Likelihood to Recommend Small office, small business, medium business even larger enterprise can work on Cisco Meraki MX if they can sacrifice some of the functionality that Cisco Meraki MX can not provide. To enhance security, I would advise combining with cloud delivered firewall.
Read full review Palo Alto Networks Wildfire is well suited for pretty much anywhere that you need the latest and greatest network security. It is extremely good at protecting you from the latest malware threats that might pose a potential problem for your network/endpoints. We've been very please since we installed it and I would say cost of the Palo Altos is the only drawback. If money were no object I'd go with a Palo Alto with Wildfire every time. But unfortunately in some smaller branches it just doesn't make financial sense.
Read full review Pros The management is the best. I'm an old-fashioned networking guy, so I'm used to going to the site itself and connecting. For example, a console cable and start and start configuring. Now since the management is so easy on Meraki I can configure everything from the headquarters from where I sit in Israel and then just go to the site and connect and basically, it's plug and play. After I configure everything from my office in Israel, I can just go to the site for a few hours, and connect everything. Just the magic happens. Read full review This is could base and easily manageable for our collocation. While working within the could can review in live time potential treats that it has reported from other devices. Worked very well with existing Palo Alto devices. Another huge plus is the simplicity of managing and ease of scalability. Its cost is competitive with similar/like products available. Read full review Cons Map and floor plan area is clunky. The way you need to segment devices by network causes you to need to go to different dropdowns to see everything at a single site. They have improved this and now allow you to add firewall, switches and wireless to create a single site, but still a bit clunky. Read full review WildFire, like other sandboxes, has to stay up with malware sandbox evasion techniques, which necessitates larger file size limits. More file formats should be able to be submitted and scanned by WildFire, which needs improved initial administration and setup. It's quite pricey, and there's no warning choice for performance on the cloud. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review It works very well and takes care of protecting us from threats new and well-known. It's been a game changer in terms of threat detection & prevention.
Read full review Usability 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
Read full review Easy to use and works well. For the most part it's set it and forget it, but there's also some flexibility for high security environments and those with extra privacy concerns.
Read full review Support Rating 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
Read full review PAN support is very good. You can get the reasonable and timely support on any conditions. When the product is already integrated with the PAN firewalls, you can choose the severity levels based on the effect. The customer service/TAC is very helpful, they even have additional recommendations of advises for product usability. Local partners are also assisting the cases and give their expertise.
Read full review Implementation Rating Good product and simple to use.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Overall, for a new network admin or a non-IT person, the Cisco Meraki MX is much easier to configure for a single site than the Cisco ASA Firewalls. ASA can be quicker for those with a background in Cisco command line OS.
Read full review We wanted a single device to handle numerous jobs, such as antivirus, antimalware, vulnerability detection, url filtering, etc. Palo Alto provides this, while
TippingPoint IPS is a more dedicated product. Caveat: I used
TippingPoint over 5 years ago, so things may have changed.
Read full review Scalability The Cisco Meraki MX is basically a good product, but not perfect. If you compare the Cisco Meraki MX with a Fortigate or Cisco Firepower, you quickly realize that this system can do less than the reference product. The Cisco Meraki MX can be used in small environments, but in large environments you have to check carefully whether it really makes sense to use it.
Read full review Return on Investment VPN tunnel between locations has been up 99% of the time in the 7 years that I have used the Cisco Meraki MXs in my current position. That does not include ISP issues because, in my mind, that shouldn't dictate the performance of the Cisco Meraki MXs. Sometimes we get phishing emails with malicious links in them. We are able to block the URLs on our network using the Cisco Meraki MXs, and the appliance configuration sets in less than a minute. Blocking that link for anyone over VPN or on the LAN. The interface is really simple and configuration is a breeze, which makes deploying a new Cisco Meraki MX really fast and easy. Replacing an Cisco Meraki MX is even easier, Just remove the old and add the new and all the configuration stays for the new appliance to use. Saves so much time and money. The biggest thing is we have not had really any issues with any of our Cisco Meraki MXs going down in the past 7 years. The reliability with these devices are amazing. Read full review As we all know the product of Palo Alto is little bit expensive but its performance is far better than any of its competitors. So as I previously mentioned, Palo Alto should not sell WildFire Licence seperately. If the firewall is internet facing then only we should buy WildFire Licence. WildFire Licence is not necessary for internal firewall. If you are planning to buy a firewall for internal network where your traffic is not going towards internet so no need to buy WildFire Licence. Read full review ScreenShots