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Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs ThousandEyes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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 Provider Connectivity...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
45th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (39th)
ThousandEyes
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (10th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.7%, down from 0.8% 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 Provider Connectivity Assurance0.7%
Other97.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at DYNASAFE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.
Addresses connectivity issues with real-time monitoring while offering good local support
I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and quality use. This involves addressing network device issues, specifically Cisco network devices One…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"APM analysis is much faster than traditional root cause analysis of application problems."
"Network control when experiencing problems indicating "the network is slow"."
"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."
"What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy. I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful."
"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."
"It has clearly saved us money."
"Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark."
"Ease of use; can literally diagnose an issue in about four clicks."
"The authentication overall - including to the VPN and LAN - is excellent."
"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."
"The historical timeline feature is what I appreciate most about ThousandEyes because when people report that something occurs at a specific time of day, I can set up a test and capture the issue in action."
"The most valuable feature of ThousandEyes is user-friendliness. It has been essential for us to have a solution that is easy to use."
"From our perspective, ThousandEyes stands out as an invaluable tool because of its deep and extensive capabilities."
"ThousandEyes is an excellent product that really provides accurate metrics into network performance as well as the user experience, and I would highly recommend it."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution was the ability to see how the connection quality is between the sites and get an alert if it was turning bad."
"We have only had good experiences with support, as they are helpful and responsive, and we are quite happy with the level of attention we get when we have issues."
 

Cons

"A lower price and more flexible versions will help the product."
"Because of the policies in Vietnam, we cannot connect the system to the Accedian cloud. It would be good if Accedian could provide a local cloud. In the next release, I would like them to focus on improving and adding more reporting features. This will help the operations teams."
"We have encountered problems with the license that is connected to the hypervisor on which the virtual appliance is deployed."
"Embed a warning system to a mailbox when it exceeds the threshold for use of bandwidth over a given period of time."
"If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either."
"For the PVX, they are in the process of getting the results to export to cloud and SaaS for analytics. They told me that this will happen later this year. Right now, for the most part, I create that data myself."
"It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database."
"The licensing of the virtual pollers is problematic because they are attached to the physical ESX on which they are installed."
"There is room for improvement in terms of customization and user-friendliness."
"The solution's network and reporting could be improved."
"The tool does not provide features for application-level monitoring."
"We can show the traffic path in some cases, but it's almost impossible to do so in cloud networks like CDN, Akamai, or Microsoft."
"Presently, it lacks the ability to integrate with other Cisco products."
"Cisco is the standard for anyone wanting something good, the problem with it is the cost and that means that it's not accessible to many smaller companies."
"ThousandEyes should expand its application monitoring to monitor some communication applications."
"They only offer synthetic requests, so they should create an agent for users that can track your request."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."
"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."
"It provides value and the cost is not huge."
"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."
"If you look into Riverbed, it's a licensing nightmare. You need to pay for every type of analysis... If you don't look into licensing, Riverbed and SolarWinds are pretty comparable. But if you look into licensing it would not be smart to go for either of them. On the pure, bare-metal basis, it's the same. But when you get the bare metal and a few basic licenses, then you need all those other licenses just to be sure that there's no issue... One of the great things about Skylight is you have them all, and you actually need them all."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is an expensive solution."
"It is a quite expensive solution."
"In our company, we incur a yearly expense in our company for the licensing part. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten since it is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is cheap; I rate it a five out of ten."
"The solution is cheap."
"The solution costs several thousand dollars per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?
Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues. I require more tools to file and resolve these issues efficiently.
What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?
I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and ...
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?
ThousandEyes could be improved by unifying the GUI with the rest of the Cisco products since it remains legacy from its original state when Cisco acquired it.
What is your primary use case for ThousandEyes?
My main use cases for ThousandEyes are troubleshooting slow speeds and investigating disconnection issues that users report.
 

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville
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 Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. ThousandEyes and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.