Meraki Excels at Easy Scaling
Updated April 05, 2025

Meraki Excels at Easy Scaling

Christopher Hammond | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • MX64
  • MX67C
  • MX84
  • MX250
  • MX450

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Meraki MX

We leverage Meraki MX as our primary security appliance for our U-Haul operated retail locations, repair shops and manufacturing plants — over 2500 locations in total, and as our Auto-VPN concentrator hubs. I was involved with the initial testing and rollout of these devices, am the Engineering SME for Meraki within U-Haul, and manage/train our operations and support teams that handle move, add, change actions every day. The primary business problem that Meraki solved for us was providing a lower barrier to entry for our technicians and role based access control through the cloud management dashboard. Previously, we used Cisco ASA-5506, and the amount of know-how required to make changes and monitor these devices was much higher — limiting the amount of skilled workers. Our NOC is now augmented by hundreds of field technicians who can also leverage the tools of the Meraki platform. A secondary benefit to the MX67-C in particular is the built in cellular modem providing failover or even standalone WAN connections for locations waiting for dedicated broadband connections. All in all, Meraki MX has allowed our organization to scale our networks FAR more nimbly.

Pros

  • Ease of use
  • Auto-VPN + SD-WAN
  • Cellular Failover
  • Robust Alerts via Webhooks

Cons

  • Firewall Policies
  • Hardware Performance Statistics
  • IPS Performance + Efficacy
  • Limited port counts when leveraging network templates on higher end units.
  • No options for HTTPS decrypt or encrypt visibility
  • No EIGRP Routing
  • No ability to clear ARP table / release DHCP leases through GUI
  • Time to discover root cause + remediate
  • Ease of use
  • More easily scaled than our previous solution.
Meraki's ease of use has improved every aspect of our network support process. We now have self-serve options for our field technicians. What would have taken months and Cisco training to help new hires understand is now done in weeks. The amount of time to stand up a new MX is also a fraction of the ASA platform we’ve replaced it with.
Our rollout to Meraki has allowed us to completely overhaul our field networks. Improving observability, but ease of use, WiFi performance, troubleshooting tools and more. We can efficiently and effectively solve problems that were accepted as “the norm” before. It’s allowed our staff to focus on serving customers, rather than waiting on equipment changes and hours + days of troubleshooting to hunt down issues now displayed immediately in the dashboard.
This is Meraki’s greatest strength. We were able to move our entire organization to Meraki in under a year. We have over 2500 networks using Meraki and the average technician deploying this equipment required no Cisco training or background at all. Removing this barrier to entry completely changed the game for us and allowed our engineers to focus on far more important issues within our enterprise.
Meraki is just easier to use and deploy. It’s not the cheapest option, nor is it the most feature rich or performant firewall platform. But when you need something that works and meets PCI/HIPAA compliance, with very little effort to use, this is the ideal platform for you. Meraki handles setup and management far easier than most of its competitors.

Do you think Cisco Meraki MX delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Meraki MX's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Meraki MX live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Cisco Meraki MX go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Meraki MX again?

Yes

Retail locations and branch locations are served very well by the MX platform. The auto VPN functionality works very well, with little effort. The monitoring and remote management is top notch.

However, as core layer security + routing within an enterprise environment, the MX product line falls short compared to Cisco’s Firepower offerings, or their competitors.

However, the ease of management and programmability make it an excellent platform to scale, so long as you’re okay with leaving some advanced firewall features out of your deployment.

Lastly, the licensing model for Meraki requires recurring costs that must be considered beyond typical Capex expenditures. This is a networking device on subscription, which will not be replaced or renewed like a typical Op-ex model would provide.

Cisco Meraki MX Feature Ratings

Firewall
6.8
Identification Technologies
8
Visualization Tools
10
Content Inspection
5
Policy-based Controls
5
Active Directory and LDAP
4
Firewall Management Console
4
Reporting and Logging
8
VPN
10
High Availability
10
Stateful Inspection
4
Proxy Server
Not Rated

Using Cisco Meraki MX

25000 - We leverage Meraki MX for our retail locations and branch offices as well as the MX450s as VPN concentrators. The vast majority of our staff use Meraki networks to perform business activities and it also provides direct internet access to our customers with guest WiFi. We have had the MX security appliances in place for six years now and have seen a slew of operational and security improvements.
200 - On our corporate network team, we have 25 people who support the Meraki Dashboard and MX product family directly. But we also have a slew of field technicians with access that make move, add, change requests through the dashboard daily. The Meraki platform offers a much lower floor for newer or less experienced team members looking to get their start in Networking. While we do have a handful of engineers in order to plan the advanced organization settings (self included) and establish connectivity to our data centers. Meraki is a very easy platform to work with and even our non-technical staff benefit from the simplicity and visibility of the Meraki MX.
  • Retail Router and Security Appliance
  • VPN Concentrator
  • Corporate Network Management
  • Customer Network Security
  • Reduced mean time to resolution
  • Simplify our daily operations for move, add, change requests
  • Remove the need for our team to remotely connect for SSH configurations, benefiting from the cloud management platform.
  • Improved monitoring and analytics from our previous network security appliances.
  • For site to site functionality to non-meraki networks
  • Remote access VPN
  • Policy based routing to diverse endpoints
  • Integration with Cisco Umbrella API
  • Integration with Cisco ThousandEyes
The simplicity and ease of use for the Meraki Dashboard make it an easy choice for our organization to renew our Meraki Enterprise Agreement. We will likely continue using the Meraki MC67-C, MX450, and other MX models in their catalog until we shift away from Meraki completely.

Evaluating Cisco Meraki MX and Competitors

Yes - We replaced Cisco ASA and Cisco 8811 routers with Meraki MX. We wanted to replace them to simplify remote management and avoid the upcoming ASA End of Support.
  • Cloud Solutions
  • Ease of Use
We were looking for something which would simplify our daily operations while still meeting our security and regulatory requirements. Meraki provided that with impeccable ease of use and cloud management along with logging and security controls that meet PCI DSS standards.
We would put more time into evaluating alternatives and consider the long term licensing impact.

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