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Cisco DNA Center vs SolarWinds NPM 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
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 1.4%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.7%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

AvrahamSonenthal - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently manages our wireless network and provides valuable monitoring features
The platform's biggest benefit has been in managing our wireless network. Having a single pane of glass to control all wireless controllers and access points and to monitor activity has been a significant advantage. We're a small federal agency with around 300 network devices, so automation is a minor focus. It's more relevant for larger networks. The main benefits we've seen are in inventory management and the potential for configuration automation. However, I recommend using the DNA Centre only for larger networks with over a thousand devices; otherwise, it may not be cost-effective. Before proceeding, ensure that your devices are compatible with DNA Center, as not all Cisco devices are supported. Also, investing in proper training is different from plug-and-play. I rate it an eight.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."
"Cisco DNA Center provides operational support, compliance support, security vulnerability detection, and automatic scheduling."
"It does a lot of things automatically, and that's the big thing with it. They're making the software so that you don't need to be as knowledgeable as me on the switching and routing side to get your work done. If you want, you can have DNA troubleshoot your problem for you and give you solutions or fix it itself, if it was something that's just a configuration issue."
"It is a stable solution."
"Application Assurance works very well."
"The solution helps with the management and orchestration of campaigns. It helps with visibility and analytics. I also like its SDA configuration."
"I think that their LAN automation is a very good feature."
"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."
"The other valuable system is the DSS (decision support system). If there's a fault in the network, SolarWinds is basically capable of rectifying and resolving that problem on its own without any intervention from an IP assistant or administrator."
"It did a good job of the collection and then an investigation of the net flow of information for understanding the applications that were being used at certain locations."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"The connectivity of the solution is very good."
"The alerting and reporting capabilities of the tool are impressive"
 

Cons

"DNA Center has been on the market for a few years and they need to update it."
"The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI."
"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."
"The product doesn’t have good monitoring capabilities."
"The solution's integration feature can be better."
"There are some software problems from version to version. It takes a long time for DNA Center to recognize the video and control access devices."
"In terms of the clustering part, there are some concerns."
"The product has many features that do not work properly."
"The product is scalable, but at a cost. Extra modules have to be purchased for each extra server. The initial set up isn't complex, but will require someone who is experienced with the network monitoring system"
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds."
"The only real caveat that we have or that I have an issue with is when I go on vacation, it's a little hard for me to go and modify alerts so that I don't get alerted about things when I'm on vacation."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds. Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team, especially during application-level issues."
"They have had a rather large security breach in the past. It's cost some companies customers."
"The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market."
"SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The partnership price is notably high, but it ultimately depends on the chosen business model."
"The price could be better. It's a very expensive tool."
"The solution is expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"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."
"Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"It is not an expensive product."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Educational Organization
57%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco DNA Center?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it gives some kind of ease in operations, especially since our company is moving from CLI to GUI-based configuration.
What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?
The system is working fine for me currently.
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

DNA Center
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.