How Much Does SD-WAN Cost In 2023?

A quick note about pricing: When we talk about Meraki prices, the list price is for hardware. You’ll also need to add a 3-year or 5-year license to have access to Meraki cloud-based management tools and security updates. E-N Computers is able to lower pricing on Meraki equipment and licenses, which saves our clients 25% to 30% on what you see below. For the sake of simplicity, we’re rounding to the nearest $100 in this article.

Firewalls

How many network-connected devices — servers, desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, VoIP phones — and how many branch locations you have will affect your costs. If you use Azure or AWS cloud infrastructure, there will be costs to integrate it with your network. How do devices and branches affect cost?

Each branch you have needs a firewall to protect your network and prioritize outgoing traffic. Firewalls are sized by the number of devices connecting to them. Here are a the most common choices for small and medium businesses.

Firewall Pricing

Office Size (users)	Firewall	List	3-year	5-year
HQ (500)	MX95	$5,900	$11,000	$18,400
Large (250)	MX85	$3,000	$5,500	$9,200
Small (50)	MX67c	$1,700	$1,900	$3,200

Cloud Virtual Appliances

If you are a large organization that uses cloud infrastructure like Azure or AWS, you can connect it to your multi-site network much like you would a physical location. A Meraki virtual appliance (vMX) allows you to extend your SD-WAN in this manner. Much like support for a hardware appliance, you can license a virtual appliance in 3-year or 5-year durations. They are sized by the number of concurrent connections they support.

Virtual Appliance Pricing

Concurrent VPN tunnels	vMX	3-year	5-year
1000	Large	$11,000	$18,400
250	Medium	$5,500	$9,200
50	Small	$1,100	$1,800

Internet Connections

You can use a combination of best-effort connections — like DSL, cable, fiber, and satellite — and dedicated leased lines. “Best effort” connections do not have a contractual uptime guarantee and often share lines with other businesses in your area. In contrast, dedicated lines are all yours and come with a service level agreement (SLA). The cost of the connection will depend on its type, bandwidth, service level agreement (SLA), and how many static IP addresses you receive.

In many cases, having two best effort connections will provide enough redundancy to keep you online. Local options include Comcast Business, Segra, and Verizon FiOS.

Comcast Business gigabit internet costs about $300 to $350 per month. Because Comcast’s network uses copper cabling and is not fully fiber-based, it can’t provide quite the same performance as its fully fiber-optic competitors. Some Comcast plans have asymmetrical speeds, meaning your upload speed is significantly lower than your download speed. This can pose a problem if many employees rely on online services, especially ones like videoconferencing, VoIP, or large file transfers.

Segra and Verizon FiOS offer gigabit internet on a fully fiber-optic network for about $350 per month with symmetrical upload and download speeds. Their networks are newer and not as ubiquitous as traditional ISPs. But if they are available to your business, they make an excellent choice.

For the main office, you may want a dedicated line. These connections are much more expensive: you can easily spend $800 to $1,500 per month for a 100 Mbps symmetrical connection. The reason for the higher cost is because they are more reliable and typically guarantee 99.9+% uptime.

Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) Devices

When terrestrial internet options are poor or you need a backup internet connection, you can use an LTE cellular gateway to stay connected. It converts the same LTE cellular signal used by smartphones to a wired Ethernet connection that you can use on your internal network. This makes it useful as either a primary or backup connection. The Meraki MG41 accepts two SIM cards so that you can use two separate LTE networks for redundancy.

WWAN Device Pricing

Model	List	3-year	5-year
MG41 (double LTE for HQ/large office	$1,500	$1,100	$1,800

Failover

If you are concerned about limiting the impact of an internet failure, there are a few ways to do so. These include attaching a cellular modem to your network, load balancing your traffic over two similar connections, and having a warm spare firewall at your main office.

Cellular failover. We can attach a cellular modem to your network and configure it to be your internet connection for critical services when your wired connection is out. Cellular plans for this will run $50 to $100 per month.

Load balancing. We can configure your network to split traffic over two similar connections, such as Comcast Business and Verizon FiOS. By balancing the load across two ISPs, you reduce the risk of overloading them and degraded performance.

Warm spare firewall. You can configure a second firewall that matches your primary firewall to be a warm spare. It will be connected to your network and configured to automatically take over if the primary fails. A warm spare does not need its own license, so the main cost is the list (hardware) price.

Remote Workers

For remote workers that need to connect to your internal network, you can use Meraki’s client VPN or Z3 telecommuter gateway. Client VPN is a configuration on your laptops and mobile devices that creates a secure connection to your company network. There is no additional license or hardware cost for it. Meraki Z3, on the other hand, is a small hardware device that acts like an extension of your office network, making it particularly useful for people who work from home most or all of the time. See the hardware and licensing prices for it in the table below.

Remote Connectivity Pricing

Tool	List	3-year	5-year
Client VPN	N/A	N/A	N/A
Z3	$1,100	$500	$800