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Cisco DNA Center vs ExtremeManagement comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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 DNA Center
Ranking in Network Management Applications
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (19th), Network Automation (2nd)
ExtremeManagement
Ranking in Network Management Applications
20th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 8.7%, down from 24.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ExtremeManagement is 2.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center8.7%
ExtremeManagement2.6%
Other88.7%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Mahir Öztürk - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
Client history has helped resolve past network issues more efficiently
I mostly use the client history feature of Cisco DNA Center. I didn't use the real-time monitoring capability of Cisco DNA Center because I primarily used it for client history regarding issues and problems. I don't use it for real-time monitoring. If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.
reviewer1319712 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Centralized switch management has streamlined daily operations but reporting still needs improvement
The reason clients select ExtremeManagement is because we have existing Extreme customers who are looking for a centralized management solution to manage their Extreme Switches. ExtremeManagement is not only for managing Extreme Switches; it can also manage other third-party solutions such as Cisco or Juniper or any other third party. This provides good flexibility for managing even third-party solutions. ExtremeManagement offers a lot of management options, including the ability to back up the configuration on a scheduled basis and to upgrade the switches' firmwares on a scheduled basis. There is a workflow feature similar to orchestration, which is related to automation. Regarding threat detection with ExtremeManagement, there is no specific feature, but in case of any failure detection or network issues, ExtremeManagement can send a notification to the users and to the admin. ExtremeManagement itself does not include a security or cybersecurity feature; however, there is an additional module called ExtremeControl that you can add, which is a network access control or NAC solution. ExtremeAnalytics is also a very good add-on to ExtremeManagement that can analyze all the traffic coming to the switch for incoming and outgoing traffic. It checks everything even up to Layer 7, the application layer, which I believe maybe some other switches management solutions do not have. This feature is fully compatible with Extreme Switches because the switches can show the application layer traffic. The reporting capabilities of ExtremeManagement are good, but I cannot say they are perfect. Everybody can read it, but in our region, especially in Saudi Arabia and the Arab universe, some customers are requesting Arabic results, which makes it somewhat challenging for us and the vendor. Not all vendors have that capability, and sometimes the vendor asks for adding a feature request, which may take time. I cannot say this is something negative, but in our region, some customers, especially non-English speakers, require that. In general, reporting is good, though not perfect. The integration of ExtremeManagement with other Extreme products and third-party solutions is easy. It does not require specific requirements for integration with other third-party switches. However, there are limitations for integration with other third-party products, especially with firewalls from security companies. When it comes to network devices, it is very easy to integrate with.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My advice to others is if you are a large enough company to have the Cisco DNA Center technology, you must try it because for a large enterprise or multi-site organization it's impressive and it saves a lot of money and time."
"Scalability in Cisco DNA Center is good; we are using it for Software-Defined Access solution, and we haven't reached our device limit yet— from my experience, we can easily manage numerous devices."
"We have many people from the team who manage a lot of devices. By using Cisco DNA Center, it has taken some of that burden away, we are impressed with it. We did the investment in CAPEX, but in the OPEX was very low."
"The solution helps with the management and orchestration of campaigns. It helps with visibility and analytics. I also like its SDA configuration."
"One of the advantages is Cisco support."
"Automation is another key highlight. With automation, you can automate everything through a single port."
"Cisco DNA Center is a user-friendly solution."
"The monitoring is very valuable to me, as I can easily monitor all my clients through Cisco DNA Center at this point."
"The best thing about the solution is that it is all managed from just a single application window, a single pane of glass where almost all the features are managed within a single application or browser, so you don’t have to switch between different applications or windows."
"The technical support services are good."
"Overall, I believe the GUI has already improved significantly, making it easier to manage than other management tools, and the most important thing is that our customers are happy with it."
"ExtremeManagement is excellent; it is a very mature platform and robust in that it covers most of the functionality of the devices."
"It is a good solution; our experience has been good, it is easy to deploy, configure, and develop, and its performance is good; in general, we are satisfied with Extreme."
"The report model is one of the valuable models. We are able to see all the information concentrated in reports, which is very useful. We are able to get the information about the performance of the equipment and check that everything is okay. You can get very useful information across applications, so we have very good experience with their management solutions. It has many functionalities to simplify the administration and monitor the development of the switches or AP. It is easy to deploy, easy to configure. and easy to develop. Its price is also good."
"Using this solution has made our job more efficient. We need fewer people to do implementation and support, and we don't have to go on-site to change the configuration or otherwise support the switch."
"ExtremeManagement brings in the most value by reducing the technical debt to the organization in terms of having to hire personnel to maintain it or contract it."
 

Cons

"It seems to be a little bit more centered toward wireless than wired. You've got more options you can do wirelessly than you can with the wired switches, but it works for what we need it to do. We would like to see a little bit more about the traffic, and we're looking at what's out there to see about that. We are looking at something that might give us a bit more insight into the actual traffic. If they had the full functionality on the wired side, as they do on the wireless side in terms of being able to view traffic and everything, it would be good."
"There should be an option for automation of template deployment by using the stored data."
"The solution needs to improve the dashboard."
"The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI."
"The product doesn’t have good monitoring capabilities."
"Better compatibility with third parties and to other Cisco products because if versions are not perfectly matching requirements, it gives a lot of problems."
"We have had a lot of problems with the Cisco switches and have needed to upgrade the operating systems, which means that we have to upgrade the DNA."
"It's a very hard software to learn. It's very deep, and when we first got it, there wasn't a whole lot of documentation on it."
"It would be great to not need an on-premises SiteIQ license for running a Fabric OS cloud or managing third-party devices."
"It would be helpful if this solution had support for configuring and managing third-party hardware devices."
"The reporting capabilities of ExtremeManagement are good, but I cannot say they are perfect."
"There could be better integration with third-party equipment and vendors."
"Some features are quite difficult to configure and they are very complicated to figure out. Maybe the vendors should introduce a more driven configuration that can clarify the processes a bit more to make the processes more clearly defined."
"They can improve the information period. Currently, we are able to have information for only 14 or 15 days, but we would like to have information for an extended period of maybe 30 days. Their technical support can also be improved in terms of the response time to the tickets."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"The product is very costly."
"Cisco DNA Center is a licensed product with multiple levels of licensing available such as basic, advanced, and essential. I don't have the exact figure, but Cisco DNA Center is costly. For example, the box has information about the essential license and costs a considerable amount of money. You need to pay extra to use advanced features in Cisco DNA Center. My company sees Cisco DNA Center as a solution that's worth the money, which is why it invested in the solution. If you want centralized management for your network, especially when upgrading it, Cisco DNA Center is perfect, but it's more suitable for a large-scale rather than a small-scale network."
"Affordability is a problem because it's created for large enterprises only. So, some customers, even if their engineers want the solution, might have problems with budget limitations."
"Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."
"I do know that Cisco does offer some really good promotions for DNA Center to bring the costs down."
"We get a yearly license at the time we buy the product."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"It has a good price. There is a good relationship between the cost and the performance."
"While they don't consider it affordable, they don't find it overly expensive."
"The support is billed on a yearly basis, and there are no additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco DNA Center?
After evaluating other solutions, we will provide feedback.
What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?
The deployment of Cisco DNA Center was complex due to the fact that on the data center side, we have a Juniper infrastructure, which created some complexity, though not significant. The deployment ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco DNA Center?
In my organization, we currently have some Cisco devices such as access switches, and we also have infrastructure, but that is not part of our responsibility. We do not manage that infrastructure. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExtremeManagement?
I would rate the pricing of ExtremeManagement as five out of ten; it is somewhat neutral, not cheap and not expensive. I might consider it a four out of ten now due to the global hardware economic ...
What needs improvement with ExtremeManagement?
The reporting part definitely requires improvement.
What is your primary use case for ExtremeManagement?
We have been reselling ExtremeManagement for 13 years.
 

Also Known As

DNA Center
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Henry Ford Health System, Baltimore Ravens, Brandili, Federal University of Alagoas, CEDAE, Caxias do Sul, UNISC Concurrency, CenturyLink Field, Louisiana College, Cricket Tasmania Stadium, Moscow Internet Exchange
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. ExtremeManagement and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.