Cisco Meraki MS vs. NETGEAR Ethernet Switches

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Meraki MS
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Cisco offers the Meraki brand of Ethernet switches.N/A
NETGEAR Ethernet Switches
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
NETGEAR offers Ethernet Switches.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Meraki MSNETGEAR Ethernet Switches
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Meraki MSNETGEAR Ethernet Switches
Free Trial
NoNo
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 MSNETGEAR Ethernet Switches
Considered Both Products
Cisco Meraki MS
Chose Cisco Meraki MS
Hands down Cisco Meraki switches beat out the competition. Yes, you have to have the licensing, but it is worth it to centrally managing them all from a "single pane of glass."
Chose Cisco Meraki MS
The NetGear and Linksys switches do not even compare to the Cisco Meraki. The majority of those I've used are unmanaged. You just plug and go and have no control over routing. The Cisco Catalyst is much better than the Meraki. It's meant for more of a backbone/server/san …
Chose Cisco Meraki MS
Meraki is much easier to manage and train other IT admins on. The configuration is extremely straightforward so there is minimal time to replace any equipment and it automatically will download configurations to match outgoing equipment.
NETGEAR Ethernet Switches

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Cisco Meraki MSNETGEAR Ethernet Switches
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Extreme Networks Wired Access - Switches
Extreme Networks Wired Access - Switches
Score 9.2 out of 10
Extreme Networks Wired Access - Switches
Extreme Networks Wired Access - Switches
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Ethernet Switches
Cisco Ethernet Switches
Score 9.1 out of 10
Cisco Ethernet Switches
Cisco Ethernet Switches
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Meraki MSNETGEAR Ethernet Switches
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(97 ratings)
8.5
(6 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.6
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(13 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.9
(78 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Meraki MSNETGEAR Ethernet Switches
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Cisco Meraki MS suits a lot of environments, it can be connected to all kinds of vendors, but the scenario that will give you more control and visibility of your network is if you have more Meraki solutions to use and admin all from the dashboard. But if you only use Cisco Meraki MS you can also have all the functions and features from the switch, using in most of the cases as access layer.
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NETGEAR
Great for entry-level networking, and the cost-to-quality ratio is great for the average consumer. I've used them in a crawl space that is not climate controlled, and it just works and provides the switching capabilities I need. These are great for users that don't have a ton of experience and can simply try to troubleshoot with a simple power cycle.
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Pros
Cisco
  • I think when it comes to the Meraki products, it's just the ease of use and ease of troubleshooting because it's all cloud-based, easy to access from anywhere I can literally get on now and troubleshoot. So I think it's just the ease of use, which is great.
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NETGEAR
  • Manage extra connections in a switched network.
  • Provide good throughput for those extra connections.
  • Easy to add into an existing network environment.
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Cons
Cisco
  • I think it may be fixed now, but for a long time, there was no equivalent of "show version" to see the exact uptime of a switch. This led to questions from upper management sometimes like "when was this device last rebooted?" and there was no way to answer if it had been longer than 3 months.
  • Sometimes there are somewhat "generic" errors on the Dashboard when looking at devices (those yellow error messages like DHCP error). If the error messages were a little bit more detailed it could go a long way into troubleshooting issues faster.
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NETGEAR
  • Better advertisement about advanced enterprise features. My experience is with smaller switches and not with the fully managed switches.
  • Additional management tools to monitor multiple switches in the environment. Similar to Cisco Network Assistant.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
Being on the cloud its very easy to manage. We have layer 7 visibility and Cisco has introduced stackable MX switches which is even better! The Meraki portal can be accessed via SSO which is important to my organization (although it was a bit difficult to get that implemented initially!)
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NETGEAR
No answers on this topic
Usability
Cisco
It can be a simple or as complicated as you need it. It scales well too, so you can expand options or change out models if you need more later on.
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NETGEAR
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
Meraki support is excellent. They are also highly proactive. They literally replaced all of a particular model of our MS switches when it was discovered that they were not sure about the longevity of a particular chassis fan inside those switches. Without us having to do anything other than ask, they shipped us all new replacements (with a better fan in them) for the 10 or so of the switches that were in the affected model group, and we shipped the defective ones back to them int he same packaging, prepaid. None of the recalled switches had ever experienced a fan failure, but they were not willing to let them run in a production environment. I like that. Meraki MS support staff are also quick to get back to you and very knowledgeable about their product. I actually contact our Meraki rep to instigate a support case (although i could call support directly), and he gets the details from me first, then opens the ticket for us and explains it to support. This means that I only even need to talk to one person, and I like that, too. Meraki MS switches are designed to be essentially "plug and play", so support is generally not needed unless the end user is not following the deployment and operation guides
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NETGEAR
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cisco
very smoothly
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NETGEAR
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
Well, we've been using it for quite a number of years, so I guess I have evaluated, this is on the wireless side, the Ruckus platform, and it did not compare to the Cisco Meraki dashboard as far as the way it is utilized.
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NETGEAR
While the Ubiquiti are much easier to manage remotely through their cloud controllers, the Netgear is much more reliable in harsh environments than the other simple switches we use, as they seem less susceptive to high temperatures and humidity. (TP-Link and Zycel are the other major brands we use for simple switches.)
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Scalability
Cisco
I would say probably eight. I think there's a lot of, the scalability is very nice and I've definitely deployed a lot of sites quickly. I think for us right now that we have to pivot away from manual configurations and using automated configurations. And so just being sure we prevent things like drift between sites is kind of important right now for us. And so I think that's the next steps for us in that product. And so I think if there was better documentation or better best practices about how to automate and deploy standardized, I think that would help.
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NETGEAR
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • We scaled out existing networks way faster and way easier.
  • We have added new sites with new switch and network configuration requirements way faster and easier.
  • Because Meraki switches integrate so seamlessly with Meraki Wi-Fi it makes Wi-Fi management very easy and very straightforward.
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NETGEAR
  • Keeps our investment in infrastructure connections low because they can provide those connections.
  • A lower cost alternative to adding in wall connections.
  • Sometimes they can cause collision issues due to traffic across them.
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