The Pros of Aerohive
- Lower costs
- Easily maneuverable web portal
- APs coordinate without a controller
If your organization is searching for a wireless LAN solution, you have probably already heard about Aerohive and Cisco products. The question remains: which one is better for your needs? We have consolidated real customer reviews in this blog to give a quick overview of both products.
Aerohive has forecasting capabilities in the form of wireless surveying and mapping. It can also stay working without support licensing, however, after 30 days without a license, an automated email will be sent out to all admins and Aerohive’s sales team will follow up. A red banner will also appear on the dashboard. It is unlikely a device will be bricked without the team being notified.
If your organization has a “no cloud” edict in effect, the Aerohive solution is best because it can be managed with a private Hivemanager.
Meraki has a more complete portfolio in comparison to Aerohive products. Meraki allows you to create templates in order to deploy and configure multiple devices en-mass.
On the support side, Meraki wins. Although pricing is more expensive than its Aerohive counterparts, the “extra service” you pay for in the difference gives you access to highly trained engineers.
Meraki also performs slightly better than Aerohive’s APs and is generally considered to have a more intuitive interface.
The Pros of Aerohive and Meraki
“We use Aerohive APs throughout our warehouses to support our distribution as well as supply chain. It addresses all issues with connecting the thousands of device that relies on our APs to communicate and connect to our core infrastructure services.”
The Pros of Meraki
- Appliances are easy to use
- Intuitive menus and dashboard
- Great support with well-written guides
- Easy to scale with seamless transitions
“I’ve found that Meraki Wireless Access Points are able to stack up against all of the other access point manufacturers I’ve used. I think they are more usable and easy to understand when compared to others like Fortinet, Aruba, or traditional Cisco wireless. I do think the features offered are enough for almost all companies looking for a good wifi plan. They have less detailed settings than Aruba and Cisco so if you have complicated deployments they might be missing some options you are after. Keeping it simple is how Meraki wins. They also have a much easier way to do a zero-touch deployment. You can add the access points in the dashboard and get them running very quickly. They can be managed from anywhere without a VPN or local connection which gives them an edge over their competition.” – Manager, IT
The Cons of Aerohive and Meraki
The Cons of Aerohive
- Does not support MFA or IP whitelisting in the management portal
- Technical support is lacking
- Branch router platform is buggy
“A large segment of the Aerohive client base is the education market, which is very different in terms of agility and immediate support needs of financial institutions. They seem to focus more effort on their wireless AP solutions, which I have only rarely tested. When it comes to remote access, the solution is still relatively expensive due to the upfront hardware purchase, though recurring costs are fairly low.” – Engineer, Financial Serivces
The Cons of Meraki
- Pricing model can be confusing
- Not the best for Enterprise deployments
- Integration with the corporate LAN where Catalyst products are installed is a challenge
“There are a few minor limitations for VPNs, site to site with other brands can be a problem. It doesn’t have the ability to handle a few of the esoteric protocols. I, at the moment, can’t remember which protocol we had a problem with, but we were able to work around the issue with Meraki’s help. The reporting isn’t all it could be, but it has come a long way and they continue to improve it.”
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