Cisco Meraki MX vs PRTG | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 9 out of 10

Based on 116 reviews and ratings

Score 8.7 out of 10

Based on 151 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

Identification Technologies

Visualization Tools

Content Inspection

Policy-based Controls

Active Directory and LDAP

Firewall Management Console

Reporting and Logging

VPN

High Availability

Stateful Inspection

Proxy Server

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

Automated network device discovery

Network monitoring

Baseline threshold calculation

Alerts

Network capacity planning

Packet capture analysis

Network mapping

Customizable reports

Wireless infrastructure monitoring

Hardware health monitoring

Pros

The appliances are very, very easy to use. You could set one up for basic use with minimal documentation.
Intuitive menus in the Meraki Dashboard make traversing your options and finding what you need very easy.
Good support options and a healthy knowledge base with well-written guides.

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Infrastructure, Network Administrator II

Dynamic AviationAviation & Aerospace, 501-1000 employees

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Very, very configurable. You can create all kinds of monitors for all kinds of things. Plus it has loads of suggestions out of the box. It can get complicated but monitoring is complicated. Pretty decent interface and good support - active community.
I really liked how easy it was to add alerts by SMS. So easy to setup.
I like their sizing models (for purchase). We're actually small enough that we are free. But it's not free as in stripped down - it's free because we don't use many "sensors" and don't honestly have the need.

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Director of IT

BLDD ARCHITECTS INCArchitecture & Planning, 51-200 employees

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Cons

Possible granular access to switchport settings when using VLAN's.
Wireless models could and should have advanced wireless functionality which is inherent in the Meraki AP devices.
More functionality and customization on the local access pages when device has not connected to the cloud yet.

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Network Engineer

United Vision LogisticsTransportation/Trucking/Railroad, 201-500 employees

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The probe service can be quite resource-intensive. This can cause false-positive readings from some sensors sometimes.
The software gets updated very regularly. Whilst this is usually a good thing to fix bugs etc, it does meantime downtime of the monitoring quite often while they are installed.
The ability to create Maps from Libraries. Very specific issue but a lot of people have been asking for it for years and it is still not available.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Telecommunications Company, 51-200 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Cisco Meraki MX 8.7

Based on 3 answers

As we have it in place now, we will continue to keep it at our remote sites. Future expansion is something we are reviewing, and may well start with some of the larger switches as they seem to offer good performance and management at a reasonable price. Wireless is also something we're investing in and their devices are great for that.

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IT Manager

John Robertson ArchitectsArchitecture & Planning, 51-200 employees

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PRTG 10.0

Based on 2 answers

It is now an essential tool for monitoring and maintaining the health of our network and systems.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 201-500 employees

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Usability

Cisco Meraki MX 8.4

Based on 4 answers

The Cisco Meraki MX series is very easy to use. Setting up user VPN access, site to site VPN to tie multiple locations together and managing all your devices. You can even download the latest firmware and install without ever leaving the dashboard. Meraki is the very definition of easy to use

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Director of Information Technology

Callaway CountyGovernment Administration, 51-200 employees

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PRTG 9.0

Based on 1 answer

The tool is very intuitive to use and it is Windows-based (everybody knows how to use Windows) so it's easy to get into. Every time is setup in a hierarchy so if you have a good initial hierarchy design, it will really reduce administrative effort down the road.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Support Rating

Cisco Meraki MX 9.7

Based on 20 answers

I haven't ever had a bad experience with Meraki support. On the few occasions where I wasn't understanding the UI or needed some clarification about what a setting actually would do, I contacted them and they were very quickly able to provide help. Returns are simple and fast, too. We had to return a defective device one time and they shipped the replacement before we had even un-racked the one that was faulty. Unlike many other vendors, they didn't ask use to a do long list of scripted diagnostics, they just took my word for it that the device was broken and sent out a replacement immediately

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Senior Systems Administrator

DRT Holdings, Inc.Aviation & Aerospace, 501-1000 employees

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PRTG 8.6

Based on 28 answers

I am giving this a 6 simply because I have never had to contact support. The online documentation is adequate for most things, and the user-maintained knowledgebase is excellent. The few times I have run into issues that were not easily resolvable with intuitive UI, I was able to find the answers that I needed either in the PRTG-provided documentation, the knowledgebase, or with a quick online web search.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Investment Management Company, 51-200 employees

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Implementation Rating

Cisco Meraki MX 7.0

Based on 3 answers

Good product and simple to use.

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IT Manager

John Robertson ArchitectsArchitecture & Planning, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

When comparing the Cisco Meraki line to other products it became nearly an incomparable argument. While Fortinet and SonicWall were very comparable to the Meraki MX series, there were just too many tangible and intangible factors that led to us choosing Meraki. The biggest deciding factor was the cloud management of Cisco products that was that much more reliable compared to the other products. A negative against Meraki though is its yearly licensing costs which are significantly higher than its counterparts.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology

Construction Company, 201-500 employees

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Nagios and Icinga (which is itself a fork from Nagios) are decent enough solutions for free, being open source. They do take more to set up and maintain, with quite a lot of manual work and agent installs in some cases. So in comparison with PRTG, they require more labor, but PRTG requires more capital. I also feel like PRTG is more robust, and stable; it's never crashed or required a complete reinstall, which I've definitely had to do with Icinga in the past.PRTG runs on Windows, while the other two are Linux. That only matters if you're more familiar with one or the other, of course, but it does take more to set up a LAMP server sometimes.

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Technical Administrator

New Hampshire Retirement SystemGovernment Administration, 51-200 employees

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Scalability

Cisco Meraki MX 9.4

Based on 21 answers

Actually my largest deployment is limited to 50 sites for a customer. I'm actually in a new one with the aim of deploy more than 1000 sites. I also can't give 10 because I don't know how it will work with many sites. But actually we already have more than 300 sites and the administration is still easy.

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Network Engineer

6hatComputer & Network Security, 1-10 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

Previously I managed Cisco ASA equipment and enjoyed these firewalls. The need to train other admins and deployment at MSP clients were at the top of my list for switching to Meraki MX. The learning curve is much less steep for new security admins and the central dashboard allows coolabritive efforts when admins are in different locations. Built-in change management makes it easy to see who made specific changes as changes are logged on the dashboard.
Other content filtering solutions that I have used had more bells and whistles, but given the cost, complexity, and management overhead, I am very pleased with Meraki’s solution.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Utilities Company, 51-200 employees

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Given us a nice, controlled, ringed-fence portal to deliver to customers for them to view monitoring on the services we sell them.
Given us plenty of metrics to allow us to measure SLA's and OLA's.
Given us the tools to deploy proactive measures for service outages.

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Service Level Compliance Manager

TasmaNet Pty LtdInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Cisco Meraki MX Editions & Modules

Edition

MX64	$595¹
MX67	$695¹
MX68	$995¹
MX84	$1,995¹
MX100	$4,995¹
MX250	$9,995¹
MX450	$19,995¹

per appliance

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

PRTG Editions & Modules

Edition

PRTG 500	$1,750¹
PRTG 1,000	$3,200¹
PRTG 2,500	$6,500¹
PRTG 5,000	$11,500¹
PRTG XL 1	$15,500¹
PRTG Enterprise	Custom Pricing²

perpetual license
subscription license

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

Cisco Meraki MX

PRTG

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