Cisco Meraki SD-WAN vs. MikroTik Routers and Switches

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN is a software-defined WAN offering transport independence, application optimization, intelligent path control, and secure connectivity.N/A
MikroTik Routers and Switches
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Latvian company MikroTik offers routers and switches.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Meraki SD-WANMikroTik Routers and Switches
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Meraki SD-WANMikroTik Routers and 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 SD-WANMikroTik Routers and Switches
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Cisco Meraki SD-WANMikroTik Routers and Switches
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Routers
Cisco Routers
Score 8.4 out of 10
Cisco Routers
Cisco Routers
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Routers
Cisco Routers
Score 8.4 out of 10
Cisco Routers
Cisco Routers
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Meraki SD-WANMikroTik Routers and Switches
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(43 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(2 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.2
(41 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Meraki SD-WANMikroTik Routers and Switches
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
At our level, we had to optimize our 3 internet links (MPLS and LTE) with applications like O365, SAP, Microsoft CRM Dynamics and our collaborative work tools like Teams. We also had to ensure that both client workstations and servers could communicate with minimal latency with our Microsoft Intune infrastructure.
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Mikrotik
MikroTik is suited for large companies that require advanced distributions in terms of contracted bandwidth, and in the same way, allows a single device to specify filtering and firewall rules without acquiring an additional device. There is a range for small companies which is more economical and less robust, but in case it's not necessary, such a strict control over the data consumption of the company is not a feasible solution.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Meraki has been beautifully done for people who are actually very lean on the IT infrastructure as in resources wise. So Meraki is a very good solution to give them the simplicity on a single glass plan where they can actually have visibility over all their networks on a single glass plane by a click of button, they could actually see what's happening. They could actually do troubleshooting on the fly, including packet capture, which is such a smooth feature. Usually myself including I've been have an engineering background, all my ears packet capture, I've never seen that smooth and easy to operate that you can actually have a high level understanding or deep level depending on how much you want to go in with the click of a button. That's so beautiful. I mean everything for me Meraki is point of kind of a go ahead for everyone.
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Mikrotik
  • Affordable, it has more features compared to other brand at the same price.
  • Widely available, by today it's easy to obtained one, even online retailers sell it.
  • Highly customizable, you may write a powerful script to enhance the function.
  • Flexible, you can make different configuration approach based on you needs.
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Cons
Cisco
  • The platform itself is very feature-rich. One of the difficulties we find is that to do things, for example, in terms of monitoring and obtaining data, it's not consistent. There are multiple interfaces to get them, but you can't get the same data through all interfaces. So you end up having to try to find either the least common denominator or we have to build our own code that then mines through all the interfaces and that becomes very problematic.
  • The other problem we've found is that there are issues where the same amount of expected software quality isn't really there in all releases. Cisco breaks things out by like shorter or long-lived release trains. And the long-lived release trains tend to have good quality by the time you get to the second or third release within it. But then those are skips. There are like 12, 18 months skips in between those. So if you start releasing features on versions in between there practically to be safe, you have to wait until you know much later. So to be able to see new future capabilities as they come out and deploy those readily needs to improve, it needs to be much faster.
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Mikrotik
  • Some of the wiki articles have not been updated or are not accurate enough. We spent a couple of days trying to find an example of implementing a mobile IPSec client solution. But once this has been implemented, it has been solid (always worked). A bigger community would help, and I am finding it hard to find the time to contribute to these articles.
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Usability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Mikrotik
Almost perfect, despite some issue that need to be addressed by the manufacturer. If this issue has been addressed, a full 10 mark will be given.
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Support Rating
Cisco
Fast and efficient. The only issue currently is that the support is only overseas support and not in South Africa, which causes delays in resolution for some cases. Escalating issues is quite simple and the opening of new cases from the dashboard is easy. I have never had a support issue that could not be resolved.
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Mikrotik
There is no SOC, NOC, where you can contact to try to resolve any difficulties. The problems that these devices have are solved largely through the community, with workaround alternatives, or if the support team responds to a request, the response times are too high for the current needs of technological communications.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
The Sonic wall and Cisco ASA required a lot of trial and error to get up and running. Rules and configurations were difficult to setup and were not intuative. Meraki is very ituative.
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Mikrotik
Cisco Routers are one of the best in the market, however they are also very expensive and not suitable for a small deployment or any deployment which requires just a couple of routers. MikroTik on the other hand are less expensive and provides many features that you require for a small scale deployment. they fit in with the budget and do what you need them to.
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Scalability
Cisco
Once your template is set up Meraki is easy to scale. Even creating the template is easy and I was able to learn enough in 4 hours to build, test, and deploy templates for our locations. Best part is you can stage your deployment by adding a unit to a template even before taking it out of the box.
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Mikrotik
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • It was mostly around logs. I mean I understand because the aim is to provide the simplified solution to the people as an end user, be it an IT manager or the oil team. So I understand where you don't have lots of tools assigned where you can actually take help from the track. But in terms of having that logging information, I think that's where it's been a bit of a kind of journey where struggling, we have been struggling there.
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Mikrotik
  • First of all it's cheaper than Cisco routers.
  • It has more functionality than Cisco routers that cost 4 times more.
  • It has a GUI. But it has CLI too.
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