We’ve been looking at Ekahau for Wi-Fi analysis, surveys, and planning, but the cost is honestly hard to justify for us right now.
We do need something serious though — not just a basic scanner. Ideally something that can handle Wi-Fi analysis, site surveys, and planning before installs. Active testing would be nice too.
Is there a decent alternative that people actually use in the real world, or is it basically “pay for Ekahau or deal with worse results”?
Yeah, same. Ekahau is strong, but it’s not cheap, and you do need to know what you’re doing to really get value out of it.
NetSpot is probably the first thing I’d look at. It’s obviously not Ekahau-tier enterprise everything, but it does cover the stuff a lot of teams actually need: Inspector, Survey, and Planning in one app. It also supports active scanning, including tests against iperf3 servers, which is pretty useful for validation.
If you want another name to look at, Hamina is worth checking too. Different approach though. Very cloud-first, very collaboration-heavy, very design-focused. Good if you want something modern and shareable across a team, but it’s not the same vibe as a traditional local survey workflow. Hamina’s site and apps are very much built around cloud design plus onsite surveying.
@Repulsive_Trade303 My only gripe is hardware. Ekahau has Sidekick. Hamina has Nomad and now Clip. NetSpot still feels more software-first to me. Ekahau’s Sidekick 2 is very much a dedicated measurement device, and Hamina is also pushing dedicated onsite hardware.
@Training-Today9031 That’s kind of my take too. Software-wise, NetSpot looks solid for the money. Hardware-wise, it doesn’t have that same “full ecosystem” feel yet.
@Training-Today9031 I saw people on another forum saying NetSpot hardware might be in development, but I haven’t seen anything official. So maybe, maybe not.