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Cisco Catalyst Center vs NetMaster Network Intelligence comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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 Catalyst Center
Ranking in Network Management Applications
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetMaster Network Intelligence
Ranking in Network Management Applications
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Cisco Catalyst Center is 4.4%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetMaster Network Intelligence is 3.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Catalyst Center4.4%
NetMaster Network Intelligence3.0%
Other92.6%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

AR
Network Engineer at Edmonton Catholic School Board
Has improved infrastructure management with customizable reporting and automated deployment
Cisco Catalyst Center's reporting is one of the best features, providing graphs and quick hit analysis in one place instead of having to search elsewhere. Historical data can be stored in Cisco Catalyst Center, and dashboards and widgets can be configured to personal preference. Device deployment can be automated to the point where all someone needs to do is plug it in. Zero Touch Provisioning, while requiring some initial work to set up properly, provides significant benefits. Once configured, it reduces the need for travel by specific network personnel, allowing on-site or other staff to handle device deployment by simply plugging in the cable.
it_user558525 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines quick and effective drill-down into the network stack for better troubleshooting
I would like to see a web-based interface that mimics the ease of doing data traces, similar to something like a Wireshark which is a Windows-based network monitoring tool. Wireshark is fast. I'm an old Windows guy, it's what I know. I think the liability of NetMaster is having to do things through the panels. It's slow to generate traces, and when you're doing a real-time troubleshooting call - when you have to wait 30 seconds for a process to spawn and fire up in order to give data back - 30 seconds is a long time when there's an issue. The user interface is probably the biggest impediment to my success with it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco's technical support is excellent."
"The best feature is its availability, easy deployment, and the good support for the solution."
"It gave us details like the operating system, device type, vendor, and the OUI of the MAC address, providing deep insights into the clients and users."
"Cisco Catalyst Center has significantly reduced travel time for our organization, which has approximately 60 locations across our state."
"The architecture and the way Cisco designs it, VXLAN and Cisco Express Forwarding are some of the features I like."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Catalyst Center is automation."
"Cisco Catalyst Center has been pretty smooth with scaling the growing needs of my organization, and it is scaling; we are about to replace all of our switches, so we are anticipating that it will help a lot with that."
"The main benefits I receive from Cisco Catalyst Center include management, monitoring, and troubleshooting of the network, and these are very good benefits."
"Stability-wise, the whole product runs great, especially with the automation; that's where it really shines."
"The most valuable features are SNA and IP monitoring, and it has been very easy to define many thresholds, including self-defining baselines."
"The support has been excellent. It is far and away the best among the products that our team supports."
"I consider NetMaster to be the best-of-breed for network."
"Otherwise, I think it is one of the better network products out there."
 

Cons

"The area for improvement in Cisco Catalyst Center is the spectrum analyzer, as I find it difficult to identify which type of device is causing a problem."
"The deployment process is pretty complex"
"Current pricing is too expensive for features that users may not be sure they will use, pricing the company out of the market."
"To improve Cisco Catalyst Center, I think the dashboard and UI experience is inferior to what I used previously with Ubiquiti equipment."
"My experience with deploying Cisco Catalyst Center had one challenge where we couldn't find enough documentation because one of our nodes went down. So we had to rebuild our entire Catalyst."
"My customers often complain about numerous software bugs requiring frequent software patches and updates to resolve these issues."
"Some documentation or use cases are not clear enough."
"It is a little more expensive."
"I think the liability of NetMaster is having to do things through the panels."
"I didn't think the SNMP function was easy to set up. That caused some problems with the address space."
"The automation part could use improvement, but I do not do that much with it."
"I would like to see a web-based UI (major effort now in progress)."
"I would like to see new release migrations made easier."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Catalyst Center?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that licensing is always a pain, as everything involves levels of licensing, so when there are specific features I am looking for, they are ...
What needs improvement with Cisco Catalyst Center?
I would say Cisco Catalyst Center's PNP functionality is not as good as it could be. When the switches come out of the box and we try to configure it, the onboarding is kind of hard where I assign ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Catalyst Center?
The main use case for us is to centralize managing our switches in one spot. We have a lot of switches to manage, so it's very easy to find that useful.
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Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA NetMaster Network Management. CA NetMaster, CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP, CA NetMaster Network Management for SNA, CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Tieto
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Catalyst Center vs. NetMaster Network Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.