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Cisco UCS Director vs Zesty comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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 UCS Director
Ranking in Cloud Management
24th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zesty
Ranking in Cloud Management
16th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Cost Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.8%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zesty is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zesty1.1%
Cisco UCS Director1.8%
Other97.1%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

OR
Senior Telecommunications Engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Managing extensive VoIP services becomes efficient and seamless
We use Cisco UCS Director primarily for managing our VoIP service to maintain seamless service delivery. We operate in an enterprise government environment Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate. It helps save time by making it quicker to roll out new call…
Srinivas Rayudu  - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Zensa Technologies
Managing complex onboarding has been challenging but automated cost optimization delivers strong savings
Zesty is a good solution; however, the learning curve can be complex for new users without a solid tech background, posing a challenge in training and the initial setup process. I would deduct one point for this aspect since everything else is fine. A specific example of where the learning curve caused issues is when we introduced Zesty to our new development team, which struggled to understand the platform while working on a project related to AI and ML. Our system architects explained how Zesty works, but I believe a more proactive approach to training and foundational data could help teams be more self-sufficient and less reliant on internal support.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A product that really aids in systems management without complexity."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Better visibility and better control are the main benefits people receive from Cisco UCS Director; the automation and the orchestration part, these three to four points are the key factors to decide on Cisco UCS Director."
"Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate."
"UCS director enables us to be more productive and more agile, and also more self-sufficient because we don't have to depend on anybody else."
"As usual, the technical support from Cisco is amazing."
"The reason we went with Cisco is that it comes at a very negligible cost as part of the BOQ. Compared to the competition's products, which are incredibly expensive, UCS Director is low-cost."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the fabric sharing."
"From a metrics perspective, Zesty reduced our Kubernetes infrastructure spend by about 24% in the first six months, we also cut wasted storage costs by roughly 18% and improved saving plan utilization by around 12%, and on the operational side, we saved roughly 40 to 50 hours a month in manual cloud cost tuning."
"One of the reasons we decided to onboard Zesty was that it started supporting Windows instances."
"I think Zesty is a really useful tool, it is really quick, it is really powerful, they are always improving it, and the customer service is flawless."
"The turnkey aspect of Zesty is very valuable."
"Zesty has positively impacted our organization by providing a good return on investment, with a total reported percentage of savings around 40 to 50%."
 

Cons

"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
"The areas where this product can be improved are the integrations and the UI. These features are not as friendly compared to VMware products."
"There are a lot of bugs in the solution. This is an area in the solution that can be improved."
"The product's pricing needs to improve."
"The product could allow more programmatic opportunities through better development of the API."
"The solution could be improved is including a feature where I could do things programmatically versus having to create workarounds to get what I want to get done."
"Currently, Cisco UCS Director is unable to integrate with another product or with a server from another brand."
"The scalability of this solution needs to be improved because as it is now, you cannot scale the storage alone. Rather, you have to scale the storage and the compute together."
"I would like to get RDS-reserved instances that I could buy and sell, but that's a limitation on AWS."
"The biggest area for improvement is still reporting depth."
"Zesty is a good solution; however, the learning curve can be complex for new users without a solid tech background, posing a challenge in training and the initial setup process."
"There are different resource types that we would like to leverage and get reserved instances for, such as RDS instances."
"It would be really useful if Zesty had more code snippets that were easy to use, an easier library instead of their documentation, and something that provided an automated finish to insert code so it could give you code hints."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"The cost of this solution is significant."
"I rate Cisco UCS Director's price a three out of ten. Cisco UCS Director is not an affordable product. With Cisco UCS Director, there is a need to pay an overall price, which consists of the product, software, and support."
"I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing around five to six out of ten."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Educational Organization
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS Director?
While the pricing might be seen as expensive, it provides value for money due to reliable service and excellent technical support.
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Director?
It should be more of a cloud-based architecture for Cisco UCS Director, and it should be affordable to small customers as well because the pricing is a major challenge when we talk about Cisco UCS ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS Director?
Mainly in my region and country, large data center customers are using Cisco UCS Director, not the SMB or mid-market customers. More of the on-premise customers are utilizing Cisco UCS Director. Th...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zesty?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was great, as we had a great account manager that we did not have to query too much about it. The free one was nearly good enough to start with...
What needs improvement with Zesty?
I find myself using the online editor the most often, and what would be better is if you could have multiple windows open to work in, something like an actual program rather than having to shift be...
What is your primary use case for Zesty?
My main use case for Zesty is the CMS. For our corporate website, my team uses Zesty's CMS to allow users from any point in the company to upload content, add posts, add pages, and promote the comp...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
Walkme, Wiz, Gong, Grubhub, Singular
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. Zesty and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.