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I see a lot of people who when they want to buy a non consumer router tend to only know about ubiquiti rather than other brands. I mean theres cisco lower end, engenius and all sorts of other brands too that sell all sorts of products. Theres also the x86 area where you get your own PC and install a router/UTM distribution on it instead of buying any of it.
So im writing this so that people can understand the difference between these 2 brands when it comes to choosing an AP or a switch or a router. So the next time someone on the forum asks about ubiquiti or mikrotik, link them here so that they know other brands exist too and other choices exist too.
As a brand, both rely on forums for their support and they give a limited time email support. Warranty is equivalent to a consumer brand of 1 year. In support they do very poorly such that you only get support for functionality that can be achieved with a consumer router (though you still do get better support than for consumer routers in this case) but it is still community reliant. Both have professional and dedicated tutorials from various blocks and networking professionals. The only difference is that ubiquiti uses bs marketing by directly shaming cisco (saying their devices are more reliable and better than cisco professional from a video). The bad thing that both brands have is that they will not offer support for any advanced prospect of their products unlike what cisco would offer with their higher end products and what some companies who make business products do provide as well.
In terms of products both brands release good products. Mikrotik tends to be more on the customisable side since more of their products have SFP than ubiquiti even their APs for quite a low price and they have mini PCIe and probably other tricks that let you upgrade your wifi without having to buy a whole new device. Mikrotik also allows you to change the cpu frequency of your routerboard and they all run the same OS, something that ubiquiti lacks.
So when choosing an indoor AP, the only reason to choose mikrotik or ubiquiti is because you want their OS. They both lack a number of hardware wireless features that even consumer wifi routers have. Mikrotik relies on software more to handle the job just like the netgear r7000 when it comes to wifi which is why they can reliably handle many clients and in price mikrotik actually wins for indoor APs but you have to buy the case and PSU for it too but their indoor APs are customisable incase you want to add more wifi or functionality to them through usb, SFP and mini PCIe or even LTE. If you are someone who lacks skill or an IT department do not go for either of these brands, go for engenius,cisco or some other business brand. In small scale deployments Ubiquiti does fine in that area. For outdoor APs both brands offer very similar products so the choice is between price, routing features you need and skill (if you lack skill go for ubiquiti's AP if choosing between the 2).
In the switching area, both their low end switches arent much to look at compared to whats out there. Ubiquiti offers better low end switches than mikrotik and in the higher end ubiquiti has POE out on their larger switches however mikrotik has SFP+ on their higher end switches for a lot less than ubiquiti's equivalent. They both offer fully managed functionality so they can do more than the commonly suggest sg300 at the price point and they use the same OS as their routers so they can function as low end routers. Although mikrotik is new to the fully managed switch game both brands offer a lot that you can use from a fully managed switch although the sg300 is a semi managed switch. Again lots of skills are required for using their switches and you should really ask yourself what features are you planning to use. If you need to perform LAN filtering and firewall than buying a switch for that is a mistake. As with any switch, once you start adding rules to them you start losing wirespeed. If you are out for a fully managed switch, both brands offer a lot for less price but it is rare that you would need a fully managed switch. Best to look at other brands.
For their routing products, you will need skill or an IT department. As a router mikrotik is a lot better in firmware, flexibility and dedication than ubiquiti does. Their firmwares are less buggy in routing and are better optimised in software throughput. Mikrotik doesnt rely on hardware acceleration that ubiquiti does so if you are buying a router, the choice between brands depends on if you are just doing basic NAT (like a consumer router) that is compatible with hardware acceleration or advanced stuff like QoS and firewall in which routerOS wins here. RouterOS also lets you perform layer 2 filtering which ubiquiti's edgeMAX doesnt have and if you have gigabit internet that has PPPOE and need to perform QoS and firewall than you will need a mikrotik CCR as it does that and VPN at gigabit speeds which the ubiquiti edgerouters just cant keep up with. However although ubiquiti's firmware doesnt offer much as a router it does follow the linux OS well so the best way to utilise an edgerouter is to treat it as a linux server. Currently i have an ERPRO running squid3 and some other things, not using any of the features from the GUI or console. Being able to install 3rd party software or other things is what mikrotik lacks. in terms of scripts, Ubiquiti wins here for being able to use linux scripts unlike mikrotik's very restrictive scripts but Ubiquiti doesnt make this apparent in their GUI for running and managing scripts. In terms of management software Ubiquiti has a cluster controller while mikrotik has winbox which does a better job to access their own products (such as being able to access them through layer 2, ipv6 and vpn but they arent cloud managed). As a cisco alternative both brands fail spectacularly. If you need to use a cisco feature/protocol get high end cisco/juniper. None of these brands can perform cisco features fast enough to be considered as an alternative.
As an importact fact to remember, neither of these brands are a saviour to the networking space. consumer routers can be just as reliable if you installed a 3rd party firmware and there are cheaper and more reliable choices such as x86 that performs the job faster in every way (except to the CCR series) and with much more flexibility. If you're looking for cheap 10Gb/s than consider 2nd hand SFP+ cards. Ubiquiti's marketing portrays them as a saviour from their low price points to the features they offer but dont be fooled by it as if you are considering an ERL, the ASUS AC56 is a very potent choice too and you get wifi and usb3 thrown in which you dont get with the ERL.
So im writing this so that people can understand the difference between these 2 brands when it comes to choosing an AP or a switch or a router. So the next time someone on the forum asks about ubiquiti or mikrotik, link them here so that they know other brands exist too and other choices exist too.
As a brand, both rely on forums for their support and they give a limited time email support. Warranty is equivalent to a consumer brand of 1 year. In support they do very poorly such that you only get support for functionality that can be achieved with a consumer router (though you still do get better support than for consumer routers in this case) but it is still community reliant. Both have professional and dedicated tutorials from various blocks and networking professionals. The only difference is that ubiquiti uses bs marketing by directly shaming cisco (saying their devices are more reliable and better than cisco professional from a video). The bad thing that both brands have is that they will not offer support for any advanced prospect of their products unlike what cisco would offer with their higher end products and what some companies who make business products do provide as well.
In terms of products both brands release good products. Mikrotik tends to be more on the customisable side since more of their products have SFP than ubiquiti even their APs for quite a low price and they have mini PCIe and probably other tricks that let you upgrade your wifi without having to buy a whole new device. Mikrotik also allows you to change the cpu frequency of your routerboard and they all run the same OS, something that ubiquiti lacks.
So when choosing an indoor AP, the only reason to choose mikrotik or ubiquiti is because you want their OS. They both lack a number of hardware wireless features that even consumer wifi routers have. Mikrotik relies on software more to handle the job just like the netgear r7000 when it comes to wifi which is why they can reliably handle many clients and in price mikrotik actually wins for indoor APs but you have to buy the case and PSU for it too but their indoor APs are customisable incase you want to add more wifi or functionality to them through usb, SFP and mini PCIe or even LTE. If you are someone who lacks skill or an IT department do not go for either of these brands, go for engenius,cisco or some other business brand. In small scale deployments Ubiquiti does fine in that area. For outdoor APs both brands offer very similar products so the choice is between price, routing features you need and skill (if you lack skill go for ubiquiti's AP if choosing between the 2).
In the switching area, both their low end switches arent much to look at compared to whats out there. Ubiquiti offers better low end switches than mikrotik and in the higher end ubiquiti has POE out on their larger switches however mikrotik has SFP+ on their higher end switches for a lot less than ubiquiti's equivalent. They both offer fully managed functionality so they can do more than the commonly suggest sg300 at the price point and they use the same OS as their routers so they can function as low end routers. Although mikrotik is new to the fully managed switch game both brands offer a lot that you can use from a fully managed switch although the sg300 is a semi managed switch. Again lots of skills are required for using their switches and you should really ask yourself what features are you planning to use. If you need to perform LAN filtering and firewall than buying a switch for that is a mistake. As with any switch, once you start adding rules to them you start losing wirespeed. If you are out for a fully managed switch, both brands offer a lot for less price but it is rare that you would need a fully managed switch. Best to look at other brands.
For their routing products, you will need skill or an IT department. As a router mikrotik is a lot better in firmware, flexibility and dedication than ubiquiti does. Their firmwares are less buggy in routing and are better optimised in software throughput. Mikrotik doesnt rely on hardware acceleration that ubiquiti does so if you are buying a router, the choice between brands depends on if you are just doing basic NAT (like a consumer router) that is compatible with hardware acceleration or advanced stuff like QoS and firewall in which routerOS wins here. RouterOS also lets you perform layer 2 filtering which ubiquiti's edgeMAX doesnt have and if you have gigabit internet that has PPPOE and need to perform QoS and firewall than you will need a mikrotik CCR as it does that and VPN at gigabit speeds which the ubiquiti edgerouters just cant keep up with. However although ubiquiti's firmware doesnt offer much as a router it does follow the linux OS well so the best way to utilise an edgerouter is to treat it as a linux server. Currently i have an ERPRO running squid3 and some other things, not using any of the features from the GUI or console. Being able to install 3rd party software or other things is what mikrotik lacks. in terms of scripts, Ubiquiti wins here for being able to use linux scripts unlike mikrotik's very restrictive scripts but Ubiquiti doesnt make this apparent in their GUI for running and managing scripts. In terms of management software Ubiquiti has a cluster controller while mikrotik has winbox which does a better job to access their own products (such as being able to access them through layer 2, ipv6 and vpn but they arent cloud managed). As a cisco alternative both brands fail spectacularly. If you need to use a cisco feature/protocol get high end cisco/juniper. None of these brands can perform cisco features fast enough to be considered as an alternative.
As an importact fact to remember, neither of these brands are a saviour to the networking space. consumer routers can be just as reliable if you installed a 3rd party firmware and there are cheaper and more reliable choices such as x86 that performs the job faster in every way (except to the CCR series) and with much more flexibility. If you're looking for cheap 10Gb/s than consider 2nd hand SFP+ cards. Ubiquiti's marketing portrays them as a saviour from their low price points to the features they offer but dont be fooled by it as if you are considering an ERL, the ASUS AC56 is a very potent choice too and you get wifi and usb3 thrown in which you dont get with the ERL.
