Cisco Meraki Wireless Access Point Reviews

The fact that it is cloud-based and scalable suits us since we have small offices that come and go based upon projects.

We have other Cisco products/services so it plays well with others like Umbrella.

More time for the IT team

Less time for tshoot

Bandwidth control for users (more productive in office)

IT Admins really like managing the Merakis—set and forget.

Alerts when devices or network goes down is great, which we never had previously.

No more users complaining of slow network speeds on WiFi.

We've had a positive impact. Better visibility and auditing

Visibility into sites visited and data throughput.

We saved on ripping out one-off networking equipment and going with a common vendor

Simplified networking

Integrated networks with ease

Single pane of glass to manage them all

KPI generator: Generator of commercial indicators that help us define the client's profile.

Consumption data: See in which the network is occupying the consumption by application and user.

Heat zones: See which is the area of ​​interest most traveled by the end user.

Lower travel expenses due to access to configuration on the Meraki dashboard.

Lower solution costs as it includes features that competitors would charge additional amounts.

Increased costs due to the requirement for Meraki licensing.

Great wireless access no matter where you are in the building.

Easy SSD setup for multiple situations.

Lower cost than some of their competition.

Subscription cloud access cost is easy to manage.

Uptime has been extremely good resulting in keeping our operations running.

The dashboard allows it to be managed from anywhere, saving trips and local troubleshooting.

Scalability is very easy.

Deployment required minimum of IT to be on site.

Adequate ROI. Some equipment has depreciated but they are still operating fine.

For our retail stores it was considered a good investment becasuse it was within our authorized budget.

We are in education, and our mandate is to provide wireless networking to all students and staff, and Meraki has done that for us.

Since we are a school, we don't measure ROI the same way businesses do, but we do have to justify our expenditures, and we have determined that Meraki provides us with very good value for the cost.

We have also had a very low failure rate, so we are happy with that too.

Meraki products are not cheap, but you get premium hardware and a premium architecture for the money. The flexibility these APs offer mean I'm set for any configuration I may need to make, such as bringing a new SSID online or reshaping traffic flow, all without buying new hardware.

Wireless is an afterthought for my users now, as it should be. We are also able to offer our guests a premium wireless experience.

Security is unmatched, as I am able to now monitor all wireless devices on my network, see what they are doing, how much bandwidth they are consuming, etc. I can segment traffic by VLAN and even route networks through different WANs. I have unprecedented control and monitoring of my network, all from a single, browser-based dashboard. The experience for the system admin is just as polished and premium as the experience for the user.

Meraki frequently adds features and tools to its products, meaning your ROI is constantly advancing.

The only negative ROI I can think of is the recurring licensing costs. You are forced to renew licenses each year or the system will no longer function. With other systems this ongoing cost for maintenance is optional.

No need for a dedicated network support person.

Ability to set up multiple SSIDs for development machines cuts down networking hardware for testing.

Cuts down cost on using 3rd-party monitoring software.

The biggest return is the time, and money saved, in managing the WiFi solution at my company. Especially with credentials and connecting to WiFi. Before I installed the Meraki, the existing solution was configured with PSK for company users, and guest WiFi which was totally opened to anyone. The solution did not support any security features we needed. Once I installed the Meraki, I was able to set up Radius authentication for corporate users, and user accounts for guest who needed access to the Wifi. The Meraki solution helped us reach PCI compliance.

Less training required for supporting the devices, as GUI is intuitive with good help and FAQs.

Managing lots of devices is much easier than non Meraki equivalents.

The time it takes to deploy a device into production is much quicker than any non Meraki equivalents.

Makes it easier for users.

Less effective technical cost.

A positive impact is that we spend less (almost no) time dealing with Access Point management.

A negative is the annual license renewal. While not currently overly pricey, the AP's are useless if you don't keep your license current, so it is a requirement.

Positive impact on time to deploy as a remote worker solution.

Positive impact on making it simple to order.

Positive impact on being able to grow/scale as we need it to in order to support more remote workers.

Cisco Meraki Wireless has served us well in allowing us to divide multiple SSIDs to multiple use cases. The configuration methodology is easy and simple and really reduced a lot of administrative overhead.

Cisco Meraki Wireless offers great flexible pricing plans over the support that can save you money through bulk purchase or support licenses. Once Cisco Meraki Wireless is the wireless solution you can see an increased ROI on managed services through a group buy that seems to be industry leading, they seem to have more "flexibility" than Aruba.

Cisco Meraki Wireless has saved us money using their reporting features by finding bandwidth hogs, understanding what type of processes it was running, whom and at what IP address, so we could remedy that issue and reduce the overall used bandwidth in the company and balance our demands vs usage.

This is the key enabler for many of our customer business

Ease to manage the wireless network of the company

Gain visibility about traffic consumption

We can connect 5Ghz devices on our network

Positive impact #1: Deployment of AP's are as easy as entering a serial number to your existing configuration and mounting the AP. The configuration automatically downloads to the AP as soon as it is plugged into the network. Huge time saver.

Positive impact #2: Creating a seamless Wi-Fi infrastructure enables our mobile workstations to move around the manufacturing floor without loosing connectivity to our corporate network. Enables us to provide services to our manufacturing operations instantly. End users can access engineering data from anywhere on the operations floor without being tied down geographically.

Positive impact #3: Managing all of my AP's from one console is a significant time savings. We can make global changes as well as update our firmware with a few clicks of the mouse. Adding new SSID's and making configuration changes deploy instantly to all affected AP's quickly.

The only negative (from my perspective) is the annual cost and the fact that if your subscription runs out so does your access. However, Cisco, won't just turn you off immediately...they give you a grace period :). Additionally, when you add an AP, the time of your subscription is amortized across the quantity of AP's. So, if you have 10 AP's and are on a 3 year contract and then add an AP, the contract time left will be adjusted accordingly. Not a big deal to us, but something to think about before making a decision.

the simplicity of the administration

The easy of the hardware installation and deployment

The ease of configuration