completely replace the Unifi hardware and swap it for Mikrotik.
Why replace working equipment?
I suspect there are a lot of MikroTik users with Unifi/Amplifi wireless equipment who use the MikroTik only for routing, firewalling, and switching. This is a perfectly reasonable choice.
I already this switch from Mikrtotik
Please don't link to third-party web sites for MikroTik product info. The product page on MikroTik's web site is
here, and it shows it as discontinued. I believe the current equivalent is the
CCR1009-7G-1C-1S+PC, swapping one of the 1GbE ports for a combo port.
I find the configuration interface but very confusing and I do not really see through.
RouterOS is one of those sorts of tools that multiplies your power the more you study it. When you find yourself running up against a limitation, it is more often a limitation in your knowledge than in the power of the platform.
This means you have a choice: stop studying and thus lose out on potential power, and thus gain back the time you'd spend studying and configuring RouterOS, or spend that time and gain the power.
Both are rational choices, but as a complete outsider to the MikroTik organization, I feel confident in predicting that "new hardware" won't give you the power while saving you the need to study how to properly
apply that power. I agree that MT's UIs could use some work, but any improvements there can work atop the existing hardware. The trick is, how to get a simpler user interface without losing the power we currently have with RouterOS?
If you want pointy-clicky mobile apps with whizzy features like AR, then you go with Unifi. If you want a ridiculous amount of power under your personal control, at a cost of spending time learning how to use that power, then MikroTik is likely to return greater rewards for your efforts.
The closest equivalent I'm aware of in Ubiquiti land to RouterOS is their EdgeOS, a fork of the old
Vyatta OS. I found EdgeOS far more confusing than RouterOS, and it appears that they're trying to push products exposing this feature off to the side anyway. I couldn't say if Ubiquiti is trying to get rid of EdgeOS or if their marketing department is just hoping no one will realize it's still there underneath, but either way, it seems to me that it's a big risk spending a lot of time learning EdgeOS today.
When I came to that conclusion while researching which switches and routers to buy, I tried researching
VyOS hardware, since that's another fork of the old Vyatta OS, and I couldn't find the products I wanted. I also wasn't very happy with what I found for
pfSense hardware. At least with pfSense, the underlying FreeBSD isn't going away any time soon.
🤷♂️ You lays down your money and you takes your gamble.