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Cisco DNA Center vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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 Monitoring Software
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
Plixer Scrutinizer
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
74th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 0.8%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center0.8%
Plixer Scrutinizer0.5%
Other98.7%
Network Monitoring Software
 

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.
Ira Mulyanti - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Director at ARGA SOLUSI
An affordable product with great integration capabilities
Plixer Core Platform is a valuable feature and a good software. Plixer Scrutinizer uses NetFlow analysis to monitor whatever is there in a network. Price-wise, Plixer Scrutinizer is not an expensive product. Basically, Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that can integrate with any other brand or product in the market, so it is not an area of concern.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I found valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the Software-Defined Access Network, so the entire LAN network can be centralized and managed from a single dashboard. Cisco DNA Center is suitable for centralized management and lets you deploy switches in a centralized fashion. You can also do multiple switch port configurations simultaneously and segregate your traffic into multiple fabrics. Another valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is enhanced security through Scalable Group Tags. Cisco DNA Center can be integrated with your Cisco ISE to enhance the port securities, and this paves the way for Software-Defined Networking in the LAN segment, which is the main advantage of Cisco DNA Center. I also like that you can use Cisco DNA Center for data assurance or correlation. The solution shows your network and client health parameters, which I find convenient for troubleshooting."
"The most valuable features were the monitoring, maintenance, and configuration."
"It is a stable solution."
"I like that we can easily configure any new hardware. It's also easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot."
"Technical support is excellent. We have pretty good technical support."
"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."
"The most valuable features of the solution are all of its security features...It is a highly scalable solution."
"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
"Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features."
"Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly."
"The ability to view the status of the top-10 at a glance is helpful. We immediately know which link is over-utilized or heavily used... and it's all in real-time."
"It shows us the saturation of the network of devices. It gives us a clear view of the flows in the network to understand, for instance, planning upgrades in the network to get an idea of what's going on the network on traffic flows. It gives us insight, for instance, on what's going on on our VPN Client. There are a lot of things where it provides very helpful information. It also gives us our security reports with quite detailed information on what's going on in the network, and whether there are data exfiltrations and so on."
"We see things that we did not see before; it's opened up peoples' eyes among our network folks and overall it has had a good, positive impact."
"Compared to other solutions, the functionality Scrutinizer delivers is better."
"For security purposes, it is really a very powerful product."
"If you have a large network then this product is totally invaluable."
 

Cons

"As a user, it would be good if I could plug in controllers, suites, and devices from other vendors to Cisco DNA Center."
"Cisco could improve the security side of their solutions."
"The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI."
"When it comes to deploying wireless fields, integrating defaults into the DNS interface can be challenging."
"The deployment part is definitely an area for improvement; Cisco DNA Center has some weaknesses that require improvements in that area."
"An area that needs improvement is the integration with other vendors."
"The pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco DNA Center are expensive."
"The product has many features that do not work properly."
"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."
"The reporting structure, the front-end GUI, also needs some work."
"For updating the Scrutinizer platform, when we have the actual data, it never happens in one day."
"There is room for improvement around the data that they have on the website about solutions... they should have more templated solutions on their website. Going out and identifying how to do RTP performance with a Cisco router, or how to do application response times in an Arrista data center deployment was where most of the work was... They should spend some more time documenting solutions and putting together white papers."
"From what I understand it is that the solution is not very scalable in a high volume traffic environment with a large number of flows."
"They're working on the security areas, so it can provide more insight."
"The solution creates a visual map of a particular location and how the network flows. You need to spend time to generate all those maps. If they could figure out a way to reduce the time needed to generate the maps, that would be great."
"Knowing that they're coming out with a new user interface, that is an area where there is room for improvement. There are so many variables. They should limit the variables in the user interface and create some classes, like "simple," "novice," and "expert" to narrow down the variables within it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a three-year license with them."
"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."
"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."
"The price of the solution is expensive. The hardware is licensed on the device, but the hardware on the server is expensive."
"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."
"Cisco DNA Center is expensive."
"Cisco DNA Center is too expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"We recently bought a license upgrade, so we will integrate more exporters. We upgraded from a 25 exporter license to a 50 exporter license. Therefore, there will be more flows, and this will be an extension. I don't know when we will purchase a faster server, because the server that we have is quite new."
"It's about €10,000 a year for initial license and yearly maintenance costs. In addition, the hardware costs are about €10,000 once every five years."
"There are no extra costs. It's about $8,000 a year. The bang for the buck (cost) is definitely a plus."
"We have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."
"I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive."
"Currently, the license for Plixer Scrutinizer is subscription-based and at a yearly fee. The price would depend on the amount of traffic you pull in. For example, there are several blocks from a 10K flow, a 40K flow, and a 100K flow, and based on the number of devices that you receive the flows from, that's the license, and it is not a per-interface pricing model, so that is a very strong, very competitive pricing feature of Plixer Scrutinizer. Licensing for the product is also not based on the number of storage, compared to some competing products that are priced based on the amount of storage you need, particularly based on the retention and the amount of data. Plixer Scrutinizer licensing is based on the device, and it's more in the direction of $10,000 because, with just $1,000, you don't have anything."
"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."
"The licensing cost for Plixer Scrutinizer is in the middle. It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive. Its licensing model is based on how many exporters, how many devices export information to the system. Plixer Scrutinizer has different modules you could add such as the security module which would cost extra."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

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. ...
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Also Known As

DNA Center
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Oxford Networks, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, UltiSat, Wipro, West Aurora School District 129, SUNY Geneseo College, Bloomington Public Schools, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Kitsap Credit Union, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County Houston Texas, Carilion Clinic, Banner Health, IDEXX Laboratories, Phibro Animal Health Corporation, Goodwill Industries, Parmalat, Armstrong Coal Company, Flybe, James Walker
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. Plixer Scrutinizer and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.