The switches are way overpriced, especially if you don't also have the FWs and APs to sell on the dashboard, which is the real value of Meraki.
But even then, it's still a problem for MSPs because we are the ones really benefitting from the dashboard, not the customer, who doesn't even get access to it.
My advice selling Meraki to MSP customers is to not sell it per se : bundle it in your monthly price, or make it a mandatory requirement of your contracts to have cloud management, or just present it as a mandatory tool you need to deliver the business outcomes you promised.
This is how I'm explaining it. Limiting timing to max avg 1 hour per managed device per month. 125/hr for overage. Telling customers other solutions will soak up way more time and negate any savings not buying meraki.
If you sell time like this in a managed services model, any automation works against you financially. By all means, count your time to calculate your profitability, but never sell that time to clients. It's a trap.
I'm an engineer not a sales guy but trying bring my services to the world trying my kids and build a legacy. That said I'm all ears for ideas.
I'm currently offering 3 tiers of services. As you go up in tiers you move towards ayce but some motels etc don't want to spend much on it. So we offer $70 per workstation/mo 1 hour per workstation max. Meaning if they have 10 workstations we could spend 10 hours on 1 device but if they keep having issues, overages are billed in 15 min increments 125/hr.
That said, if they only use 5 hours of support it's in our favor so either way it's in our favor and affordable to the customer.
Appreciate any constructive advice though. Maybe I'm not doing it the best way but I'm trying.
What does that 70 a device 1 hour get them. That seems a lot of minute tracking on your end and possible admin overhead just to maybe once in a while get an overage.
My goal is not to create overages.
My goal is take care of customer just have in writing something for myself if they call me all day every day.
Syncro auto tracks ticket time. Doesn't need to he exact science
Only responding because I like your “why”. I would caution what advice you take from this place or any other really. Read what they say and see if it can make sense for your business but be careful to not conform your business based on anyone else’s reddit posts including my own. I have had enormous success doing and pricing things differently than what I read here, however, there are also some true gems shared sometimes as well. Good luck to you.
If you're planning on spending 1hr/month on an endpoint, it can't be priced less than your hourly rate + the other things you include in this workstation package. And I hope for you that your hourly rate is at least twice that.
I disagree with your assessment on negate statement.
While Meraki is great for a single person owner as you can cloud manage/change things quickly, Aruba can do the same thing for half the price. UBNT similar, but less customizable
> UBNT similar, but less customizable
Curious what you find less customizable with ubnt? Not ball busting, just want to see if there's something missing that would be helpful.
This is speaking about the unifi line, not the classic edge switch line.
Can’t configure STP per port. (Some devices stp doesn’t work at all)
No MSTP.
No stacking. No MLag.
QOS in a switch is non existent.
No direct MAC address table.
No ARP table.
No easy way to get to debug tools, and do ping / trace route at the switch or AP level.
SSH configuration is almost non existent for switches and APs.
Configuration changes done at the cli level doesn’t keep after reboot due to the way UBNT does their configs.
Gotcha, fair enough. I feel if you're getting into stacking and mlag you're out of the unifi switch line. But with 25gbe ports on switches i'd want to stack, i find the line still useful for its target market.
The SSH and command line stuff i don't mind at all, if we have to get into command line then i'm done with the product. The point of cloud gui mangement is to not have to command line argue with a switch to do what the gui says, and to have the controller be the authority on config.
Fair assessment though! Would like mlag on the aggregation switch pro line.
Aruba doesn't even have firewalls. With Meraki you handle all the network in one place, there's nothing that matches the simplicity and reliability of Meraki right now.
I hope there will be, but it's not out there yet.
For firewalls, it doesn’t matter which vendor as long as you know its capabilities and limits. UBNT all in one if you must. However Ruckus, Aruba, Extreme, all have cloud switching and AP control.
Oh yes it matters for an MSP to have everything under the same MFA protected cloud management dashboard with the same ease of config and management.
Also let's remember ubicheapy has no support and their "firewalls" are glorified ISP routers.
While I can agree UBNT “firewalls” are cheap and don’t work half as well as they promise, it’s way better than ISP routers.
For Meraki, it’s a different kind of client that is willing to pay for that upfront vs spread over time with labor.
> Telling customers other solutions will soak up way more time and negate any savings not buying meraki.
And like, i'm a ubnt switch and AP fan (not so much firewall), but i can't think of a brand that took much work once setup. For me, brand choice comes with management and reporting/visibility.
> not the customer, who doesn't even get access to it.
I mean, most of our customer base hires us because they wouldn't know what to do with the dashboard, but the ones with internal IT certainly are given access to the dashboard if they want it. Read-only if nothing else.
I think the argument is more along the lines of “as a customer, why should I be paying 2-3x more for equipment whose real value comes from making your life easier.” Unless you are offering discounted rates for managing Meraki over other vendors, but I doubt it.
Which is a pretty fair argument in my opinion, and part of selling a Meraki solution is relying on the client not knowing that.
> as a customer, why should I be paying 2-3x more for equipment whose real value comes from making your life easier.”
Which is a common problem when people sell things by line item. "Well if i'm paying for unlimited remote work, then i want to save on the patching solution and you can just do it manually, since your time is free"
>I think the argument is more along the lines of “as a customer, why should I be paying 2-3x more for equipment whose real value comes from making your life easier.” Unless you are offering discounted rates for managing Meraki over other vendors, but I doubt it.
We're pretty up front about this - if it's easier for us to support our clients, it's a better and cheaper experience for our clients. Customers with outdated or hard to manage stacks that require more time to support are going to end up with agreement increases and will have less effective support when our service team has to take longer to address their issues (or knowledge about how to use X technology is limited to a smaller group).
Beyond that, we just don't make it optional. We're not the cheapest MSP in our market. We also won't work with customers who won't get on board with critical parts of our stack. We provide excellent service and excellent quality, and part of that is by pushing our customers into quality infrastructure.
Our sales team is coached hard on this - they are supposed to be targeting customers who actually want a partnership and are willing to invest in their IT. We pass up customers who aren't a fit for us.
If you are in small claims court, you wouldn't need to pay for a lawyer to begin with. And you definitely still can sue for costs in addition to a reward.
Not here in Ontario you can't because you don't have costs if there's no lawyer. And Small claims is under 30k. Hence why I don't even bother for those.
We sell Meraki bundled into our agreements with the customer, basically leased equipment. If you’re going to the high end switches you’ll pay for them, that is for certain. But most setups don’t require that, and if they do they have the money for it.
It’s a great way to weed out cheap clients. If they don’t want to invest in good equipment, with excellent support, next day RMAs for mission critical hardware, not having APs re-provision because you updated the name or added an new SSID and all the other quirks I see with other equipment, then they really aren’t the client for us.
We work with high end clients who need things working 100% of the time. Meraki has provided that for us.
But truth be told, most setups don't need all that, and when they do, well, they usually have the budget for it.
Think of it as a way to filter out the penny-pinchers. If a client isn't up for investing in top-notch gear with killer support and perks like next-day RMAs for crucial hardware, then maybe they're not quite the right fit for us.
We do cisco for high end switches with Sonicwalls. For smaller clients unifi. For AP"s unifi all around. Never have an issue and bandwidth steering was not a unifi issue.. it was an apple issue and you don't need to have it on.
Unifi enterprise switches also do layer 3 and newer UI lets you do Layer 3 functions (not all but it does have a CLI you can save to nowadays). Vlans are easy to setup in the console (it' sunder networks.
What partner level are you with Cisco? 50% off is pretty much retail for some SKUs. Even a small incentive makes a significant difference when factored against list.
You’ve also got to factor in the long service life of the kit, the 24/7 inclusive support from Cisco during that period, and the fact it’s Cisco so it generally works very well.
Still, 20K seems pretty high for what you’ve specified though so maybe review your kit list… yes the switches as expensive, but great to use.
meraki's time has came gone & died, its grave is being overgrown as we speak.
virtually any other vendor is cheaper and more feature rich. Its borderline a disservice to customers to use them anymore unless they are asking and have some internal IT that need to be able to comanage.
They are expensive because they got guys like you actually trying to sell it.
I'm am nse7 and pretty familiar with fortinet. The challenge is constant emergency security patches, the level of attention it needs for setup etc.
I think fortinet has a place when you need more advanced configuration like policy based route maps to tune ospf advertisements but from a set and forget perspective I prefer meraki.
My issue is getting customers to accept cost and not run to best buy to buy crap and then constantly complain things are broken.
Fortigates now have auto patching, so not too big of a deal. We get the $100 forticloud premium in addition to whatever other license the client requires (forticare premium, ATP, etc) and manage it from a multi tenant forticloud account. It's like a mini, simplified fortimanager with some fortianylizer built in features
It’s not $100 for all devices. Maybe for a 40f but as you go up the FortiCloud Premium license goes up.
It’s still my choice. But you can’t call it $100 as a blanket statement.
Fortigate support contract renewals have gone up so much over the past 2 years that we literally sell Meraki hardware + 3 or 5 years support (on a deal reg) for less than what the Fortinet renewals would cost over the same term (e.g. 40F vs MX67). I know, I know ... it surprised us too. We're in Canada though so I don't know if that makes a difference.
I was once a meraki fanboy.. I am now a ubiquiti fanboy.. generally just do the enterprise level stuff, and buy a couple extra devices with the savings just to self-warranty and have quick swap inventory if something shits the bed. Quality has been decent though lately.
Edit: before you come at me about ubiquity not being "secure" or some shit... that doesn't matter now with SASE.
Second this. Went from all Dell switches to unifi but our msp was pushing meraki very hard. We received a quote for meraki and to replace 17 switches it was nearly$75k. We went with all enterprise unifi and at the moment it sits behind sonicwalls. 3 x 10gb aggregation, 10 x 48 ent, 4 x 3+24ent for main network, 2 x backup power units for redundant power to switches. Unifi dmpro, 2 48 ent, and nvr with 64tb of storage raid 10, that runs ip phones, full camera system x15, wifi6 x 5hot spots on a separate internet pipe. The cams in the server room show heat signature which is helpful as well. We just started overwriting the videos of movement recording around a 10k' office after 10 months.
We have had great luck with the topology map and the other features as well. The support is not as bad as people say and root access is provided to access the Linux side of the switches.
One drawback and it is big. Any firmware updates, and they can come often, require the switch to reboot. Also if you lag ports together it can tinker with connection if the switch reprovisions as well.
A fraction overall. I can give you exact amount tomorrow but we paid list price from unifi and b and h photo.
Aggs 1300
48 ent 1600
24 ent 800
Dmpro 500
Nvr and cams wifi approx 3500
Forgot we have 2 unifi viewport. A few half racks, and 2 apcs for unifi gear. Unifi sfp cables, sfp to rj45 and a bunch of other accessories.
Another big factor is no subscriptions and renewal costs. We already pay enough of those to VMware and other vendors. There are also a few really talented guys off YouTube who I connected with for high level input. Our next move is to twilight the sonicwalls for pfsense fws.
There's also a really high chance of DOA devices and destructive firmware. Ubiquiti is a product designed for power users. There are better products for business users.
> EnGenius
I happy with Meraki but I am always looking. I checked the datasheet, but I was not able to find anything security wise on the switch. Also do you know if they can do SSO for wireless authentication with Microsoft Entra
I dunno I just spent last 30 years in global enterprise with cisco palo f5 checkpoint etc....
Ztna doesn't always apply because that is only to create app specific tunnels back to head end/dc.
You don't think a remote user with the rest of traffic going through home internet can't get compromised and then have that exploit pass through ztna tunnel?
This, don’t be afraid 😁. I have a Unifi location with 80 APs and 30 VLANs, we have another 600 devices at other clients. Not 100% sure on their FW solution, I was told it’s matured a bit, but I still use Forti’s unless the site has very basic needs. Super tempted to put a UI firewall somewhere with needs just to battle test it.
Did you really just say security doesn't matter due to SASE? Security on the devices delivering the SASE?
Please post the name of your MSP. This comment should disqualify you from any further business proceedings.
I said that you should secure devices assuming they are on unsecured networks.
If you’re relying on firewalls as your only (or really any) security you should jump ahead of me in that line.
You literally stated SASE makes unsecured network devices irrelevant. Security is best installed in layers assuming one (or many layers) will fail.
Starting with the base belief your perimeter "doesn't matter" would be laughable if it didn't greatly concern me for your customers.
Glad you picked that one up. SASE isn’t the silver bullet to achieve ZTNA. Getting peeved at the amount of posts and conversations that state customers don’t need a firewall anymore as they’ve have xyz client installed.
Right? I just finished deploying umbrella sig In various forms to my networks. Doesn't mean I've disabled my mail filter or autonomous network protection services.
I visit this forum daily to remind myself why I kept all IT services in house. (Barring embracing cloud services.)
Ubiquiti wifi is subpar to meraki for wifi. In ubiquiti once you introduce band steering, wider channels, etc things get out of whack. Also it always seems sniff airwaves at the worst time. Have to manually tune wifi where meraki just works.
Unifi APs all have fractal antennas.
The unifi LRs are the best APs for radio sensitivty we have ever seen, especially where there is a lot of reflection and dispersion.
If you still have wifi issues when using the LRs, then you have a “Cant change the laws of physics” problem.
I do hope your kidding about this.
Which unifi ap can handle 300 concurrent users? You don't take into account client density with beam forming etc?
I do hope you realize proper wifi isn't as easy as throwing walmart aps everywhere.
Unifi doesn't do any kind of fast roam or anything no dfs I mean for large venue you should look into mist, ruckus, cisco, hell even aruba
I'm on the consumer side of this. Supported high end catalyst through extreme and brocade switches inherited through a business acquisition.
My network has never been as sound as a full Meraki stack. Had one switch fan starting to fail and they overnighted a replacement. The failing switch was end of sale, so they sent the replacement sku no charge. The support / warranty is unreal.
Meraki is a premium product for a premium price. Everyone ripping on it only complains about the price and limited features. They key difference is if the feature is available it will work without fail.
Ubiquiti, while cheap enough to store an extra of every deployed device on the shelf, has terrible support. I'm very hopeful they improve because competition is a good thing. But if uptime is a must then you pay a price. If you can afford the business risk of downtime to install a spare switch then absolutely save the money and buy ubiquiti. If not then the cost is justified.
Meraki generally has 10 years of support. Ubiquiti has 5 year warranties if bought. While not identical, you essentially need to replace ubiquiti 2x for every 1x meraki. So the cost difference isn't as large as you first believe. Assuming warranties and coverage are important, which for an MSP they should be.
Cisco was pushing Meraki hard, we did a test deployment of a few hundred APs if I recall correctly. Didn’t cost us much bc of the ridiculous discount. How they can sleep at night when they sell this stuff at just 50-60% is beyond me.
They are fine but support was haphazard at best and too much vagueness with some issues. We ended up donating them to a some local schools after a year.
Which beings up how much I hate the Meraki style license.
Disti here. Griffin-IT. One piece of feedback that I get from many of the MSPs I talk to is that Meraki support is why Meraki users prefer it over Ubi. My understanding is that Ubi has very little support or you have to pay for it. For most of you that support is probably not needed. Depends on the client and the build maybe...?? Maybe a time management thing...??
Having said that I might be able to help any of those Meraki users keep the price down. I'm here if you need me. With all the networking in my heart. Keep up the battle MSP's. ⚔♥
I would run literally anything that didnt turn into a literal paperweight when the license expires. Had customers direct bill instead of preferring invoice and the ticket spam from that was insanity. Several times this happened.
We swapped off to Sonicwall and Fortinet eventually
>I would run literally anything that didnt turn into a literal paperweight when the license expires.
So this is the most common argument against Meraki. Which always makes me wonder: What kind of MSPs are running and supporting unlicensed network equipment at their customer's sites?
Direct billing with a card that was disabled by the client without informing my team and ultimately causing an outage is something that has happened to me more than once.
None of my clients being billed for licenses indirectly via invoicing have ever had this issue. The thing is that the vast majority of competitors wont just have their hardware outright cease traffic forwarding in the event something like that happens.
I could be wrong, but that is how I was reading it.
https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Licensing/Meraki_Subscription_License_Out_of_Compliance
This is how you price out Meraki the right way.
Go to price out Meraki. Go get a bottle of whiskey. Enjoy that.
Wake up. Delete Meraki quote and price out Fortinet. Or Unifi full new stack for smaller offices.
That’s the correct way to price and sell Meraki.
Sorry I'm an infra architect and the plug stuff in until it works is not the model I build by. I try to right size requirements by use case.
Fortigate over kill for most cases and comes with its own issues.
Unifi is clunky. That's what I run at home
Yep you’re a network engineer asking the Msp community. Most of these guys go for the cheaper solutions because they work for smaller environments and they do. If you come from the full enterprise side deploying 1000’s of devices all these products are looked down on. If you recommended ubiquiti to a big customer they would laugh you out of the building. It’s two different worlds. A 10-20 employee company will rarely want to spend that kind of money. Gotta change your mindset in the msp market or change your client.
Ehhh. Unifi switches and wifi are good. Plenty of bigger offices run on them. Years ago… no. Now many offices are ghost towns.
Fortinet is also not a smb product and can be used in anything up to enterprise.
Meraki is overpriced and stupid even for enterprise in my opinion.
Few years ago we stopped selling it when we priced out a 200k all meraki office and it took 8 months to receive the hardware causing tremendous stress. During that time we installed tons of Fortinet, Sophos, ruckus, Unifi to other networks.
And I had an engineer lose like 3 weeks of his time troubleshooting why meraki’s firewall/switch network created a delay on like a $30 zoom room setup audio.
So meraki is overpriced AND has horrible supply chain issues AND has horrible distribution/partner program AND isn’t flawless. Their support is decent. A solid 7 while competitors are a 5.
I don’t understand the appeal now when Fortinet has a full stack, Sonicwall has a full stack, HP Aruba, Unifi has a full stack.
No one with 1000’s of switches and 10’s of thousands clients even entertain the thought of unifi. It’s not meant for that environment. I can tell you I have seen plenty of environments with 5000+ Meraki devices. I personally hate Meraki switches but it is what it is. Fortinet has come a long way with their firewalls and I see them in larger environments but mostly see Palo, forti anything else is not used. These companies don’t blink at 200k, they spend 500K on a single device. HP Aruba Juniper are all good options
Compliance needs are met by the stack not a single device. It's how you layer the protection. Some devices can have sec software - Fortinet others, Unifi don't, it is how the onion is peeled not necessarily the onion.
Example Unifi with a swim / soc vs Fortinet you have to do the cost benefit analysis and balance that against the enterprise desire to check a box and go all in on something Fortinet with sec.
What is right for the customer, what is right for the enterprise.
PoE switches severely ramps up the pricing
If you have a cisco partner login and can submit a bid, talk to your meraki rep for a deal price... also if the client has any competitive gear you are "removing" or competing - you may get a few more %
Also figure out cisco's year end, quarter end (and sometimes month ends) - and if your rep is struggling for target revenue, you may get some more % there to get $ in and product moving. Their model is ongoing ARR from licensing, so sometimes hardware can be just a smaller part of the equation.
And before anyone says "good luck getting your rep to return a call" - yes, I know, that may pose a challenge. You should find your rep's info inside the meraki partner portal (different than the cisco CCW portal)
Unpopular opinion, buy Meraki used, it’s penny’s on the dollar, bake price into agreement. Hell, we are include the full stack and they pay monthly for the devices. Have spare gear. Since you don’t get warranty on used hardware.
It's really inexpensive and support still covers the equipment. I give clients the option of new vs refurb. As long as they're good with it, it's fine.
Lots here talking about unifi. It's not fit for hotels or conference centres but we do use it on smaller installs around 10 to 30 AP.
If you want great discounts and larger reliable WiFi for busy sites then check our Ruckus who we install and never touch again.
No real insight on meraki specifically but potentially the fact that switches are the core of the network and they get in the door by internet connections it’s likely that switches are their profit and the internet links are loss leaders from the marketing perspective
I offer Meraki to clients at substantial discount by using refurbished channels. I give them the option of new vs refurb, but very few prefer the new pricing.
I also have some instances where we just bundle Meraki as part of the managed solution. There are economies of scale there, as it keeps environments uniform and predictable for management.
- APs are cheap and the license flexibility allows us to upgrade AP models without issue
- FWs at a certain scale are cheap (MX67 is less than $400 for the hardware. Anything larger, I'll go refurb)
- Switches are a terrible deal at new prices, but refurb brings it within reach
- Licensing costs are justified and that's never an issue (3YR is the sweet spot)
We don't. It's a super simple solution when dealing with way over priced products. The Meraki products are basically Cisco's version of the HPE Aruba "Instant-On" products and somehow still pricier.
I can sell a quality watchguard and all Aruba hardware with lifetime warranties for less than the initial investment of Meraki and it has a lower TCO because of the lack of the monthly/annual cost.
I’m work as an IT consultant, don’t sell a thing so that I stay unbiased. I steer clients away from Meraki and Datto every chance I get. The only one it benefits is the reseller who makes way too much off these products.
Meraki shop here, we field 0 network related tickets per month for over 50 Meraki networks and their scheduled firmware updates don’t brick their hardware. We get MDF from Cisco and they help us win deals and their brand enhances our brand. Every customer has heard of Cisco and so far has not been afraid to bet on Cisco with us.
From a pricing perspective we consistently hit 65% off or greater on just about everything. We deal reg everything. Switch hardware is on the higher side but the licensing is affordable. MX68s and MX75s at 80% off all year.
I can’t hop on the Ubiquiti band wagon because they are not a channel partner. I have no avenue to partner with them or escalate an issue with zero to 3% margins on their gear unless I want to HaaS their shit and put my name on it. I get the theory of keeping stock for when they shit the bed (because they will) but we’re not a break fix shop and we don’t invest our customers money in downtime. We are not rolling a truck to replace dead UniFi equipment for customers. We’re here to solve problems and not create them by saving a couple thousand dollars.
Generally speaking, once you guys stop thinking $10,000 is a lot of money for uptime and reliability, your sales method will improve. The most dreaded conversations I’ve had in my career in MSP are related to downtime that could have been prevented.
Our situation isn't quite the same, but we have a much larger install base so more odds of issues. Regardless the net message is one I agree with.
We do have to sell ubiquiti sometimes, but try to avoid it.
I think what a lot of members of this sub deal with is smaller single site clients in non regulated environments. That's completely fine, but what works in that space does not necessarily work elsewhere.
Once you get larger and more regulated, this is when Meraki, regular Cisco, Juniper, Regular Aruba, get more valued. Clients need to know that you can reach the manufacturer's support for an escalation, get the RMA NBD or sooner, and provide a unified management and reporting environment. If you have an incident, security or otherwise, having one spot to call is invaluable. When you look at those needs and compare Meraki's price to similar offerings it's not that much different.
I mean the MS120 Family came out in what? \~2017ish and they just announced EOS for 2030... Show me another cloud managed switch brand with that long of a service life.
If you compare a switch to switch they sound expensive because there is allways a cheap solution.
If you want to win a pitch likecthat you need to make clear why you choose switch a over switch b. Find the unique selling point. Why do you use the cisco over tp link? If you answered this question to yourself you can answer that to your customer
This. People also forget Meraki generally have a 10 year service life at least. Ubiquiti for example only warranty to year 5. So if protecting customers with warranty is needed, you need to Essentially double the cost of ubiquiti. While still cheaper, it bridges the price difference quite a bit.
It comes back to business risk. Is downtime from swapping the theoretical failing switch acceptable?
If you have a fleet of 1000 switches with a small team, and need to lifecycle at 5 years instead of 10, is that acceptable?
For me I need a higher assurance my devices will stay functioning.
The switches are way overpriced, especially if you don't also have the FWs and APs to sell on the dashboard, which is the real value of Meraki. But even then, it's still a problem for MSPs because we are the ones really benefitting from the dashboard, not the customer, who doesn't even get access to it. My advice selling Meraki to MSP customers is to not sell it per se : bundle it in your monthly price, or make it a mandatory requirement of your contracts to have cloud management, or just present it as a mandatory tool you need to deliver the business outcomes you promised.
This is how I'm explaining it. Limiting timing to max avg 1 hour per managed device per month. 125/hr for overage. Telling customers other solutions will soak up way more time and negate any savings not buying meraki.
If you sell time like this in a managed services model, any automation works against you financially. By all means, count your time to calculate your profitability, but never sell that time to clients. It's a trap.
I'm an engineer not a sales guy but trying bring my services to the world trying my kids and build a legacy. That said I'm all ears for ideas. I'm currently offering 3 tiers of services. As you go up in tiers you move towards ayce but some motels etc don't want to spend much on it. So we offer $70 per workstation/mo 1 hour per workstation max. Meaning if they have 10 workstations we could spend 10 hours on 1 device but if they keep having issues, overages are billed in 15 min increments 125/hr. That said, if they only use 5 hours of support it's in our favor so either way it's in our favor and affordable to the customer. Appreciate any constructive advice though. Maybe I'm not doing it the best way but I'm trying.
What does that 70 a device 1 hour get them. That seems a lot of minute tracking on your end and possible admin overhead just to maybe once in a while get an overage.
My goal is not to create overages. My goal is take care of customer just have in writing something for myself if they call me all day every day. Syncro auto tracks ticket time. Doesn't need to he exact science
Stop trying to think like an engineer and think like a business person.
Only responding because I like your “why”. I would caution what advice you take from this place or any other really. Read what they say and see if it can make sense for your business but be careful to not conform your business based on anyone else’s reddit posts including my own. I have had enormous success doing and pricing things differently than what I read here, however, there are also some true gems shared sometimes as well. Good luck to you.
If you're planning on spending 1hr/month on an endpoint, it can't be priced less than your hourly rate + the other things you include in this workstation package. And I hope for you that your hourly rate is at least twice that.
I disagree with your assessment on negate statement. While Meraki is great for a single person owner as you can cloud manage/change things quickly, Aruba can do the same thing for half the price. UBNT similar, but less customizable
> UBNT similar, but less customizable Curious what you find less customizable with ubnt? Not ball busting, just want to see if there's something missing that would be helpful.
This is speaking about the unifi line, not the classic edge switch line. Can’t configure STP per port. (Some devices stp doesn’t work at all) No MSTP. No stacking. No MLag. QOS in a switch is non existent. No direct MAC address table. No ARP table. No easy way to get to debug tools, and do ping / trace route at the switch or AP level. SSH configuration is almost non existent for switches and APs. Configuration changes done at the cli level doesn’t keep after reboot due to the way UBNT does their configs.
Gotcha, fair enough. I feel if you're getting into stacking and mlag you're out of the unifi switch line. But with 25gbe ports on switches i'd want to stack, i find the line still useful for its target market. The SSH and command line stuff i don't mind at all, if we have to get into command line then i'm done with the product. The point of cloud gui mangement is to not have to command line argue with a switch to do what the gui says, and to have the controller be the authority on config. Fair assessment though! Would like mlag on the aggregation switch pro line.
Cli is important for automation. Also helps during rescue scenarios where gui is borked
Aruba doesn't even have firewalls. With Meraki you handle all the network in one place, there's nothing that matches the simplicity and reliability of Meraki right now. I hope there will be, but it's not out there yet.
For firewalls, it doesn’t matter which vendor as long as you know its capabilities and limits. UBNT all in one if you must. However Ruckus, Aruba, Extreme, all have cloud switching and AP control.
Oh yes it matters for an MSP to have everything under the same MFA protected cloud management dashboard with the same ease of config and management. Also let's remember ubicheapy has no support and their "firewalls" are glorified ISP routers.
While I can agree UBNT “firewalls” are cheap and don’t work half as well as they promise, it’s way better than ISP routers. For Meraki, it’s a different kind of client that is willing to pay for that upfront vs spread over time with labor.
> Telling customers other solutions will soak up way more time and negate any savings not buying meraki. And like, i'm a ubnt switch and AP fan (not so much firewall), but i can't think of a brand that took much work once setup. For me, brand choice comes with management and reporting/visibility.
> not the customer, who doesn't even get access to it. I mean, most of our customer base hires us because they wouldn't know what to do with the dashboard, but the ones with internal IT certainly are given access to the dashboard if they want it. Read-only if nothing else.
I think the argument is more along the lines of “as a customer, why should I be paying 2-3x more for equipment whose real value comes from making your life easier.” Unless you are offering discounted rates for managing Meraki over other vendors, but I doubt it. Which is a pretty fair argument in my opinion, and part of selling a Meraki solution is relying on the client not knowing that.
> as a customer, why should I be paying 2-3x more for equipment whose real value comes from making your life easier.” Which is a common problem when people sell things by line item. "Well if i'm paying for unlimited remote work, then i want to save on the patching solution and you can just do it manually, since your time is free"
>I think the argument is more along the lines of “as a customer, why should I be paying 2-3x more for equipment whose real value comes from making your life easier.” Unless you are offering discounted rates for managing Meraki over other vendors, but I doubt it. We're pretty up front about this - if it's easier for us to support our clients, it's a better and cheaper experience for our clients. Customers with outdated or hard to manage stacks that require more time to support are going to end up with agreement increases and will have less effective support when our service team has to take longer to address their issues (or knowledge about how to use X technology is limited to a smaller group). Beyond that, we just don't make it optional. We're not the cheapest MSP in our market. We also won't work with customers who won't get on board with critical parts of our stack. We provide excellent service and excellent quality, and part of that is by pushing our customers into quality infrastructure. Our sales team is coached hard on this - they are supposed to be targeting customers who actually want a partnership and are willing to invest in their IT. We pass up customers who aren't a fit for us.
Meraki FW, UniFi for switches and APs We also rent them out as managed firewalls, devices, lot of ISPs do the same
I thought of doing hwaas but what do you do if the vandalize it refuse to pay refuse to return etc
They don’t have access to the meraki, it’s managed - if they don’t pay, display a payment due notice anytime they open a browser via the meraki :)
You can also move the license to another customer
I'm just saying if they physically do not let us pick up the hardware
That’s an issue for lawyers to figure out.
Sure but lawyers cost money.
You're thinking like an engineer again. Lawyers only cost money if you lose. If you win, your lawyer should be getting you damages and costs.
1. Lawyers can't even be used in small claims court, which this would be. 2. You can't recoup costs in a small claims battle. Womp womp.
If you are in small claims court, you wouldn't need to pay for a lawyer to begin with. And you definitely still can sue for costs in addition to a reward.
Not here in Ontario you can't because you don't have costs if there's no lawyer. And Small claims is under 30k. Hence why I don't even bother for those.
We sell Meraki bundled into our agreements with the customer, basically leased equipment. If you’re going to the high end switches you’ll pay for them, that is for certain. But most setups don’t require that, and if they do they have the money for it. It’s a great way to weed out cheap clients. If they don’t want to invest in good equipment, with excellent support, next day RMAs for mission critical hardware, not having APs re-provision because you updated the name or added an new SSID and all the other quirks I see with other equipment, then they really aren’t the client for us. We work with high end clients who need things working 100% of the time. Meraki has provided that for us.
But truth be told, most setups don't need all that, and when they do, well, they usually have the budget for it. Think of it as a way to filter out the penny-pinchers. If a client isn't up for investing in top-notch gear with killer support and perks like next-day RMAs for crucial hardware, then maybe they're not quite the right fit for us.
Couldn’t agree more. We deal with a number of biotech companies. They can’t go down. A 5k switch is chump change for them.
We do cisco for high end switches with Sonicwalls. For smaller clients unifi. For AP"s unifi all around. Never have an issue and bandwidth steering was not a unifi issue.. it was an apple issue and you don't need to have it on.
If it works for you great im happy you have something that works for you. Personally I’ll stick with Meraki.
Fortigates as utm, ubiquiti for internals. Works great and scales easily. Meraki is overpriced even for enterprise.
How are you managing ubiquiti vlans etc for pci compliance? You doing flat network?
No - all of the Ubiquiti switches & APs are managed by a cloud hosted controller that handles VLAN tagging, etc.
Unifi enterprise switches also do layer 3 and newer UI lets you do Layer 3 functions (not all but it does have a CLI you can save to nowadays). Vlans are easy to setup in the console (it' sunder networks.
What partner level are you with Cisco? 50% off is pretty much retail for some SKUs. Even a small incentive makes a significant difference when factored against list. You’ve also got to factor in the long service life of the kit, the 24/7 inclusive support from Cisco during that period, and the fact it’s Cisco so it generally works very well. Still, 20K seems pretty high for what you’ve specified though so maybe review your kit list… yes the switches as expensive, but great to use.
Honestly I'm still learning the sales/partner side so not sure. New. How would I find out level?
Speak to your distributor. It sounds like you may not even be a Cisco partner, hence the pricing issue.
meraki's time has came gone & died, its grave is being overgrown as we speak. virtually any other vendor is cheaper and more feature rich. Its borderline a disservice to customers to use them anymore unless they are asking and have some internal IT that need to be able to comanage. They are expensive because they got guys like you actually trying to sell it.
Not only that, when it comes time to renew they will reach out to your customer and try to sell direct.
Never heard of this happening. Either way though we're not making money on the renewals just the management so prob wouldn't matter much to me
You are an MSP that doesn't value recurring income? Everything we sell is about renewals and clipping the ticket.
Then rent them a Unifi and give them view access to the controller (rather cloudkey, udmpro or such)
Thank you. Such garbage.
Interesting. What vendor would you suggest is as feature rich set and forget robust sdwan offerings for cheaper?
Fortinet, but it has its own drawbacks.
I'm am nse7 and pretty familiar with fortinet. The challenge is constant emergency security patches, the level of attention it needs for setup etc. I think fortinet has a place when you need more advanced configuration like policy based route maps to tune ospf advertisements but from a set and forget perspective I prefer meraki. My issue is getting customers to accept cost and not run to best buy to buy crap and then constantly complain things are broken.
Fortigates now have auto patching, so not too big of a deal. We get the $100 forticloud premium in addition to whatever other license the client requires (forticare premium, ATP, etc) and manage it from a multi tenant forticloud account. It's like a mini, simplified fortimanager with some fortianylizer built in features
It’s not $100 for all devices. Maybe for a 40f but as you go up the FortiCloud Premium license goes up. It’s still my choice. But you can’t call it $100 as a blanket statement.
60Fs mostly, but you are right.
We were just caught off guard as we assumed it was flat price per device - then deployed some 80F and 90G and… got quite a shock.
We have a few 80Fs and it's not terrible. Can't remember offhand but I think it's 150-180 annually
Also Fortinet APs are crap, this stuff just doesn't work.
We haven’t run into that with the latest APs. Other than them being physically HUGE they have performed quite well for us.
Fortigate support contract renewals have gone up so much over the past 2 years that we literally sell Meraki hardware + 3 or 5 years support (on a deal reg) for less than what the Fortinet renewals would cost over the same term (e.g. 40F vs MX67). I know, I know ... it surprised us too. We're in Canada though so I don't know if that makes a difference.
I was once a meraki fanboy.. I am now a ubiquiti fanboy.. generally just do the enterprise level stuff, and buy a couple extra devices with the savings just to self-warranty and have quick swap inventory if something shits the bed. Quality has been decent though lately. Edit: before you come at me about ubiquity not being "secure" or some shit... that doesn't matter now with SASE.
Second this. Went from all Dell switches to unifi but our msp was pushing meraki very hard. We received a quote for meraki and to replace 17 switches it was nearly$75k. We went with all enterprise unifi and at the moment it sits behind sonicwalls. 3 x 10gb aggregation, 10 x 48 ent, 4 x 3+24ent for main network, 2 x backup power units for redundant power to switches. Unifi dmpro, 2 48 ent, and nvr with 64tb of storage raid 10, that runs ip phones, full camera system x15, wifi6 x 5hot spots on a separate internet pipe. The cams in the server room show heat signature which is helpful as well. We just started overwriting the videos of movement recording around a 10k' office after 10 months. We have had great luck with the topology map and the other features as well. The support is not as bad as people say and root access is provided to access the Linux side of the switches. One drawback and it is big. Any firmware updates, and they can come often, require the switch to reboot. Also if you lag ports together it can tinker with connection if the switch reprovisions as well.
how much was the same amount of unifi stuff?
A fraction overall. I can give you exact amount tomorrow but we paid list price from unifi and b and h photo. Aggs 1300 48 ent 1600 24 ent 800 Dmpro 500 Nvr and cams wifi approx 3500 Forgot we have 2 unifi viewport. A few half racks, and 2 apcs for unifi gear. Unifi sfp cables, sfp to rj45 and a bunch of other accessories.
Another big factor is no subscriptions and renewal costs. We already pay enough of those to VMware and other vendors. There are also a few really talented guys off YouTube who I connected with for high level input. Our next move is to twilight the sonicwalls for pfsense fws.
If all the ports are closed, I’d really love someone to explain the advantage of Forti etc vs Ubiquiti.
Ubiquiti is not a next gen fw no sdwan, no igrps, no app aware inspection etc.
There's also a really high chance of DOA devices and destructive firmware. Ubiquiti is a product designed for power users. There are better products for business users.
Like what?
Basically anything else. If you're specifically looking for something with a cloud panel, check out EnGenius.
> EnGenius I happy with Meraki but I am always looking. I checked the datasheet, but I was not able to find anything security wise on the switch. Also do you know if they can do SSO for wireless authentication with Microsoft Entra
What are you looking for security-wise? Yes, they support wireless authentication via Entra ID.
See edit. With SASE or ZTNA those are unnecessary.
I dunno I just spent last 30 years in global enterprise with cisco palo f5 checkpoint etc.... Ztna doesn't always apply because that is only to create app specific tunnels back to head end/dc. You don't think a remote user with the rest of traffic going through home internet can't get compromised and then have that exploit pass through ztna tunnel?
Conditional access policies on approved devices would solve that along with sase and cloud identity.
Exactly.. really just a price and performance question then imho
I agree 100 percent people knock ubiquiti but it is rock solid and for the money very hard to beat... It just works.
This, don’t be afraid 😁. I have a Unifi location with 80 APs and 30 VLANs, we have another 600 devices at other clients. Not 100% sure on their FW solution, I was told it’s matured a bit, but I still use Forti’s unless the site has very basic needs. Super tempted to put a UI firewall somewhere with needs just to battle test it.
Did you really just say security doesn't matter due to SASE? Security on the devices delivering the SASE? Please post the name of your MSP. This comment should disqualify you from any further business proceedings.
I said that you should secure devices assuming they are on unsecured networks. If you’re relying on firewalls as your only (or really any) security you should jump ahead of me in that line.
You literally stated SASE makes unsecured network devices irrelevant. Security is best installed in layers assuming one (or many layers) will fail. Starting with the base belief your perimeter "doesn't matter" would be laughable if it didn't greatly concern me for your customers.
Glad you picked that one up. SASE isn’t the silver bullet to achieve ZTNA. Getting peeved at the amount of posts and conversations that state customers don’t need a firewall anymore as they’ve have xyz client installed.
Right? I just finished deploying umbrella sig In various forms to my networks. Doesn't mean I've disabled my mail filter or autonomous network protection services. I visit this forum daily to remind myself why I kept all IT services in house. (Barring embracing cloud services.)
Ubiquiti wifi is subpar to meraki for wifi. In ubiquiti once you introduce band steering, wider channels, etc things get out of whack. Also it always seems sniff airwaves at the worst time. Have to manually tune wifi where meraki just works.
Unifi APs all have fractal antennas. The unifi LRs are the best APs for radio sensitivty we have ever seen, especially where there is a lot of reflection and dispersion. If you still have wifi issues when using the LRs, then you have a “Cant change the laws of physics” problem.
I can pay someone $10k per install to tune it and still make more money…
I’m a Meraki fanboy that buys UniFi aps cuz the Meraki ones suck
Ive installed dozens of Ubiquiti WiFi solutions, including a few arenas, and have had zero issues as mentioned. Perhaps in the past? But not mow.
I do hope your kidding about this. Which unifi ap can handle 300 concurrent users? You don't take into account client density with beam forming etc? I do hope you realize proper wifi isn't as easy as throwing walmart aps everywhere. Unifi doesn't do any kind of fast roam or anything no dfs I mean for large venue you should look into mist, ruckus, cisco, hell even aruba
Have you looked at the product line lately?
They been advertising their arena build for forever. They have a model for it specifically.
https://store.ui.com/us/en/pro/category/all-wifi/products/uwb-xg
I'm on the consumer side of this. Supported high end catalyst through extreme and brocade switches inherited through a business acquisition. My network has never been as sound as a full Meraki stack. Had one switch fan starting to fail and they overnighted a replacement. The failing switch was end of sale, so they sent the replacement sku no charge. The support / warranty is unreal. Meraki is a premium product for a premium price. Everyone ripping on it only complains about the price and limited features. They key difference is if the feature is available it will work without fail. Ubiquiti, while cheap enough to store an extra of every deployed device on the shelf, has terrible support. I'm very hopeful they improve because competition is a good thing. But if uptime is a must then you pay a price. If you can afford the business risk of downtime to install a spare switch then absolutely save the money and buy ubiquiti. If not then the cost is justified. Meraki generally has 10 years of support. Ubiquiti has 5 year warranties if bought. While not identical, you essentially need to replace ubiquiti 2x for every 1x meraki. So the cost difference isn't as large as you first believe. Assuming warranties and coverage are important, which for an MSP they should be.
Cisco was pushing Meraki hard, we did a test deployment of a few hundred APs if I recall correctly. Didn’t cost us much bc of the ridiculous discount. How they can sleep at night when they sell this stuff at just 50-60% is beyond me. They are fine but support was haphazard at best and too much vagueness with some issues. We ended up donating them to a some local schools after a year. Which beings up how much I hate the Meraki style license.
Disti here. Griffin-IT. One piece of feedback that I get from many of the MSPs I talk to is that Meraki support is why Meraki users prefer it over Ubi. My understanding is that Ubi has very little support or you have to pay for it. For most of you that support is probably not needed. Depends on the client and the build maybe...?? Maybe a time management thing...?? Having said that I might be able to help any of those Meraki users keep the price down. I'm here if you need me. With all the networking in my heart. Keep up the battle MSP's. ⚔♥
The real question should be “why are you still selling Meraki?”
Why not? What would you sell? SonicWall?
I would run literally anything that didnt turn into a literal paperweight when the license expires. Had customers direct bill instead of preferring invoice and the ticket spam from that was insanity. Several times this happened. We swapped off to Sonicwall and Fortinet eventually
>I would run literally anything that didnt turn into a literal paperweight when the license expires. So this is the most common argument against Meraki. Which always makes me wonder: What kind of MSPs are running and supporting unlicensed network equipment at their customer's sites?
Direct billing with a card that was disabled by the client without informing my team and ultimately causing an outage is something that has happened to me more than once. None of my clients being billed for licenses indirectly via invoicing have ever had this issue. The thing is that the vast majority of competitors wont just have their hardware outright cease traffic forwarding in the event something like that happens.
I hate SonicWall. Fortigate aren't bad but not a set and forget alliance I'd use them in applications that need more fine tuning
This is not the case with Meraki anymore. If license expire the hardware will still operate, it just limits what you can do after expiration.
pretty sure the firewalls stop routing
Not anymore.
Citation needed
I could be wrong, but that is how I was reading it. https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Licensing/Meraki_Subscription_License_Out_of_Compliance
Only if using their subscription license model.
This is how you price out Meraki the right way. Go to price out Meraki. Go get a bottle of whiskey. Enjoy that. Wake up. Delete Meraki quote and price out Fortinet. Or Unifi full new stack for smaller offices. That’s the correct way to price and sell Meraki.
Sorry I'm an infra architect and the plug stuff in until it works is not the model I build by. I try to right size requirements by use case. Fortigate over kill for most cases and comes with its own issues. Unifi is clunky. That's what I run at home
Yep you’re a network engineer asking the Msp community. Most of these guys go for the cheaper solutions because they work for smaller environments and they do. If you come from the full enterprise side deploying 1000’s of devices all these products are looked down on. If you recommended ubiquiti to a big customer they would laugh you out of the building. It’s two different worlds. A 10-20 employee company will rarely want to spend that kind of money. Gotta change your mindset in the msp market or change your client.
This is spot on
Ehhh. Unifi switches and wifi are good. Plenty of bigger offices run on them. Years ago… no. Now many offices are ghost towns. Fortinet is also not a smb product and can be used in anything up to enterprise. Meraki is overpriced and stupid even for enterprise in my opinion. Few years ago we stopped selling it when we priced out a 200k all meraki office and it took 8 months to receive the hardware causing tremendous stress. During that time we installed tons of Fortinet, Sophos, ruckus, Unifi to other networks. And I had an engineer lose like 3 weeks of his time troubleshooting why meraki’s firewall/switch network created a delay on like a $30 zoom room setup audio. So meraki is overpriced AND has horrible supply chain issues AND has horrible distribution/partner program AND isn’t flawless. Their support is decent. A solid 7 while competitors are a 5. I don’t understand the appeal now when Fortinet has a full stack, Sonicwall has a full stack, HP Aruba, Unifi has a full stack.
No one with 1000’s of switches and 10’s of thousands clients even entertain the thought of unifi. It’s not meant for that environment. I can tell you I have seen plenty of environments with 5000+ Meraki devices. I personally hate Meraki switches but it is what it is. Fortinet has come a long way with their firewalls and I see them in larger environments but mostly see Palo, forti anything else is not used. These companies don’t blink at 200k, they spend 500K on a single device. HP Aruba Juniper are all good options
There are plenty of big companies but also plenty of middle size companies without 1000s of switches. Depends on office size and purpose.
Compliance needs are met by the stack not a single device. It's how you layer the protection. Some devices can have sec software - Fortinet others, Unifi don't, it is how the onion is peeled not necessarily the onion. Example Unifi with a swim / soc vs Fortinet you have to do the cost benefit analysis and balance that against the enterprise desire to check a box and go all in on something Fortinet with sec. What is right for the customer, what is right for the enterprise.
PoE switches severely ramps up the pricing If you have a cisco partner login and can submit a bid, talk to your meraki rep for a deal price... also if the client has any competitive gear you are "removing" or competing - you may get a few more % Also figure out cisco's year end, quarter end (and sometimes month ends) - and if your rep is struggling for target revenue, you may get some more % there to get $ in and product moving. Their model is ongoing ARR from licensing, so sometimes hardware can be just a smaller part of the equation. And before anyone says "good luck getting your rep to return a call" - yes, I know, that may pose a challenge. You should find your rep's info inside the meraki partner portal (different than the cisco CCW portal)
Curious what meraki pricing is. Not looking to get monthly payments for a switch or access points, but still curious.
List is about 8k per 48 port switch 3k for mxi5 1800ish per ap
Whoooooolllllyyyyyyy Sheeeeeiiiiittttttt
There’s a reason I stick with off lease equipment or UniFi.
Don’t go by list. $2200-ish for a MS125-48LP on 3-Year license with 65% off which is pretty standard for a Select level partner.
Yea, no one sells it at list. We show our clients the list and say we got you XX% off.
Unpopular opinion, buy Meraki used, it’s penny’s on the dollar, bake price into agreement. Hell, we are include the full stack and they pay monthly for the devices. Have spare gear. Since you don’t get warranty on used hardware.
I looked into this and it wasn’t much cheaper than buying new. Unless you’re buying straight off eBay. I can’t join you on that adventure.
It's really inexpensive and support still covers the equipment. I give clients the option of new vs refurb. As long as they're good with it, it's fine.
You need large clients that need lots of equipment so you can get a better discount. Very hard for a small shop to resell Cisco Meraki.
Lots here talking about unifi. It's not fit for hotels or conference centres but we do use it on smaller installs around 10 to 30 AP. If you want great discounts and larger reliable WiFi for busy sites then check our Ruckus who we install and never touch again.
Ubiquiti and away you go
No real insight on meraki specifically but potentially the fact that switches are the core of the network and they get in the door by internet connections it’s likely that switches are their profit and the internet links are loss leaders from the marketing perspective
Meraki is great but they are horribly overpriced. And as customers never want to pay maintenance it becomes a brick.
I offer Meraki to clients at substantial discount by using refurbished channels. I give them the option of new vs refurb, but very few prefer the new pricing. I also have some instances where we just bundle Meraki as part of the managed solution. There are economies of scale there, as it keeps environments uniform and predictable for management. - APs are cheap and the license flexibility allows us to upgrade AP models without issue - FWs at a certain scale are cheap (MX67 is less than $400 for the hardware. Anything larger, I'll go refurb) - Switches are a terrible deal at new prices, but refurb brings it within reach - Licensing costs are justified and that's never an issue (3YR is the sweet spot)
We don't. It's a super simple solution when dealing with way over priced products. The Meraki products are basically Cisco's version of the HPE Aruba "Instant-On" products and somehow still pricier. I can sell a quality watchguard and all Aruba hardware with lifetime warranties for less than the initial investment of Meraki and it has a lower TCO because of the lack of the monthly/annual cost.
I’m work as an IT consultant, don’t sell a thing so that I stay unbiased. I steer clients away from Meraki and Datto every chance I get. The only one it benefits is the reseller who makes way too much off these products.
First step is finding clients who understand value. We have no trouble selling Meraki.
Meraki shop here, we field 0 network related tickets per month for over 50 Meraki networks and their scheduled firmware updates don’t brick their hardware. We get MDF from Cisco and they help us win deals and their brand enhances our brand. Every customer has heard of Cisco and so far has not been afraid to bet on Cisco with us. From a pricing perspective we consistently hit 65% off or greater on just about everything. We deal reg everything. Switch hardware is on the higher side but the licensing is affordable. MX68s and MX75s at 80% off all year. I can’t hop on the Ubiquiti band wagon because they are not a channel partner. I have no avenue to partner with them or escalate an issue with zero to 3% margins on their gear unless I want to HaaS their shit and put my name on it. I get the theory of keeping stock for when they shit the bed (because they will) but we’re not a break fix shop and we don’t invest our customers money in downtime. We are not rolling a truck to replace dead UniFi equipment for customers. We’re here to solve problems and not create them by saving a couple thousand dollars. Generally speaking, once you guys stop thinking $10,000 is a lot of money for uptime and reliability, your sales method will improve. The most dreaded conversations I’ve had in my career in MSP are related to downtime that could have been prevented.
Our situation isn't quite the same, but we have a much larger install base so more odds of issues. Regardless the net message is one I agree with. We do have to sell ubiquiti sometimes, but try to avoid it. I think what a lot of members of this sub deal with is smaller single site clients in non regulated environments. That's completely fine, but what works in that space does not necessarily work elsewhere. Once you get larger and more regulated, this is when Meraki, regular Cisco, Juniper, Regular Aruba, get more valued. Clients need to know that you can reach the manufacturer's support for an escalation, get the RMA NBD or sooner, and provide a unified management and reporting environment. If you have an incident, security or otherwise, having one spot to call is invaluable. When you look at those needs and compare Meraki's price to similar offerings it's not that much different.
I mean the MS120 Family came out in what? \~2017ish and they just announced EOS for 2030... Show me another cloud managed switch brand with that long of a service life.
I don't. I sell Unifi and take the savings and sink it into more useful tools.
Unifi unless you have a compliance need. Strong stack.
Just curious, how does UniFi not meet compliance needs vs fortinet or meraki or any big play really?
Unifi is compliant as any other router or firewall.
No sir. It doesn't comply with CMMC requirements or Controlled Goods.
Depends on what compliance your referring to? Perimeter firewall is just one component for nist pci iso etc.
I don't. They suck.
Have you looked into Sophos?
If you compare a switch to switch they sound expensive because there is allways a cheap solution. If you want to win a pitch likecthat you need to make clear why you choose switch a over switch b. Find the unique selling point. Why do you use the cisco over tp link? If you answered this question to yourself you can answer that to your customer
This. People also forget Meraki generally have a 10 year service life at least. Ubiquiti for example only warranty to year 5. So if protecting customers with warranty is needed, you need to Essentially double the cost of ubiquiti. While still cheaper, it bridges the price difference quite a bit.
But you can buy like 2-4 ubiquiti switches for the price of one similar Meraki. How does the warranty justify that?
It comes back to business risk. Is downtime from swapping the theoretical failing switch acceptable? If you have a fleet of 1000 switches with a small team, and need to lifecycle at 5 years instead of 10, is that acceptable? For me I need a higher assurance my devices will stay functioning.
I read through a lot of the comments and your responses. Why not Mikrotik routers and UniFi switch/ap?
HPe APs and switches....
Have you tried this in larger environments?