Voice of IT Survey: The wireless access points IT pros recommend

The Spiceworks Voice of IT Survey series is back with its next round of survey results. This time around, we asked IT pros in the Spiceworks Community and around the world for their feedback on wireless access points. We had an even stronger set of responses for this one than our last survey on password managers, going from almost 600 responses to more than 771 survey takers for this one. That’s a really encouraging upswing in the number of IT pros who want to help advise their peers across the industry.

On to the results! Our survey began by asking respondents for their role in tech decision making within their place of business, as well the size of their current wireless infrastructure, the wireless standards they rely on the most, and the features, security protocols, and compliance standards they value the most when they purchase wireless networking hardware. We then asked them to rate up to three different wireless access point brands from a list of 27 options.

As in our password manager survey, we chose the winners from the top three wireless access point brands by overall satisfaction rating, with likelihood to recommend providing additional context in the event we needed to break a tie.

We required each brand to have a minimum of 30 responses to make the final list, which netted us seven brands overall. Of those, our survey respondents were most satisfied with Ubiquiti, Ruckus Commscope, and Aruba from HPE. Ubiquiti had by far the most responses at 352, followed by Cisco Meraki with 182, Aruba with 46, and Ruckus with 46.

Speaking of Cisco Meraki, its satisfaction score of 3.9 kept it out of the top list, but it still did well overall given the number of respondents that it received. Pricing was the most commonly cited challenge. “It’s a fine system, very solid access points,” said one respondent of Aruba, “but the value proposition is just not there anymore, and the management is poor compared to [Ubiquiti’s] UniFi.” It’s also a credit to Ubiquiti that it had such a high response rate and still landed at the top of the list.

Challenges

Speaking of challenges, we saw a diverse set of responses across all seven brands that made the cut in our overall list. As mentioned above, the biggest pain point was pricing, which often entails a cost for the hardware, as well as a subscription fee for additional administration services. Despite the fact that Ruckus, Aruba, and Cisco Meraki were near the top of the overall satisfaction ratings, respondents still dinged them heavily for their pricing terms.

From another respondent, “Ruckus delivers excellent wireless performance in dense environments, which is a standout strength. However, support, pricing, and management tools could be improved to match the ease-of-use of other leading vendors.” Conversely, Ubiqiuti had the second fewest number of respondents cite pricing as an issue, with Netgear as the only one performing better in that category.

Opinions were mixed across our other challenge categories. Management complexity was an issue for Aruba and fifth place Fortinet. At the lower end of the list, coverage gaps, issues with security, and integration with existing systems all came up for more than one brand, but nothing outpaced pricing as a common complaint. For all-around winner Ubiquiti, the most commonly cited challenge was troubleshooting difficulties. “Overall I’m pleased with Ubiquiti,” said one respondent, “however, when there is a device that is causing problems, it is hard to see how things are going.” Another respondent said “What do I change and where in their UniFi Console? Lots of features, but very busy and loud.”