Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Catchpoint vs Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) 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
57th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (39th), Cloud Monitoring Software (31st), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (9th)
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabri...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Catchpoint is 0.4%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Carl Funk - PeerSpot reviewer
The UI is well designed, so it's easy to get the visibility you want.
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. The other issue is the cost. The more data you collect, the more expensive it becomes. You sell your organization by saying we can get this feature set, but then you have to walk that back because we'll need more money to run every test. This is something hard to get out in your initial scoping. You provide Catchpoint with a series of tests and get a cost estimate, not realizing all the data you might have to collect long term. That was a big deal for us because we partly switched on the promise of saving money.
OusaidAbaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides spine-leaf architecture and support integration with programming languages
Configuring Cisco Nexus switches is relatively straightforward, especially if you're familiar with configuring Catalyst switches. The primary differences between Catalyst and Nexus switches lie in their system architecture and CLI commands. Nexus configurations can differ by about 20-30% from Catalyst configurations. For instance, while certain features may be enabled by default on Catalyst switches, they need to be explicitly enabled on Nexus switches. Maintaining a solution like this involves several support options, such as Cisco Smart Net. Smart Net is a support program that provides SLAs if the Nexus switches go down. With Smart Net, you can choose different levels of support, such as 2-hour, 4-hour, or 2-business-day response times. This ensures that Cisco will provide a replacement switch as quickly as possible if a Nexus switch fails or is out of service. The Nexus switches are known for their stability and high performance, so they have a higher price tag. Due to their cost, they are typically suited for large enterprises rather than small or medium-sized businesses. Major corporations, such as banks, multinational companies, and large industrial firms, have the budget for these high-end switches. The investment is justified by their advanced features and reliability, making them ideal for large-scale environments. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Catchpoint helped us establish that something is in a provider network, so we could tell our customers to check their internet provider because the traffic is not getting to us. You need to be gentle when you tell them that, but the fact that we could do it was crucial."
"The product's most valuable feature is the ability to identify and troubleshoot network issues."
"The most valuable features of Catchpoint are basically the transaction monitors on the API and UI."
"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."
"The drill-down feature of this product was very good. It allowed us to identify the exact page or area of the site that was causing our customers an issue."
"During business hours, it has worked absolutely fine without any issues."
"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."
"The best feature in Catchpoint is the alert or the notification my company gets frequently, in particular, every five minutes. It's the notification you get whenever a respective market has an issue. There's also a dashboard in Catchpoint that shows the markets you support, so all the markets will be highlighted graphically in the dashboard whenever there's downtime that could affect you. If there's no issue for a specific market, it will be in green, so in this way, anybody would be able to understand which market has issues and which market has no issues through Catchpoint. The tool is very useful for monitoring activities."
"The product has excellent stability."
"I like running the scripts. With the help of a Python script, we deployed within the configuration and built up the code."
"The interface of this solution is easy to use overall."
"I don't have to rely on the on-site engineer who can do the configuration. I can have our team just plug the devices and perform remotely. I can also do the templates."
"We use the product to manage access points."
"It has a very nice dashboard so you can see what's currently happening in the network and the performance of the back story."
"The most valuable feature is the connectivity monitoring."
"Stability is not an issue."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Catchpoint can be improved by focusing solely on network monitoring."
"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."
"As part of the improvement, there are certain categories, like for the China market, where we face issues."
"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."
"It's very costly."
"It is not very easy to monitor or to browse."
"The tool should be more user-friendly and improve AI integration."
"It's a relatively expensive product for some clients."
"More integration features would be beneficial."
"The reporting is not very intuitive and has room for improvement."
"The solution needs to improve reports."
"The automation feature could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is comparable to the last tool we were using."
"In terms of licensing fees, I believe they were slightly higher."
"The price and licensing are very, very high. They have to come down on the pricing to match with the industry standard."
"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 varies based on services and licensing models."
"The tool is always expensive, but their service, product quality, and support are good. We're happy with it, but it's still an expensive solution. There are cheaper alternatives but no similar platform across all domains."
"The product is licensed with contracts that work on a yearly basis rather than a monthly model."
"The price of Cisco Data Center Network Manager is expensive compared to other vendors on the market."
"The solution is very expensive."
"On average, Data Center Network Manager's pricing isn't too costly unless you choose a premier license."
"I would say that the pricing offers great value for the money."
"We usually opt for a yearly plan, commonly for three or five years upfront. Some customers may not utilize all the features included in the product, and this can lead to them paying for functionalities they don't need."
"When we purchase a Nexus box, the MDS CM license comes with it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
850,236 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
48%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 Data Center Network Manager?
It uses push technology, which pushes the changes to all relevant devices to ensure they are updated accordingly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Data Center Network Manager?
The tool is always expensive, but their service, product quality, and support are good. We're happy with it, but it's still an expensive solution. There are cheaper alternatives but no similar plat...
What needs improvement with Cisco Data Center Network Manager?
In a mixed architecture where Nexus switches are used as border devices and are connected to a Palo Alto firewall (e.g., version 9.1 or 10.1), you might encounter issues with BGP peering. For insta...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cisco Data Center Network Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Banco de Guayaquil, Cox Communications, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Roper St. Francis, University of British Columbia
Find out what your peers are saying about Catchpoint vs. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,236 professionals have used our research since 2012.