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DX Performance Management vs Kentik 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

DX Performance Management
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
41st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure Capacity Planning (1st), DX NetOps (2nd)
Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
22nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of DX Performance Management is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kentik1.9%
DX Performance Management0.6%
Other97.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1810893 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Operations Specialist at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Flexibility and detailed performance stats enable effective network monitoring
Spectrum is very good at monitoring all network faults and configurations. It enables me to take action based on network issues. The Performance Management provides detailed network performance stats, including CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth. Additionally, Spectrum is flexible and allows me to organize and treat devices uniquely without impacting other devices.
SS
Network Engineer III at Fortanix
Integrating synthetic tests and network monitoring enhances traffic pattern visualization
The Kentik support team is good. If you want me to rate them on a scale, I would give them eight. I had a call with the Kentik support team for fifteen minutes, so I'm going to give them eight for now. The reason for giving them an eight is that they are good and address our issues. They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us, including what is needed and what is not. However, when we are working on some real issues with Kentik, I sometimes feel there's a delay due to the busyness of their teams. We faced some outages and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools, so that took a little time to resolve.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integration to the other products that we use: NFA, we use ADA, we use Spectrum; and CAPM integrates all those into a single pane of glass, for performance."
"The most valuable feature of DX Performance Management is the quick way we can collect data without putting much effort. They have a lot of customization and features with the solution internally and out of the box. We can discover the device, and start collecting information. For example, if the device is available, we can receive the CPU and memory utilization, and the interface optimization is simple and very fast to implement."
"The technical support from CA Performance Management was very good."
"​The ability to quickly do drag and drop customized reports for dashboards.​"
"When we deployed it, right out of the box we were able to stand up Performance Management within two weeks, in our production environment, with full discovery and relevant information, actual information, that we could use in our command center, our 24/7 operations center."
"We have been able to get a little bit better at seeing more things in real time and more just in time, so we're less reactionary."
"The capability where not only the traditional SNMP information is captured but also the netflow data; who is consuming the data on the WAN, and voice-related information, is helpful. The voice quality makes it very easy for first- and second-line operators to see where the issue is, and who is impacted."
"We're able to present data from multiple back-end collection sources into a single dashboard for the users. So they don't have to go to multiple locations to get data about a particular item, or device."
"One of the valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."
"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."
"It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics."
"Kentik answers the flow question: what are my flows, where are they are going, and what can I do to better optimize my connectivity."
"Kentik is worth the money to have as a tool."
"Good NetFlow visualization and analysis tools are valuable to anybody who needs to understand the traffic that flows in and out the network."
"Honestly, it is one of those products that I would suggest to almost any network operator."
"Kentik excels in telemetry within data centers and works well in multi-vendor environments."
 

Cons

"This tool gathers so much data, which makes it hard to convert over. To upgrade it, you really need the solution backed up. That is the issue that we are facing right now."
"Install is done as root, which is a security no-no, and the database IO requirements were not stated correctly, which lead to a year of instability."
"Today, tenants are bound to a data collector which requires a lot of networking and resources to configure."
"It would be helpful if CA provided online training for its customers."
"Since we are out of registered IP space, we are moving to ipv6 and we expect our vendors to move with us, and they have not delivered yet."
"This may be available by now but for server space, when it comes to the disk file system, I'd like to see that graphically represented, or the trend, rather than what I'm seeing now."
"What we want to see: More integration inside of Spectrum and integration of role-based access."
"It could be a little easier to integrate new metrics."
"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable."
"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."
"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use."
"It also detects anomalies proactively, but the same is not so true when it comes to real network problems, since they tend to just happen."
"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."
"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."
"Version 4 of the platform is good and going in the right direction."
"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."
"Do your homework and know how many devices you will be managing out of the gate. Be sure to project what your growth will be each year."
"We purchase a license to use the solution every three years and we have multiple contracts. They have been increasing the price annually. We have a baseline for three years and then we need to pay the difference from the baseline, and we are in the process of negotiating a new price for all the licenses we need. The price overall is affordable."
"They should provide more scalable licensing for the product."
"We were looking at other vendors in the marketplace for NetFlow, and CA just beat everybody else in price, cost, and the size to implement. ​"
"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."
"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."
"The tool is cheaply priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with DX Performance Management?
Spectrum's topology view sometimes does not rebuild automatically when a device is shut down and reconnected. It requires manual discovery and rebuilding of the topology, which I hope can be improved.
What is your primary use case for DX Performance Management?
I have used Spectrum for monitoring all network faults, configurations, and troubleshooting network issues. It provides network performance stats, such as CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth detai...
What advice do you have for others considering DX Performance Management?
I would recommend this solution based on its functionality, flexibility, customizability, and ease of use. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I am just a customer and not a par...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.
What needs improvement with Kentik?
There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.
 

Also Known As

CA Performance Management
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Jack Henry & Assoc, Target, CenturyLink, Bell Canada, BrightHouse Networks, Telus, Unisys, Verizon, Southern California Edison, GEICO, Fidelity Investments, Wells Fargo, American Family Insurance Group, Deutsche Telekom AG 
Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Performance Management vs. Kentik and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.