLAN
Chose Ubiquiti WLAN
Meraki is a great product providing many of the same remote management features that Ubiquiti offers for network solutions. The main difference is Meraki licensing costs. Each device must be licensed in order to work. After a licensing period expires the device will stop …
Best Alternatives
Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access PointsUbiquiti WLAN
Small Businesses
Ubiquiti WLAN
Ubiquiti WLAN
Score 9.0 out of 10
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Score 9.4 out of 10
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Score 9.4 out of 10
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access PointsUbiquiti WLAN
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(140 ratings)
8.9
(15 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.5
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(8 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
7.7
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(26 ratings)
1.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(79 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.7
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access PointsUbiquiti WLAN
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
The Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points is a good solution although not for everyone. Cost wise it is more expensive than competition. Technically speaking, if you are going for a full Cisco Meraki solution from firewall, switches, WAP, and management app, it requires a solid technical understanding of where each part and piece falls. If you have the money and the technical capabilities (in house or outsourced) then it is a solid platform that leans on Cisco's respectable history in the communications and infrastructure industry.
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Ubiquiti Networks
Ubiquiti is well suited to not just indoor WLAN access, but also outdoors. In fact, the range of the outdoor applications, while maintaining throughput is astonishing. I would say this is not a solution for a 1-5 person small office, due to the costs.
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Pros
Cisco
  • It's cloud based, so as long as we have an internet connection, we can access it. Whenever we push a change, it's one stop like a single pane of glass to manage all our equipment. And so that's what I liked about it.
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Ubiquiti Networks
  • The access points are rock solid for uptime. Once configured, they don't skip a beat and you'll forget they're there.
  • Excellent range and signal strength.
  • Very comprehensive configuration and administration via the UniFi Controller software.
  • The Ubiquiti access points look great! Whether wall or ceiling mounted, they are discrete and neutral enough to just blend in with the building.
  • Being powered via PoE, it's easier to place the access points where they're most useful.
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Cons
Cisco
  • So the Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points dashboard, it's a little bit like comparing Apple and Android. So with Android you can do a lot more configuration, whereas with Meraki there are a lot of assumptions about a radio resource management. There are a lot of assumptions around, for instance, when it does a heat map, it's a heat map, which is a population density rather than a wireless coverage heat map. So that can cause confusion because normally when you look at heat map, you're looking at, that is a metric for how well it's performing rather than how many devices are using it. So I think that's always at the bone of contention around one of the things it can do.
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Ubiquiti Networks
  • Management of devices has become much simpler with the UNMS application, but personally, I would like to see some AirMax-like devices from their Unifi line where everything could be managed from an Unifi controller.
  • Most Ubiquiti devices are 24V PoE, which is the bane of my existence. I have had several devices fried when staff plugged into standard 48V PoE. They generally don't fail catastrophically, either. You just get strange issues that are difficult to diagnose and eventually need to replace them.
  • Devices seem to have trouble with many patch cables/switches. Make sure you certify any patch cables you make and don't over crimp.
  • Sending devices from the factory with same 192.168.1.20 IP instead of DHCP makes it a pain to bulk-setup devices.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
It is a solution that works very well. It is almost like setup and forget, since the solution works. When issues occur, documentation is available with detailed steps on how to solve this problems you are facing, of course Technical Support is always ready to help. We have had instances where an Access Point fails and within 2 days we have the replacement
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Ubiquiti Networks
No answers on this topic
Usability
Cisco
To get basic functionality doesn't take long. Set up a new Meraki Dashboard activate the licenses and get internet connection for the APs and you are more or less done. The Dashboard will find your items and you're good to go.
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Ubiquiti Networks
Ubiquiti makes great Access points at various tiers provided far better coverage and throughput than consumer-grade wireless repeaters and routers. We have not had any performance complaints from guests or from the administration who use the wifi on a daily basis.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
We have been deploying Meraki since last 8 years and even the first one deployed seems to be working fine till now!
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Ubiquiti Networks
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
We have not had any issues with the Meraki WiFi Access Point hardware but we did encounter a problem with a Meraki LAN switch that failed to power up. Upon a email into the Meraki Support, they promptly called back and we went over some quick tests to determine a power supply problem. A replacement LAN switch was sent to me the next day.
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Ubiquiti Networks
Ubiquiti's support is basically non-existent by design. However, their forums are a great resource if you are willing to do the research and ask questions. Keep in mind Ubiquiti sells hardware, not support so the responses will be from the community of professionals also using Ubiquiti just like you.
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
There were documents that detailed how the WiFi Access Point was to be installed and mounted. The only issue was to cable the device, we use a third party for this type of work and typically has to be performed after normal business hours. Other than that, the installation was easy.
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Ubiquiti Networks
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
We were more on a Cisco Wireless Controller set up, which takes a lot longer to control and that's why we've actually gone through a cloud-based product, which is very easy compared with the old traditional way that we used to have. It's more ease of software. They've got very similar features, but it's easy to set up and maintain into the future.
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Ubiquiti Networks
We have used products from Netgear, ZyXEL, Cloudmesh, Datto, Mereki, and EnGenius previously often choosing products based on a specific situation, since starting with Ubiquiti [WLAN] we have pretty much stopped [usage] of all other vendors in the networking field and standardized which better allows us to stock spare equipment. Best part is if you need to replace equipment it is easy to swap it out quickly as the controller also acts as a live configuration backup.
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Scalability
Cisco
As far as I know, it's 10. I mean, because like I said, I manage stuff in the south. I have coworkers that manage it in the north. And so the scalability of it to be able to be go in and see the configurations of the ones in the north as well as they can see in the south. So across the board, it works really well for how widespread out it is.
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Ubiquiti Networks
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Uptime has improved significantly. The dashboard automatically keeps devices up to date by scheduling upgrades at remote times (say 2am on a Sunday)
  • Swapping to Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points has reduced the management overhead. No more long controller software hardware upgrades and obviously no more need for beefy central controllers.
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Ubiquiti Networks
  • Initial ROI was positive - but now we need to replace them
  • We were able to deploy rapidly - configuration is easy if not consistent
  • Upgrades are easy to apply when they don't take the radios offline - which happens more often then not
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ScreenShots