If you're shopping for a Meraki Insight license, or trying to renew one, you won't find it on a current price list. Insight itself hasn’t gone away. How you license it has.

Cisco has deprecated the separate Meraki Insight license. Insight's monitoring features now come only with the Secure SD-WAN Plus license tier on your MX. That matters if you have an active Insight license, if you're renewing an MX license soon, or if you've noticed the LIC-MI SKU missing from a recent quote.

This guide walks through what changed, what to check in your own dashboard, and what to do before your next renewal comes up.

What Is Meraki Insight?

Meraki Insight is a set of analytics features for Meraki MX security appliances that shows you how your network and the applications running on it are actually performing, not just whether they're online.

It covers four areas: WAN health, web app health, VoIP health, and internet outage monitoring. Instead of guessing whether a slowdown is your internet connection, your WAN, or the SaaS app itself, Insight shows you where the problem lives.

For IT teams managing more than one site, that's the difference between a quick diagnosis and a support ticket that drags on for days. One hardware note: Cisco states that Insight features aren't currently supported on C8000-series devices, so confirm your platform before planning around them. If Meraki's broader lineup is still new territory for you, how the different Meraki product lines fit together is worth reading before going deeper into Insight itself.

What Changed: Insight Now Ships Inside Secure SD-WAN Plus

The short version: Cisco stopped selling Meraki Insight as its own product. The functionality is still there, but you can only get it as part of Secure SD-WAN Plus, the top of the three MX license tiers: Enterprise, Advanced Security, and Secure SD-WAN Plus. 

That’s a licensing change, not a feature change. If you already have Insight configured, nothing about how it works today is different.

The July 2024 Transition

As of July 26, 2024, Cisco stopped selling standalone LIC-MI SKUs. Cisco's MX licensing documentation now says it directly: the separate Meraki Insight license has been deprecated, and anyone who needs Insight's current and future feature set should use Secure SD-WAN Plus.

Think of this as consolidation, not removal. Cisco folded Insight's capabilities into a broader license, so WAN and application visibility now comes bundled with Meraki's full security stack and its more advanced SD-WAN controls instead of sitting on its own SKU.

The practical effect for most IT managers is smaller than the headline suggests. Your existing setup keeps running. The change shows up at your next renewal, not today.

If You Still Have a Standalone Insight License

If you're still on a standalone Insight license, it keeps working through its current term, and you won't lose visibility mid-contract.

The decision point arrives at renewal. Since the standalone SKU is no longer sold, renewing into the same license isn't an option. The path forward is moving your MX licensing to Secure SD-WAN Plus, the only tier that includes Insight going forward.

How that upgrade works depends on your licensing model. On co-termination licensing, the standard path is buying one Secure SD-WAN Plus license for all compatible MXs and applying it to the organization. That converts the whole org to the new tier and shortens your remaining co-term to account for the higher tier. Co-term organizations already on Advanced Security can also upgrade individual networks with a Per Device SD-WAN Plus license, an option that isn't available on per-device licensing (PDL) or subscription.

Actual licensing needs may vary based on deployment size and features used. The safest move is confirming your renewal date and licensing model now, then planning around both instead of scrambling when the notice arrives.

Advanced Security or Secure SD-WAN Plus: Which License Do You Need?

With Insight off the table as a standalone purchase, the real question is which MX tier fits your environment going forward. Most organizations weighing this are choosing between Advanced Security and Secure SD-WAN Plus.

This isn't a feature matrix to memorize. It comes down to one question: do you need Insight's health analytics? Advanced Security already covers Meraki's full unified threat management, including IDS/IPS, content filtering, and malware protection. Secure SD-WAN Plus includes all of that, plus Insight.

When Secure SD-WAN Plus Makes Sense

Secure SD-WAN Plus is the right call if you want Insight's WAN, app, and VoIP visibility going forward, especially across multiple sites where pinpointing the source of a slowdown eats real time. Since Insight isn't sold on its own anymore, Secure SD-WAN Plus is the only way to get that functionality on new or renewed licenses.

If you're still weighing how much SD-WAN control your sites need, Meraki's SD-WAN feature set is worth reading through first. Once you know the answer for your environment, the Meraki SD-WAN Plus decision tends to make itself.

The SD-WAN and Security Features Bundled In

Beyond Insight's health analytics and internet outage monitoring, Secure SD-WAN Plus adds a few capabilities no other MX tier includes: SD-Internet steering and policies, smart breakout, and Adaptive Policy SGT assignment. It also supports ThousandEyes visibility in the Meraki dashboard, though ThousandEyes itself requires a separate license.

Core SD-WAN features like Auto VPN, traffic shaping, and dynamic path selection come with every MX tier, so they aren't a reason to upgrade on their own.

How to Check Your Current Licensing and Plan the Upgrade

You don’t need to make a licensing decision today. But you do need to know where you stand, so nothing catches you off guard at renewal. Four steps cover it.

• Check your license type and licensing model. In the Meraki dashboard, go to Organization > License info and confirm whether your MX is on a standalone Insight license, Advanced Security, or Secure SD-WAN Plus, and whether your organization uses co-termination, per-device, or subscription licensing. Subscription and co-term licenses can't be mixed in the same dashboard organization, so this shapes your upgrade path.
• Note your renewal date. This is your real deadline. There’s no need to act before then, but the standalone Insight SKU won’t be available to renew into once that date arrives.
• Get a same-day quote. Hummingbird Networks can quote the Secure SD-WAN Plus upgrade path against your existing MX hardware, typically the same day you ask.
• Talk to an IT concierge before you commit. A Hummingbird Networks account manager, backed by 20+ years of Cisco and Meraki experience, can confirm the right tier for your device model, site count, and licensing model before you buy, not after.

What This Means for Your Day-to-Day Troubleshooting

The licensing change is the headline, but it’s worth remembering why Insight mattered to your team in the first place.

Insight’s value was never the license. It’s the time it saves when something breaks: faster root-cause isolation, fewer vague “the internet is slow” tickets landing on your desk, and one dashboard that shows WAN, app, and VoIP health together instead of three separate places to check.

Folding Insight into Secure SD-WAN Plus means visibility, security, and SD-WAN now live under one license instead of two, which is one less renewal to track across your sites. If slow WAN performance or outages are a recurring headache across multiple locations, how Meraki spreads traffic across multiple WAN connections is a natural next read.

Get Clarity Before Your Renewal Date Comes Up

Here’s the short version. Meraki Insight is now part of Secure SD-WAN+, not a standalone purchase. Your existing license keeps working through its term, so nothing about your day-to-day changes right now.

What changes is your next renewal. Check your license type, your licensing model, and your renewal date, and you'll know exactly which path applies to you well before that date arrives.

Not sure whether your Meraki setup is ready for the Secure SD-WAN Plus transition? Contact our team and we'll walk through your current license, your renewal date, and what upgrading actually costs.