Mikrotik sadly didn’t succeed in creating “good brand” image through marketing. Through the years they made some really bad business decisions but it is very difficult to destroy “good brand” image. They managed to position themselves into “good brand” category. Ubiquiti invests a lot into marketing – brand management. I’m sure others have differing opinions/experiences. Pfsense and opnsense are good players in this space for sure for the small to medium business and are a good complement to a MikroTik route/switch LAN. they don’t have an NGFW, but there’s companies that do that can be an add-on solution if the customer wants it/can afford it. Especially if they have any sensitive information or devices to protect MikroTik is just so flexible it’s as much as a one-size-fits-all solution as I can find (at least for a basic starting point). I’ve put in unifi systems as well, but with the lack of decent firewalling and good IPS/IDS it’s hard to feel comfortable deploying to businesses. This is where I see a lot of larger MSPs start to struggle, they think Cisco is a one-size-fits all solution and are deploying crazy amounts of gear to companies with less than 50 employees and can’t afford the bill but have no other choice. Nothing is ever 100% perfect in every situation so having a bit of a repertoire is helpful, especially when working with small to medium businesses. I can usually find add-ons or supplemental systems to do the rest. I tend to try a few things out and try and stick with the one that meets at least 90% of my need. It takes a lot of resources to properly learn, support, and deploy a new technology so it’s not something to be taken lightly. That said in a small business time and effort are definitely a worthy consideration. Now Im way more comfortable in Mikrotik and find myself wishing most of my Cisco gear was mikrotik because it’s so much easier to troubleshoot. Though I probably would have had the same problem in reverse. I will say mikrotik took me a bit of time to get used to coming from a Cisco background. They also offer content filtering and traffic shaping as well. I just started playing with it and it works pretty well. specifically designed for mikrotik and pretty slick setup.

Firewall router mikrotik