Meraki vs UniFi for VPN: Best Router for Remote Work

The Australian small-business reality

Remember March 2020? Overnight, kitchen tables became offices and the daily commute disappeared. The lockdowns ended, but the flexibility stuck. Today your staff expect to work from home a couple of days a week, and as an owner you're constantly reaching back into office resources from wherever you happen to be — the shared files, the server or NAS, the accounting package, the booking system.

Then there's the second office, or the home office you want permanently linked back to base. On a typical NBN connection, this all has to be fast enough to actually use and, crucially, secure.

The quiet hero behind all of this is a good VPN on your router. Get it right and remote work is safe and almost invisible. Get it wrong and you've got staff who can't connect and resources exposed to the internet. So let's compare two popular platforms — Cisco Meraki and Ubiquiti UniFi — honestly, with no silver bullets.

First, the two jobs a VPN actually does

Before we compare platforms, it helps to know that "VPN" really covers two different jobs:

• (A) Remote-access / client VPN — an individual laptop or phone dialling back into the office. This is your accountant working from home, or you checking the booking system from a café.
• (B) Site-to-site VPN — a permanent tunnel linking two locations: office-to-office, a home office to base, or your office to cloud resources. Once it's up, it just stays up.

Most businesses need a bit of both. The two platforms have genuinely different strengths across these jobs, so let's dig in.

Meraki: rock-solid site-to-site, with an Android caveat to know

Cisco Meraki runs on its MX security appliances — devices like the MX67 (MX67-HW), MX68 (MX68-HW) and MX75 (MX75-HW) — all managed from a single cloud dashboard.

Client VPN (remote access)

Meraki's built-in client VPN uses L2TP/IPsec, and it works well and natively on:

• Windows
• macOS
• iOS (iPhone and iPad)

No extra software to install — the VPN client is already built into those operating systems.

The important caveat you must know: Android 12 and later removed support for L2TP/IPsec (and PPTP). Google now only allows IKEv2 for new VPN connections. In plain terms, you can no longer add a new Meraki L2TP/IPsec client-VPN connection on a modern Android phone. Profiles created on older Android versions keep working, but you can't set up a new one.

If your team is on iPhones and Windows laptops, this never bites you. If you've got modern Android phones in the mix, it's a real consideration.

The modern fix on Meraki is Cisco AnyConnect / Secure Client VPN on the MX, which uses current protocols and works happily on Android. The honest flag: AnyConnect involves additional licensing, so it's an extra cost on top of your usual Meraki licences. Worth budgeting for if Android remote access matters to you.

Site-to-site VPN — where Meraki shines

This is genuinely a Meraki strength. Meraki AutoVPN lets two MX appliances at different offices build a stable, secure tunnel between them almost automatically from the dashboard. You tick a few boxes and the tunnel forms itself — no fiddling with IP addresses, pre-shared keys or firewall rules at 9pm on a Friday.

For office-to-office (or home-office-to-base) links that need to be set-and-forget, AutoVPN is excellent and rock-solid. If you've got two or more sites, this alone is a strong reason to look at Meraki.

Premise-to-cloud

Meraki also handles premise-to-cloud site-to-site — for example, linking your on-prem network to Google Cloud over IKEv2 / route-based VPN. (We've got a separate step-by-step guide on exactly this — link below.) It's powerful for hybrid setups.

The honest note: the cloud side carries its own cost. The cloud provider charges for its VPN gateway, so this isn't free. Plan for it.

UniFi: generous, licence-free, and Android-friendly

Ubiquiti's UniFi line — particularly the entry-level business gateways like a UniFi Cloud Gateway — has a surprisingly generous VPN offering, and importantly, no recurring licence fees for the VPN features.

Out of the box, a UniFi gateway can act as:

• A WireGuard VPN server — modern, fast, and (this is the big one) works fine on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac.
• An OpenVPN server.
• An L2TP VPN server.
• Teleport — UniFi's one-click, WireGuard-based remote access that you set up from the mobile app via a QR code. Genuinely simple for non-technical staff.
• Site-to-site VPN for linking locations — including Site Magic, UniFi's zero-config, one-click site-to-site SD-WAN that auto-builds tunnels between UniFi gateways (its answer to Meraki AutoVPN), plus manual IPsec for linking to other brands.

That WireGuard support neatly sidesteps the Meraki-Android-L2TP issue. If you've got a fleet of modern Android phones and want licence-free remote access, this is a real advantage.

The honest catch

From real-world use, UniFi asks more of you. The dashboard can be busy, and some flows are fiddly — OpenVPN server setup, for instance, can throw cryptic errors that send you searching forums. It's less hand-held than Meraki, and you own more of the troubleshooting when something misbehaves. There's no dedicated support line holding your hand the way there is with a Meraki licence.

For a confident DIY-leaning business, that's a fair trade for the price and flexibility. For a business that just wants it to work without becoming an amateur network engineer, it's a genuine consideration.

Which fits which Australian SMB scenario?

No single winner here — it depends on your situation.

Solo operator or a few staff who just need simple remote access

If it's mostly individuals dialling back in from home — especially on mixed devices including modern Android phones — UniFi's WireGuard and Teleport are genuinely strong. They're licence-free, fast on NBN, and they sidestep the Meraki-Android-L2TP problem entirely. Teleport's QR-code setup is about as friendly as remote access gets.

A business with two or more offices

If your priority is the most stable, set-and-forget office-to-office link, managed from one dashboard with real vendor support behind it — Meraki AutoVPN shines. This is its home turf. An MX at each site (say an MX67 or MX68 at smaller branches, an MX75 where you need more grunt) and you're away.

A hybrid business linking the office to cloud resources

Both platforms can do premise-to-cloud. Meraki is particularly well-documented for this (see our guide below). Whichever you choose, budget for the cloud provider's VPN gateway cost — that charge applies regardless of the router brand.

A quick reality check on cost

VPN features are only part of the picture. Meraki's licensing buys you the dashboard, support and AutoVPN polish; UniFi trades some of that hand-holding for no recurring VPN licence. We've written an honest, no-spin breakdown of the whole picture in our Meraki vs UniFi total-cost-of-ownership comparison — worth a read before you commit.

We've also got two hands-on guides that walk through the practical detail:

• Site-to-site VPN: connecting an on-premises Meraki network to Google Cloud, step by step
• "Router down": a real-world Meraki vs Ubiquiti VPN and VLAN experience

The bottom line

Both platforms are good. Neither is a magic bullet.

• Want simple, licence-free remote access across mixed devices including Android? UniFi's WireGuard/Teleport is hard to beat.
• Want rock-solid, set-and-forget office-to-office VPN with real support? Meraki AutoVPN is the standout.
• Going hybrid to the cloud? Either works — just budget for the cloud gateway.

Let TYO Store get you working remotely — properly

We specialise in Cisco Meraki, and we genuinely love it for site-to-site and multi-site businesses. But we're also happy to supply UniFi and other manufacturers when that's the better fit for your team and devices — because the right answer depends on you, not on what we'd prefer to sell.

Tell us how your people work, what devices they're on, and how many sites you've got, and we'll design the right remote-access / VPN setup and supply the right router — Meraki or otherwise. Get in touch with TYO Store today and let's get your business working from anywhere, safely.