Cradlepoint NetCloud Engine Reviews & Insights

We use Cradlepoint NetCloud Engine to manage our many Cradlepoint devices deployed in the field, about 50 locations. It allows us to very easily make changes and control our AER1600 and CBA850 devices on the fly and in real time. It notifies us when there are problems with our devices and shows us health of the connectivity.

I have yet to have any situation where Cradlepoint NetCloud Engine was "less appropirate". It's easy to use and understand and extremely effective for deploying Cradlepoints and maintaining them. The control over the Cradlepoint devices is remarkable, absolute and the product is very well suited and feature rich for the task,

We currently use Cradlepoint NetCloud to manage devices at approximately 20 remote locations. The product allows us to remotely modify device properties, create and restore settings backups, perform firmware upgrades, and monitor device use. NetCloud has saved lots of time by removing travel to remote, rural locations. In addition, it allows us to remotely monitor device status, such as whether a device is offline.

While offering integrations with other products, such as Palo Alto Prisma Access and Zscaler, the root use of this product is supporting Cradlepoint devices through a single, standard interface. By easily allowing remote management of remote Cradlepoint devices, this product is invaluable if you are tasked with maintaining numerous remote locations.

We use Cradlepoint NetCloud because of the high mobility of our workforce between our 56 different offices and the many offsite visits our staff do as part of their jobs. We install the agent on every laptop and even on desktop in remote offices in the organization to create a virtual WAN, emulating a hub and spoke WAN with SmartZones, so that each user has access to corporate resources from wherever they are. We use any Internet connection to get seamless access.

When you need a WAN or a widespread VPN-as-a-Service with high degrees of security and manageability, agent-based VPN is a versatile way to get needed connectivity between endpoints. Using the SmartZones feature and API Key authentication it is easy to deploy, lock down, and is seamless to the end-user (always-on VPN). Because its agent-based on endpoints, in addition to other security features, IT is also able to limit access to resources simply by not installing the application on devices that remote agent devices shouldn't need to access.

We use Cradlepoint NetCloud to provide software-defined, secure network access and firewall transversal services for diagnostic telemedicine systems. Within our own company and across the clients we serve, Cradlepoint NetCloud is our go-to platform combining SD-WAN and fault-tolerant Smart WAN management into a single, centralized pane of glass. It is our de facto standard for virtualized network applications.

The platform and product selection as a whole covers a lot of range. The pricing is low enough and the levels granular enough that even customers that only need the use of a few features of the product can buy into the ecosystem with reasonable investment and grow with confidence without having paid too much. One thing that this enterprise company gets is this:
Many small companies need enterprise-class features but don't have the user count to justify purchasing enterprise-class solutions. It is not that they don't need advanced features, it's just that enterprise vendors assume that small companies only have basic needs. It is not true, but you can't buy a solution that is only sold in hundreds of seats if you have 25 users in your company.

Cradlepoint NetCloud does a good job of getting this right. You can buy a single seat or hundreds of seats, and the price is truly commensurate with your seat count. Everyone gets the enterprise features, you only pay for the seats you need.

I have been using Cradlepoint's NetCloud product since before they acquired it from Pertino. It is one of my favorite tools. NetCloud is basically a set it and forget it always on VPN connection. One of the main challenges I had supporting my off-site users was troubleshooting their VPN connections which usually ended up being some kind of user error. Ever since I switched to the NetCloud product I haven't had to troubleshoot my off-site connections very often and if I do I can quickly narrow it down to a network issue at their site. I honestly can't remember a time that the issue was VPN based since I switched.

If you need to use a VPN connection for your office I can think of no better tool for the job. Once you set it up it is so easy to use that you will forget that you have it. If you don't need VPN then you would have no need of the product.