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Cisco Container Platform [EOL] vs Kubernetes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Container Platform [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kubernetes
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

CM
Cloud Architect, Feltus Lab at Clemson University
Enables the deployment/management of Kubernetes clusters from multiple resource providers at one location
One thing I have not really had the chance to explore too much is the Cisco Container Platform command-line interface. I've been told that exists and it's functional, but I'm not sure if it's really made for end-users. It might just be for admins or developers. One thing that is a little bit annoying about Cisco Container Platform is that for each cluster you create you have to go through the same web form each time. If you're creating two identical clusters, you still have to go through that web form twice. What's really nice about most platforms is that they have command-line interfaces where you can just copy a single command which has all the flags with all the configurations you want and put that in a text file. Then, when you want to create another cluster you can just paste that in and edit one or two flags if you want to. You don't have to go through a web form every time and that is a feature that I would like to see in the future with CCP. It would be nice, at the end, once you create a cluster using the web form, if it would give you a single command that you could copy and put somewhere and then paste it, in the future, to create an identical cluster or an almost identical cluster. I would like the ability to save cluster configurations to CCP. I've provided that feedback to the development team. There might even be a version that is out which already has that functionality integrated into it. I think it's safe to say that at some point in the future that feature will be provided.
RV
DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automated deployments and self-healing have transformed how I run reliable chat services
For improvements, I would definitely suggest some enhancements to Kubernetes. While Kubernetes is very powerful, there are still a few areas where it could be improved. Our challenge is the learning curve and operational complexity. For new team members, concepts such as networking, RBAC, Ingress, and troubleshooting distributed systems can take time to understand. Better built-in onboarding tools or simplified abstractions would help. Another pain point is debugging and observability. While kubectl provides good basic visibility, deep debugging across multiple services, pods, and nodes often requires external tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana, or centralized logging. Stronger native observability features would be very helpful. Networking and Ingress configuration can also be complex, especially when dealing with certificates, routing rules, and cloud-specific integrations. A more standardized experience across environments could reduce operational overhead. From a cost perspective, managing and optimizing resource usage at scale still requires careful monitoring and tuning. Better built-in cost visibility would be very helpful. For the needed improvements, I think that covers most of my main concerns. The biggest areas for improvement are still around simplifying operations, better native observability, and easier cost visibility. If I had to add one more point, it would be around standardization and developer experience. Sometimes different clusters, cloud providers, or tooling setups behave slightly differently, which increases maintenance efforts. More consistent defaults and opinionated best practices could help teams adopt Kubernetes faster and with fewer surprises. Overall, despite these challenges, Kubernetes is a very mature and reliable platform, and the benefits clearly outweigh the limitations for most production use cases. An additional area that could be improved is upgrade and version management. While managed services help coordinate Kubernetes version upgrades, API deprecations and compatibility with add-ons can still be time-consuming and risky for production environments. Better tooling and clearer migration automation would make upgrades safer and easier. Another improvement could be around documentation, consistency, and discoverability. Kubernetes documentation is very comprehensive, but for beginners, it can sometimes be overwhelming to navigate and identify best practice paths.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is definitely the fact that you can use a single platform to deploy to different resource providers. Right now, the version I'm using has vSphere and AWS, but I know in the future they're planning on adding more. The ability to deploy clusters on-prem or to any number of public cloud providers is really valuable because you don't need to relearn or switch platforms to switch resource providers."
"I like that it has really boosted cloud-native development and stood the test of time. The underlying architecture allows one to scale as per the business KPIs much faster."
"I like that it gives you all the flexibility, for example, auto-scaling. Everything is figured out exactly right. It manages all your workloads without much intervention. It can scale in, scale out, and with security. Everything looks pretty good compared to the old legacy way of working."
"Kubernetes' integration with AWS Lambda is great, and I barely had to write any code to connect from EKS to Lambda, so Kubernetes is programmer friendly."
"I would highly recommend this solution to anyone who is considering using it."
"The best thing about Kubernetes is orchestration. It is very good. We will not see much downtime unless there are some human errors. We do not see much downtime or issues with the container or automation."
"It allows us to build custom-tailored infrastructures from small to big companies and satisfy various requirements, such as providing a proper level of RPO, RTO, scalability, cost-efficiency, and support high availability/fault tolerance."
"Kubernetes' most valuable features include scalability and deployment."
"Scalability is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"One thing that is a little bit annoying about Cisco Container Platform is that for each cluster you create you have to go through the same web form each time. If you're creating two identical clusters, you still have to go through that web form twice."
"Overall, it's very powerful, but there are also a lot of complexities to manage."
"The network policies and RBAC management across multi-clusters could be improved. This is an issue we're trying to solve in the market."
"Having a thread dump and memory dump, and seeing how many objects were created would be useful."
"The user-interface in regards to the other solution can be improved."
"Lacks some scalability and more user-friendly operability."
"It's complex to manage and requires specialists."
"They have a very minimal interface to do certain things and that could be enhanced so that someone who is not as comfortable on CLI can also use the interface and play around with the cluster."
"Kubernetes could adopt UI-based approach. A UI-based approach would be really useful in the CI/CD pipeline. They should make everything a little bit more user-friendly. For example, when I'm deploying, it would be nice to load my code and be able to see which components need to be connected."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Kubernetes is open source. But we have to manage Kubernetes as a team, and the overhead is a bit high. Compared with the platforms like Cloud Foundry, which has a much less operational overhead. Kubernetes, I have to manage the code, and I have to hire the developers. If someone has a product, a developer should know exactly what he's writing or high availability, and all those things may differ the costs."
"Google Kubernetes Engine is free in the simplest setup, AWS Kubernetes Engine costs about $50 (depending on the region), in a three master setup, so it's almost the same as the cost of the EC2 instances and it's totally fine from my point of view."
"Microsoft provides reasonable costs for Kubernetes."
"Kubernetes is open source and is an orchestration platform. It is a cost effective solution and its pricing depends on your company and how you use it"
"I would say the solution is worth the money, but it depends on the required workloads, the type of workload, and the scaling requirements etc."
"You need to pay for a license if you buy branded products. For example, if you take the services from Azure, AWS, or Google, the price of the Kubernetes cluster is inclusive of the service that's being offered to us on a pay-and-use model."
"The solution itself is open-source, so there is no cost attached to it. However, it requires a virtual machine to operate, which does come at a cost; a choice of a pay as you go model, or a monthly charge via an enterprise agreement. There is a pricing calculator available, where organizations can determine the level and number of virtual machines required, and how much that will cost."
"If you have a solid AKS and a solid DevOps process, you'll automatically get an ROI, not just in terms of cost but also in how quickly you can see your business application progress."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?
My experience with pricing and setup costs shows that Kubernetes itself is open source and free, so there is no licensing cost for the software. The main cost comes from the infrastructure and mana...
What needs improvement with Kubernetes?
For improvements, I would definitely suggest some enhancements to Kubernetes. While Kubernetes is very powerful, there are still a few areas where it could be improved. Our challenge is the learnin...
What is your primary use case for Kubernetes?
My main use case for Kubernetes is deploying and managing scalable backend services and web applications in a production-like environment. For example, in one of my projects, a real-time chat appli...
 

Also Known As

Cisco CCP
K8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clemson University
China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes and others in Container Management. Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.