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Cisco ACI vs Megaport comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 ACI
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th)
Megaport
Ranking in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) category, the mindshare of Cisco ACI is 9.6%, down from 15.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Megaport is 4.6%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco ACI9.6%
Megaport4.6%
Other85.8%
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Khandelwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Technical Manager at KPMG
Enables streamlined data center management with automation and application-centric design
The main features of Cisco ACI that I really appreciate are the application-centric and network-centric designs, allowing you to create your network according to your application. That's helpful, and it's good for one-time implementation. The automation capabilities are really helpful. We deployed one data center using Terraform, and after deployment, many automation features are available, which can be very helpful. Based on my experience, Cisco ACI provides substantial capability; you can design your network accordingly and it's part of the SDN family, providing many benefits to the organization, especially when moving from traditional network infrastructure. Many organizations are actually using the old traditional Nexus infrastructure or some old data center devices. It gives you significant control and one-time implementation capabilities, and it also provides better performance and security. Functionality-wise, Cisco ACI provides integration using automation. We implemented it through Terraform, which was easy. Those features are available, so I don't think any new features are needed right now; something new could come up, but they have implemented many improvements over the years.
AJ
Senior Engineer, Cloud Operations at Cvent
Port forwarding has boosted daily development workflows and improves production testing speed
Megaport was given to me by my mentors as a tool to use for our use case, so I didn't have any decision play into this. I think port forwarding is the most highly used feature of Megaport, and since I've used that, all my fellow seniors and teammates have also used that feature only. I think the free tier we are using is free, and it's very easily integratable with no setup guide needed for using it. There might be other features that came up during implementation, but we didn't have any use case for those; the only concern for us was the port forwarding, and that's why we were using Megaport. It is actually pretty important for us; our day starts with Megaport. I think it has contributed significantly because without it, if we had used some other local code editor and then tested manually every time, it would have taken a lot more time. I think it has improved our efficiency almost by fifty percent, and obviously, our productivity has increased so much.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco ACI's best features include its network-centric approach and micro-segmentation."
"One of the most valuable features is centralized management. The other is the ability to create policies by routing."
"The operation and maintenance costs have been reduced. It is also simple to deploy any deployment. Any configuration can be easily done."
"The scalability is perfect, and it is one of the main reasons that we install it."
"Cisco technical support is great."
"We had different networks and combined them with ACI so we could have the control of one controller-based network. Also, everything is combined now."
"We get a full holistic view of the ecosystem."
"The efficiency in terms of the data center latency has been reduced by around 20-30% and our applications function a lot better."
"It is actually pretty important for us; our day starts with Megaport."
"Megaport impacts my organization by not necessarily lowering cost, but it reduces a lot of time and increases the bandwidth, which increases the performance, especially in terms of overall company performance and network performance."
"The pricing model of Megaport is appealing, along with its flexibility in providing connectivity to end customers."
 

Cons

"We had issues in the first deployment when we tried to finish the migration from traditional networking to Cisco ACI."
"The initial setup of this solution is complex. Our environment is not very complex, but the product itself is very complex."
"The initial setup was a bit complex."
"Training for this product is available from institutions but it is not available online where you can get users trained easily."
"In the new version of 4.0, the management groups for updating the software is not the best way to do it. It was better in 3.2."
"Cisco ACI, segmentation-wise, could be more flexible, which is an area for improvement. The solution could be improved in terms of macro or micro-segmentation for many access lists and contracts. The process becomes very messy in the end."
"We would like to have faster services and problem monitoring for our customers."
"I would like to see more troubleshooting apps. There should be more and better SNMP monitoring."
"My suggestion would be for Megaport to make the terminal more user-friendly; I use Windows, so it's not a problem, but I'm not sure how it would work in Linux or Ubuntu-based systems."
"However, the part that can improve is that it should be a little bit easier to use and more user-friendly."
"There are no notable complaints from customers regarding Megaport, and there hasn't been any identified need for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite expensive. It is not at all on the cheap or medium side."
"The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."
"We used Cisco Professional Services for the deployment. They were outstanding, but very expensive."
"The price could be improved. It is expensive, but then again, it is Cisco. The price is worth what you pay for."
"The good thing about Cisco is that you can trade in your old products to replace them with ACI."
"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"It saves time and resources."
"If you compare the licensing and total cost of ACI, it's cheaper than NSX because of the licensing fees. If you are going for full NSX features it will be too expensive, especially the next-generation firewalling feature."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Legal Firm
11%
Retailer
11%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise87
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco ACI?
Cost is one thing that could be improved, as it is heavy for an emerging market like ours.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Megaport?
The pricing model is one of the features I personally like about Megaport.
What needs improvement with Megaport?
There are no notable complaints from customers regarding Megaport, and there hasn't been any identified need for improvement.
What is your primary use case for Megaport?
We are a reseller of products and provide services and products to our end customers, using solutions like Megaport. Depending on the customer requirements, we sometimes need to combine different s...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Aon, News Corp Australia, Fujitsu, NEC, Virgin Australia, Zettagrid, JB Hi-Fi, blueAPACHE, CloudLogix, Data Solutions Group, Spectrum Networks, Virtutel, Cloudscene, G-Core Labs, Servers Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco ACI vs. Megaport and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.