Cisco Catalyst Switches vs. Cisco Meraki MS

Cisco Catalyst Switches

1,052 Reviews and Ratings

Cisco Meraki MS

197 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Cisco Catalyst Switches	Score9.2 out of 10	N/A	Cisco's Catalyst is one of that company's brand of network switches.	N/A
Cisco Meraki MS	Score9.4 out of 10	N/A	Cisco offers the Meraki brand of Ethernet switches.	N/A

Pricing

Cisco Catalyst Switches

Cisco Meraki MS

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
Cisco Catalyst Switches	Cisco Meraki MS
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

No setup fee

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Cisco Catalyst Switches	Cisco Meraki MS
Considered Both Products	Cisco Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches Comparing with Meraki switches, Cisco Catalyst Switches are more reliable and have more advanced features and configurations that make them usable in more scenarios. Troubleshooting (especially advanced) is better. Meraki of course is more friendly thanks to the GUI. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches Cisco Catalyst Switches integrate with our dot1x solution better and in general is the preferred permanent office solution. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches They came recommended to us by our partners due to the type of work we do due to the amount of business critical workloads are relying on a consistent and reliable connection. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches I prefer the simplicity of Meraki switches. They are cheaper, easier to use, and the licensing makes more sense to me. It was a bit harder to troubleshoot STP issues, but simple device troubleshooting was super easy. It was a better choice for an enterprise environment even if … Incentivized Helpful? Chuck Jenkins IT Mgr in Information Technology at Farm & Home Supply (Retail, 501-1000 employees) Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches Catalyst switches were already in place Incentivized Helpful? Roy Brinkley sr network administrator in Information Technology at Signature Bank of Arkansasa (Financial Services, 201-500 employees) Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches best uptime Incentivized Helpful? Xavier CHARLES Sales Director in Sales at ALTANNA (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees) Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches Cisco Catalyst Switches have reliability performance. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches If I were to compare the Catalyst to the Meraki, I do feel more secure about the Catalyst, as Meraki was not originally a cisco product and was acquired. So, from the point of security and dependability, the Catalyst is a winner. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches The Catalyst line is far more feature rich than Aruba or Meraki. The main question will be if any of those additional features provide value to the organization. There are plenty of environments where the ease of use that Meraki has far outweighed the expanded feature set of … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches The Cisco 9300 can be managed in a number of different ways compared to the Meraki portfolio which is Cloud Management only. I think that for many customers that the Cisco Meraki offering stack up really well unless of course there are features that are only included within the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches We currently use Nexus, Meraki, and Catalyst gear in our operations. All [these products] are very successful for every need they fill. In the case of Catalyst switches, we use them for more unique situations where diverse products need to connect together as this brand has … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches In comparison to the NETGEAR and Linksys, these are simple single VLAN switches that are not business capable. Cisco switches give you the ability to separate segments as well as true single-port speed, no sharing. In comparison to Aruba, Aruba just recently got into the PoE … Incentivized Helpful? Curt Sminkey Network & Telecoms Administrator in Information Technology at Southco, Inc. (Retail, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches Obviously still in the Cisco family but the Meraki switches offer trade off of being much easier to manage off-site from a cloud based management system, but you do not get the same advanced features of the Cisco Catalyst switches. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches I love them for end-user switches, however, I have also started replacing some of them in branch offices with Meraki switches for the easy GUI to train service desk members to configure ports and apply VLANs really easy with almost no training needed. BUT Meraki's are AWFUL if … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches In our case these model of Catalysts work well within our already established Meraki infrastructure, meshing with our Meraki Dashboard! Prior to the acquisition of our Catalyst, we heard many good reviews from our vendor we work with as well as our own online research seeing … Incentivized Helpful?	Cisco Verified User Chose Cisco Meraki MS Cloud solutions to more away from the traditional on prem management Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Meraki MS Cisco Meraki MS is ideal for small-medium and remote offices where IT staff never visit. I don't feel they are ready to support large offices or campuses with thousands of people. However in my opinion some offices can be Cisco Meraki MS and others can be Catalyst and it can … Incentivized Helpful? José Antonio Padilla Telecomunications in Information Technology at Grupo K (Telecommunications, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Meraki MS We selected Cisco Meraki MS for the facility to have the administration trough the Meraki Cloud, give us a lot of flexibility about troubleshooting, new configuration and monitoring. Also when you have Meraki licence enabled you have full support from Cisco in case you need it. … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Meraki MS Easy deployment and single pane of glass portal. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Meraki MS Catalyst is good but it requires CLI configuration which can be very complex for beginners because they tend to forget commands. Cisco Meraki MS takes out the complexity by having a GUI, and another advantage is the risk of committing bad configuration is minimized (such as … Incentivized Helpful? Greg Taylor Senior Network Engineer in Information Technology at Shook, Hardy, & Bacon (Law Practice, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Cisco Meraki MS The MS 210 switches are easier to deploy and customize. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Meraki MS Both have their own advantage so one needs to understand what he/she wants to achieve and based on that you can decide which product or solution is suitable. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Cisco Meraki MS I think that Meraki stacks up well against the competition. I have not found a situation where it does not meet the needs from speed to security. I think that this concept of how it is designed will become a trend of the next few years and the competition has something to … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

User Ratings
	Cisco Catalyst Switches	Cisco Meraki MS
Likelihood to Recommend	9.2 (625 ratings)	9.3 (99 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	10.0 (31 ratings)	9.7 (5 ratings)
Usability	9.5 (32 ratings)	9.5 (2 ratings)
Availability	9.2 (9 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)
Performance	10.0 (8 ratings)	7.0 (1 ratings)
Support Rating	9.8 (30 ratings)	9.0 (13 ratings)
In-Person Training	7.1 (3 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Online Training	7.3 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	8.4 (8 ratings)	8.0 (1 ratings)
Configurability	9.7 (7 ratings)	8.0 (1 ratings)
Ease of integration	9.2 (5 ratings)	8.0 (1 ratings)
Product Scalability	10.0 (9 ratings)	9.2 (80 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	8.6 (30 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	8.9 (31 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)