If so, what do you think about it? Just curious, because it seems like every wifi project my company does, we're replacing Meraki.

I've been doing Meraki almost since they formed.  The first big project I did with them was a security appliance and a boat load of access points.  This was years before they came out with their switches.

In over eleven years, I've only had two APs fail.  One failed about three or four years after installation, another one wouldn't update brand new out of the box.  Meraki took care of each of them with advanced replacements sent next day.  I've never had a switch or router fail.

I think it is a solid line.  I have several large projects running Meraki where I own the network, and about four more where I'm involved but client's own IT company installed Meraki.

They are now owned by Cisco and the best thing Cisco did for them was leave them alone.

Great company and great support.

If only there was more of this!

I have a Meraki M18 in my house. Did the free AP webinar thing. Range on the AP isn't great, but it's a solid AP. The diagnostics and dashboard are some of the best if Not THE best. Love the RF spectrum analyzer and the sniffer it has.

I would put them in every single job if the license wasn't as much as it is. It really is a commercial system that being said if I did more commercial this is all I would put in! I have a buddy that is in IT and because of my AP and the webinar he has deployed 50+ in the last year in his sites. Every time I talk to him he thanks me for turning him onto them. He uses the 28 and has no complaints with range

What are the license terms?

The licensing is for cloud management and is mandatory, there isn't an option for standalone operation.
[Link: meraki.cisco.com]

This is the only reason that most of our IT contacts get turned off on them.

Other than that, we've used these only in commercial installs and haven't had any issues. Like was said, range isn't the best, but they work and work well.

We have one location that has about 10-12 of the outdoor ap's spreading across the walkway of a large old commercial mill building (walkway is basically one long loading dock). Then we've got about 30-35 indoor ap's spread throughout 8 floors for the common areas. This system supplies public wifi to all tenants/visitors all on a Comcast 50 mb circuit. Been working great for 7 years plus now (all ap's used here are no longer sold).

Then we have another project where we installed one indoor ap in the front lobby of about 32 buildings all along Newbury Street in Boston. This system provides our property manager customer analytical information about the people moving along the street. It can track when a phone/device connects/disconnects (or is in range) to certain ap's, even when the customer doesn't connect to them. Now the property manager can conduce where the traffic of people come from and go to. Has helped them and their tenants tremendously. But this system wouldn't have worked without the cloud management because each building has its own ISP feed and trying to connect the buildings with Fiber, while going through the Historical Society, was basically impossible given all the stipulations and hoops they make you jump through.

When you buy into the Meraki space you're buying into their management software. It's superior to anything out there. You're paying for the dashboard first and foremost, and the support, and you have to buy the hardware to run their software on.

Remember that you're selling managed IT services, not hardware. That's how you sell it.

Their pricing is online. If you get set up the margins are roughly Sonos. The support is superior, the hardware rarely fails. Programming is account/cloud based: program the account, set the serial numbers of the hardware, connect devices to internet, done.

The AP's aren't the strongest but they are for high density deployments. You can use their mid tier units for resi.

Since the AP licensing is expensive and some people have a hard time we frequently put in MX64 routers and maybe high end Unifi. I'm doing some Araknis/OVRC with a Meraki. But if you do 5 year licensing it's more cost effective.

For small jobs you can put in a Z1 teleworker. The 3 year license is $100. That's $495 all in for hardware and 3 years of service. The bummer is it's rated at 50Mbs throughput, usually hits 100Mbs actual. But it's a superior solution.

[Link: meraki.cisco.com]

Put a Z1 in your house and play.

Remember: do not sell Meraki hardware. Sell 'managed services' and a maintenance plan.

im surprised most of your IT guys are turned off by this. this is a prevelant practice with almost all commercial IT equipment is handled.

Me as well. Most of them think they know everything and don't need to pay for troubleshooting Support.

I run into the same issues when trying to sell support extensions for Ruckus too.

One of our clients is actually a pretty big deal in the IT world. She started a company and wound up doing some pretty awesome stuff for the military. Well, she has Cisco AP's in her home. She was having problems with wifi out back on her porch/pool area so we used existing wiring to put one behind the tv out there. 20 feet away we could barely get a signal. I guess leaving Meraki alone was definitely the best thing Cisco could have done.

That being said, after all of the glowing meraki reviews, it's obvious that the company that we keep replacing was just offering absolute crap for bandwidth. Did a speed test on a system we're replacing today and got a smoking hot download speed of 1.97 Mbps.

That was on a Meraki system?  All Meraki gear (router, switches, & APs)?

Something definitely not right.  All firmware up to date?  What did Tech Support say?

I'm glad you said that....no, not all meraki gear. Meraki access points, antennas, etc...no switches. Routers (regular old LinkSys) that look like they were bought at your local big box retailer. May be mesh networking spread way too far? I dunno We haven't talked to tech support because why would we? We're replacing the old system. Maybe just a really bad system design? The current project at least...last one we did, the old wifi provider was using Meraki APs with Cisco 10/100 switches. I don't know where they were getting their bandwidth from, other than that it was a cable provider.

You know, I put expensive racing tires on my rusted out '75 Ford Pinto and I just can't understand why it won't go above 15 MPH!

All joking aside, you've got bigger problems here.  Meraki isn't your issue.  Sounds like you have a cobbled together mess of a network.  Enterprise grade APs on a shit foundation.  That isn't going to end well.