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Catchpoint vs Cisco DNA Center 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

Catchpoint
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
58th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (37th), Cloud Monitoring Software (31st), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (10th)
Cisco DNA Center
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Catchpoint is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

AnmolRai - PeerSpot reviewer
Valuable monitoring features enhance ecommerce experience while improvement needed in region-specific insights
As part of the improvement, there are certain categories, like for the China market, where we face issues. We are currently using an external tool, Splunk, for reporting. If we could receive similar data for the China market as we do for North America and Asia Pacific, this would be helpful.
Ahmed  Helmy - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience unified visibility and monitoring for enterprise campus and significant time savings and enhanced troubleshooting with reliable support
We have been working with Cisco DNA Center for ten years. Our clients use Cisco DNA Center for unified visibility/monitoring across Enterprise Campus both LAN & WLAN along with Access and fast technical issues troubleshooting The solution provides fast troubleshooting capabilities and fast…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We really need the API monitoring, as well as client side session monitoring, the global synthetic monitoring, to track the availability of the systems from the customer side."
"Catchpoint is very flexible and also provides logs for troubleshooting purposes. It helps us fix issues within the SLAs signed with the end users. The tool is easy to learn."
"The solution offers three different ways of slicing data to look for abnormalities."
"During business hours, it has worked absolutely fine without any issues."
"The most valuable features of Catchpoint are basically the transaction monitors on the API and UI."
"Catchpoint provides a great amount of information."
"The thing I like most is the tech support in this company, because they have 24/7 chat support. We can chat immediately and ask them about an issue and they keep responding. They create tickets on our behalf and respond."
"One of the features, the scatter plot, is very useful. It shows red dots wherever there are issues."
"I like that we can easily configure any new hardware. It's also easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot."
"Automation helps configure devices without manual intervention, enabling zero-touch provisioning."
"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."
"Application Assurance works very well."
"Automation is another key highlight. With automation, you can automate everything through a single port."
"Cisco VXLAN is a protocol that has been around for some time, but the practical implementation and operational capability of Cisco DNA Center bring it to life."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is the AI (Artificial Intelligence) that provides us with valuable information."
"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
 

Cons

"The old user version was better, it was more user-friendly."
"There's still too much manual involvement in getting customized test configurations out there. It's good, but it still takes a lot of effort. In other words, it's when you need to configure it to collect a specific variable and that kind of thing."
"if we need to do performance analysis, we have to click too many times. For example, if there is an issue that is caught by Catchpoint, we need to understand what the error is and at which step it failed, or which transaction that is impacted. To drill down, we have to click too many things to get the answer."
"Trending needs improvement. Currently, out-of-the-box, they provide only seven days availability. So, we have to do queries and we have to go into a separate analysis module, we have to run lot of queries to long-term trends."
"A room for improvement in Catchpoint is that it lacks an automated page updating feature. My company receives all the alerts and notifications it needs, but the page doesn't update automatically. You need to manually refresh the page, so every five minutes you need to refresh it to see the most updated information. If there's an automated page refresh feature, that would help my company. It's a feature that Grafana has. The page auto-refreshes in Grafana, so you don't have to manually refresh the page. If that feature is implemented in Catchpoint, it'll be useful for the users. Another area for improvement in the tool is you have to do a manual task, for example, when you have a notification for a market, you get a zip code that the user could have entered, but if the zip code is incorrect, you have to manually go into Catchpoint and update that parameter, so that manual step is another area in the tool that needs improvement."
"It would be great if Catchpoint could incorporate its alerting system instead of relying on separate tools like ServiceNow."
"We would like the script creation feature of this solution to be improved, as it currently requires a complicated manual process to update the scripts."
"As part of the improvement, there are certain categories, like for the China market, where we face issues."
"The cost is very high."
"As a user, it would be good if I could plug in controllers, suites, and devices from other vendors to Cisco DNA Center."
"Integration with analytic tools and API integrations would be ideal."
"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."
"An area that needs improvement is the integration with other vendors."
"From the recent DNA point of view, there are some stability challenges with Cisco, but very minor."
"An area for improvement in Cisco DNA Center is the latency in data correlation. For example, sometimes, when an issue happens, and I check the logs, I can't find the corresponding log. There's a delay in log replication, so this is what needs improvement in Cisco DNA Center. Reporting in Cisco DNA Center could also be improved because it only has a few templates, and you can't customize it based on your requirements. There aren't many options available in Cisco DNA Center regarding reporting, versus Cisco Prime, which has excellent features for different levels of detailed reports. I'd like to see real-time data replication in the next release of Cisco DNA Center, similar to what's done in Meraki. Data in Meraki is real-time with no delay, so data is immediately replicated in the cloud. Currently, there's a lag in Cisco DNA Center, and addressing that lag is the enhancement I'd like to see in Cisco DNA Center. The solution also needs to be more user-friendly."
"There is a limitation with the number of VRFs that you can have in your network, and this has caused us problems with some customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of licensing fees, I believe they were slightly higher."
"The pricing is based on consumption and works on a point scale. For example, let's say I want to look at www.google.com, and I'm going to test it to see if it's there. It will bring back all this data that tells me how long it took to connect and how long it took to get the first byte. It will list all the resources on the page, showing that they all work and there are no broken links. It brings that data back. That test has an assigned point value depending on what you decide to extract from that test. If all I do is check to see whether it's available, it might be one point. I don't know the exact point values off-hand. This is just an example."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to the last tool we were using."
"The solution's pricing varies based on services and licensing models."
"The price and licensing are very, very high. They have to come down on the pricing to match with the industry standard."
"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."
"The price could be better. It's a very expensive tool."
"The solution is a little bit expensive but depends a lot on the customer's usage. If you use it in the right place, you can easily pay for it."
"The solution is expensive."
"The partnership price is notably high, but it ultimately depends on the chosen business model."
"We have a three-year license with them."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"I do know that Cisco does offer some really good promotions for DNA Center to bring the costs down."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Educational Organization
13%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Catchpoint?
Catchpoint is very flexible and also provides logs for troubleshooting purposes. It helps us fix issues within the SLAs signed with the end users. The tool is easy to learn.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Catchpoint?
The solution's pricing varies based on services and licensing models. Clients typically see significant operational and cost efficiencies, with time savings estimated between 30% and 40%.
What needs improvement with Catchpoint?
As part of the improvement, there are certain categories, like for the China market, where we face issues. We are currently using an external tool, Splunk, for reporting. If we could receive simila...
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?
We have utilized the software-defined access (SDA) feature of Cisco DNA Center. The AI-driven needs enhancements and Integration and unification of visibility and monitoring to include other areas ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
DNA Center
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Catchpoint vs. Cisco DNA Center and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.