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Cisco DNA Center vs ThousandEyes 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.7
Cisco DNA Center enhances time efficiency despite high costs and complex licensing, yielding high return on investment ratings.
Sentiment score
6.4
ThousandEyes offers significant ROI by enhancing network performance, reducing downtime, and speeding up troubleshooting, benefiting organizations significantly.
Although Cisco DNA Center is expensive, we have seen a return on investment in terms of time savings.
Sr. Director, Business Development & Sales Operations at connect professional services
There has been a great ROI from using ThousandEyes, with significant time saved in troubleshooting as I can quickly pinpoint issues rather than spending time isolating them, alongside enhancing customer feedback and experience.
Senior cloud engineering lead and IT project owner at KDD
I have seen a return on investment by reducing troubleshooting time and having lesser user mapping error issues, in addition to engineering time saved through better observability and reduced organizational MTTR.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Cisco DNA Center's customer service is generally helpful, but inconsistency and delays in technical support are frequently noted.
Sentiment score
6.6
ThousandEyes customer support is highly rated, responsive, and helpful, especially for critical issues, with effective integration support.
Overall, Cisco DNA Center rates eight out of ten as a complete solution.
Sr. Director, Business Development & Sales Operations at connect professional services
I would rate Cisco support easily at nine out of ten.
Cloud Infrastructure Architect at POST Luxembourg
The support for Cisco DNA Center is good.
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
We contacted the support team, and they resolved it within a couple of hours.
System Operation Associate at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The customer support for ThousandEyes is very proactive and supportive.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Cisco DNA Center is scalable and efficient for large networks but may face limitations with IPv6 support and costs.
Sentiment score
7.0
ThousandEyes is praised for scalability and adaptability, though some note licensing costs, making it ideal for diverse businesses.
From my experience, we can easily manage numerous devices.
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
The solution is designed for large enterprise companies.
Sr. Director, Business Development & Sales Operations at connect professional services
Scalability with ThousandEyes is straightforward as you don't really need to scale; it's designed to monitor multiple applications, accommodating 50 or 100 applications simultaneously.
Network and Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
ThousandEyes's scalability is excellent; it is very scalable and grows with my organization's needs.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Users generally rate Cisco DNA Center highly for stability, with minor issues often resolved effectively by Cisco support.
Sentiment score
8.1
ThousandEyes is highly reliable with minimal bugs, fast performance, and user satisfaction ratings typically between seven and ten.
When we communicate problems, they solve them effectively.
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
From my experience, ThousandEyes has been stable up to 95%; I have not seen any stability issues.
Senior cloud engineering lead and IT project owner at KDD
ThousandEyes is not very stable; sometimes you have to reboot the servers to get actual results.
Network and Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco DNA Center needs integration, UI, security, and support improvements, with high pricing, complex deployment, and feature parity desired.
Users desire an improved interface, better integration, enhanced monitoring capabilities, detailed documentation, and proactive incident detection for ThousandEyes.
The AI-driven insights have contributed significantly to faster troubleshooting and predictive analytics.
Sr. Director, Business Development & Sales Operations at connect professional services
The deployment part is definitely an area for improvement.
Cloud Infrastructure Architect at POST Luxembourg
The client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days.
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
Incidents should be alerted on and traced early, before they escalate to full outages.
Software Developer at The Code
Having a dedicated incident alert system for URL alerts would help manage noise and streamline operations, especially during patch upgrades.
System Operation Associate at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
An area where ThousandEyes can be improved is in providing more in-depth packet analysis; we've found instances where ThousandEyes indicates everything is okay, but it's actually not.
Network and Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
 

Setup Cost

Cisco DNA Center is costly, suited for large enterprises, with advanced features requiring extra fees, and challenging for SMBs.
ThousandEyes is mid-range to expensive, offering significant value to larger organizations, with regional pricing and flow-dependent licensing costs.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that everything was cost-effective.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it comes in cheaper than alternatives.
Lead Technical Consultant at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Cisco DNA Center provides centralized management, automation, AI-based insights, and security, enhancing network operations with scalable automation and comprehensive visibility.
ThousandEyes offers comprehensive network insights, enhancing operational efficiency, troubleshooting, and user experience with end-to-end monitoring and deep visibility.
The most valuable features include AI-driven insights which make troubleshooting much easier.
Sr. Director, Business Development & Sales Operations at connect professional services
If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
I measure the 70% improvement in customer experience through customer tickets and feedback after resolving issues, where previously, users faced problems and limited time on the platform, and after using ThousandEyes, the user time reached up to five to six hours a day, even for teams possibly totaling 30 hours a day.
Senior cloud engineering lead and IT project owner at KDD
ThousandEyes offers the best features including global internet and cloud visibility from distributed vantage points, application and network performance monitoring, real-time outage detection and incident alerts, end-to-end path visualization for rapid troubleshooting, proactive issue demarcation, and historical data.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
ThousandEyes has become critical for swift network troubleshooting as well, so anytime that there's potential issues with applications or we want to be proactive in resolving potential issues before they arise, ThousandEyes is really the platform that we're leveraging for WAN monitoring, Wi-Fi, latency, packet loss, etc.
Vice President, Finance and Operations at Fruitist
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco DNA Center
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
ThousandEyes
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (10th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 ThousandEyes is 1.7%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ThousandEyes1.7%
Cisco DNA Center0.8%
Other97.5%
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.
Shreyans Parekh - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President, Finance and Operations at Fruitist
Proactive monitoring has transformed digital experience and now optimizes application delivery
With ThousandEyes, there are some configuration and metric screens that are not entirely intuitive with ThousandEyes, so they can certainly improve in terms of the usability of certain metric screens. ThousandEyes can also offer deeper traffic insights relative to specific applications, so detailed analytics on application-level traffic would help in better understanding and managing our network resources effectively. I would say that ThousandEyes can also, in terms of providing more extensibility with other observability tools, offer more out-of-the-box integrations with other observability tools so that ThousandEyes can serve as that single source of truth, so that we don't necessarily need to go to other tools to be able to be that one-source dashboard. I think there's a lot that ThousandEyes can continue to improve on there. The issues that I've talked about, including extensibility with other platforms and the improvement of accessing specific metric screens in order to be able to provide for fuller access and more detailed access to network-level metrics would make the platform feel less complicated to navigate. It wouldn't require as many manual integration inputs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

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 Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise16
 

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 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 the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or requirements. Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better from a cloud monitoring or APM monitoring perspective. You can check...
What needs improvement with ThousandEyes?
With ThousandEyes, there are some configuration and metric screens that are not entirely intuitive with ThousandEyes, so they can certainly improve in terms of the usability of certain metric scree...
What is your primary use case for ThousandEyes?
My main use cases for ThousandEyes at my current company are leveraging ThousandEyes for digital experience, internet, and internet performance. I'm using ThousandEyes for full network path visuali...
 

Also Known As

DNA Center
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Wayfair, GitHub, Craigslist, Comcast, SurveyMonkey, Lyft, Box, HP, Zendesk, IO Data Centers, Good Technology, NNTCommunications, Proofpoint, Schneider, Crowdstrike, Avera, Pitney Bowes, InstartLogic, Shutterfly, Shutterstock, Condé Nast, Roche, Jive, Actelion, Brocade, Infor, Okta, JLL, DigitalOcean, Zuora, NetSuite, CloudFlare, One, DemonWare, Quantcast, Carbonite, CareerBuilder, Prosper, Oscar, Slack
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. ThousandEyes and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.