Cisco Meraki hardware ages on a schedule. Cisco publishes an end-of-sale date, support runs for a few more years, and then the firmware updates stop. From that day, every newly discovered vulnerability in that device stays open, and because a Meraki device also needs an active licence to function at all, you’re paying full price to run kit that no longer gets patched.
The catch is that nobody remembers the schedule. The access points went in five years ago, they still work, and the end-of-support notice went to an inbox that may not even exist any more.
July 2026 is a big month for Meraki retirements
Checking matters right now, because a wave of very popular models reaches end of support on 21 July 2026: the MR33 and MR84 access points among them, along with the MR42, MR52, MR53 and MR74. If your wireless went in between roughly 2017 and 2021, there’s a fair chance some of it is on that list.
What the checker tells you
Type a model into our free Meraki end-of-life checker and you get its status, its end-of-sale and end-of-support dates from Cisco Meraki’s published notices, and both upgrade paths: the current Meraki replacement, and the Ubiquiti UniFi alternative.
One detail we’re quite proud of: Meraki’s own notices often recommend a replacement that has since gone end of life itself. The checker follows that chain until it reaches a model you can actually buy, and shows its working.
Replace like for like, or stop paying licences
An end-of-life notice is also a natural decision point. Stay with Meraki and you keep the dashboard you know, with per-device licensing for the life of the estate. Switch to UniFi and the annual licence bill disappears: you buy the hardware, you own the controller, and the kit keeps working regardless.
If you want that argument in pounds rather than principles, our Meraki to UniFi savings calculator prices your whole estate both ways over five years.
We deploy and support both platforms as part of our network services, with 24×7 monitoring from our network operations centre, so the recommendation you get from us is about your estate, not our vendor margin. Check your kit, and if something’s ageing out, talk to us before it becomes an emergency.
