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Cisco Container Platform [EOL] vs Kubernetes 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 Container Platform [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kubernetes
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

CM
Cloud Architect, Feltus Lab at Clemson University
Enables the deployment/management of Kubernetes clusters from multiple resource providers at one location
One thing I have not really had the chance to explore too much is the Cisco Container Platform command-line interface. I've been told that exists and it's functional, but I'm not sure if it's really made for end-users. It might just be for admins or developers. One thing that is a little bit annoying about Cisco Container Platform is that for each cluster you create you have to go through the same web form each time. If you're creating two identical clusters, you still have to go through that web form twice. What's really nice about most platforms is that they have command-line interfaces where you can just copy a single command which has all the flags with all the configurations you want and put that in a text file. Then, when you want to create another cluster you can just paste that in and edit one or two flags if you want to. You don't have to go through a web form every time and that is a feature that I would like to see in the future with CCP. It would be nice, at the end, once you create a cluster using the web form, if it would give you a single command that you could copy and put somewhere and then paste it, in the future, to create an identical cluster or an almost identical cluster. I would like the ability to save cluster configurations to CCP. I've provided that feedback to the development team. There might even be a version that is out which already has that functionality integrated into it. I think it's safe to say that at some point in the future that feature will be provided.
RV
DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automated deployments and self-healing have transformed how I run reliable chat services
For improvements, I would definitely suggest some enhancements to Kubernetes. While Kubernetes is very powerful, there are still a few areas where it could be improved. Our challenge is the learning curve and operational complexity. For new team members, concepts such as networking, RBAC, Ingress, and troubleshooting distributed systems can take time to understand. Better built-in onboarding tools or simplified abstractions would help. Another pain point is debugging and observability. While kubectl provides good basic visibility, deep debugging across multiple services, pods, and nodes often requires external tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana, or centralized logging. Stronger native observability features would be very helpful. Networking and Ingress configuration can also be complex, especially when dealing with certificates, routing rules, and cloud-specific integrations. A more standardized experience across environments could reduce operational overhead. From a cost perspective, managing and optimizing resource usage at scale still requires careful monitoring and tuning. Better built-in cost visibility would be very helpful. For the needed improvements, I think that covers most of my main concerns. The biggest areas for improvement are still around simplifying operations, better native observability, and easier cost visibility. If I had to add one more point, it would be around standardization and developer experience. Sometimes different clusters, cloud providers, or tooling setups behave slightly differently, which increases maintenance efforts. More consistent defaults and opinionated best practices could help teams adopt Kubernetes faster and with fewer surprises. Overall, despite these challenges, Kubernetes is a very mature and reliable platform, and the benefits clearly outweigh the limitations for most production use cases. An additional area that could be improved is upgrade and version management. While managed services help coordinate Kubernetes version upgrades, API deprecations and compatibility with add-ons can still be time-consuming and risky for production environments. Better tooling and clearer migration automation would make upgrades safer and easier. Another improvement could be around documentation, consistency, and discoverability. Kubernetes documentation is very comprehensive, but for beginners, it can sometimes be overwhelming to navigate and identify best practice paths.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to deploy clusters on-prem or to any number of public cloud providers is really valuable because you do not need to relearn or switch platforms to switch resource providers."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the fact that you can use a single platform to deploy to different resource providers. Right now, the version I'm using has vSphere and AWS, but I know in the future they're planning on adding more. The ability to deploy clusters on-prem or to any number of public cloud providers is really valuable because you don't need to relearn or switch platforms to switch resource providers."
"Overall, Kubernetes has improved system stability, speed of delivery, and the efficient use of infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is that it's a container orchestrator. It has a huge user base and it is easily incorporated into all of the public clouds."
"The most valuable features of Kubernetes are the integration with Docker and there is plenty of documentation available."
"Kubernetes has positively impacted my organization as 99% of microservices are running."
"We use this solution for the hosting of micro-services. Kubernetes helps us to orchestrate all the containers hosting these micro-services."
"Kubernetes has helped our organization by making our time-to-market better and the continuous integration and development are good."
"Kubernetes is a leading container orchestration solution, known for its simplicity and ease of use. Being open-source, it benefits from large community support, including enterprise support. Many companies offer their own version of Kubernetes, making it widely adopted and supported in the industry."
"If you don't have resources, you can certainly add another worker node and expand the cluster."
 

Cons

"One thing that is a little bit annoying about Cisco Container Platform is that for each cluster you create you have to go through the same web form each time. If you're creating two identical clusters, you still have to go through that web form twice."
"One thing that is a little bit annoying about Cisco Container Platform is that for each cluster you create you have to go through the same web form each time."
"Kubernetes could improve security. The security is really hard to deploy with proxies and other elements. Additionally, We have had some issues downloading repos and libraries."
"Overall, it's very powerful, but there are also a lot of complexities to manage."
"There is room for improvement in this area, as Kubernetes could benefit from having more integrations, such as for scanning vulnerabilities."
"We would like to have additional features related to security within the API, instead of needing to install an add-on."
"The configuration is a bit complicated."
"The tool needs to improve its UI. The tool is very complex and basic."
"I would rate the stability as five out of ten. If any containers take more space, sometimes the cluster goes down."
"The solution lacks some flexibility."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Kubernetes is open-source. Kubernetes is free, but we're charged for AWS utilization."
"You need to pay for a license if you buy branded products. For example, if you take the services from Azure, AWS, or Google, the price of the Kubernetes cluster is inclusive of the service that's being offered to us on a pay-and-use model."
"Kubernetes is open-source."
"There is no licensing fee."
"Kubernetes is open source. But we have to manage Kubernetes as a team, and the overhead is a bit high. Compared with the platforms like Cloud Foundry, which has a much less operational overhead. Kubernetes, I have to manage the code, and I have to hire the developers. If someone has a product, a developer should know exactly what he's writing or high availability, and all those things may differ the costs."
"The price of Kubernetes could be lower. However, it is less expensive than VMware Tanzu. Additionally, technical support is expensive. The overall cost of the solution is approximately $1,000 annually."
"Kubernetes is free; it's open-source software."
"There is a license to use Kubernetes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise48
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Kubernetes?
There are many good features. I feel that the scale-out features, like replica sets, are very good. The number of running containers can be autoscaled.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?
My experience with pricing and setup costs shows that Kubernetes itself is open source and free, so there is no licensing cost for the software. The main cost comes from the infrastructure and mana...
What needs improvement with Kubernetes?
For improvements, I would definitely suggest some enhancements to Kubernetes. While Kubernetes is very powerful, there are still a few areas where it could be improved. Our challenge is the learnin...
 

Also Known As

Cisco CCP
K8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clemson University
China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat, Kubernetes and others in Container Management. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.