I wish all products worked like Meraki
March 11, 2019
I wish all products worked like Meraki
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls
We use the Cisco Meraki MX Firewall for our whole organization and utilize their firewall, switches, and wireless APs at a branch office and also for remote employees to connect everyone on a single VPN. They could not be easier to setup initially nor easier to manage, both on site and remotely. They have had every feature we could think of helping and again, I can't undersell how easy they are to manage.
- Ease of Setup - When your device is shipped, you can log in to your dashboard and start setting it up. Then, once you connect it, it grabs all the settings from the cloud. We switched over from our previous solution in a couple hours, and if you know what you are doing, you could accomplish it faster.
- Ease of Administration - With the dashboard, you can administer everything remotely. The Meraki Dashboard is also easy to use. It has lots of capabilities that we don't currently take advantage of such as Content Filtering. Connecting branch offices and remote workers is very simple to roll out as well.
- Features - Our previous HP switches would constantly have ports go, and it was hard to tell which ones. With Meraki, we haven't had any ports fail in 3 years, but if we do, you can monitor and see which users are using which ports on the connected switches.
- RADIUS - We've connected JumpCloud with the RADIUS functionality and it works great.
- The menus took some getting used to initially, but fortunately, their documentation and support have been great and I got the hang of things.
- Cost. I wish they cost less. But, you get what you pay for, and I think they are reasonable.
- Not many complaints. I feel like a bit of a fanboy, but I've been really happy with my Meraki devices.
- These were a bit more expensive than some options, but well worth it now that we've had them for a few years.
- It's made remotely managing locations far less expensive since you don't need on-site staff or need to send IT staff remotely to help.
Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls was slightly more expensive but far superior in features, functionality, and ease of administration.
Using Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | Requires technical support |
- Set up. You can set up through the dashboard before you even receive the item. Once ordered, you can log the serial number and get things set up. Once plugged in, it grabs the settings and you hit the ground running.
- The dashboard makes it easy to remotely monitor.
Yes, but I don't use it