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Cisco DNA Center vs Cisco Prime [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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 DNA Center
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Monitoring Software (12th), Network Automation (2nd)
Cisco Prime [EOL]
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

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…
ZeeshanAli1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust, cost-effective, and provides good visibility, but the scalability could improve
We are extremely satisfied with the reliability and robustness of Cisco Prime Infrastructure, which we have been using for many years. Compared to newer products such as DNS centers or others, it has proven to be much more stable, which is important for large-scale operations. Stability is a primary concern for us, and we are glad that Cisco Prime Infrastructure meets our expectations in that regard. Furthermore, in regards to Legacy Plus new hardware, Cisco Prime has proven to be a reliable and adaptable solution thus far. Not only can it support older hardware, but it also has the capability to handle new features with the latest updates. If we consider new solutions such as DNS Center, we may have to sacrifice some legacy features that we still rely on. We may need to continue using these legacy features for a few more years due to various reasons such as budget constraints or the site not being a high priority. However, if we switch to a new product at this stage, we may lose a lot of the monitoring and other capabilities that we have with Cisco Prime. We have a close relationship with Cisco and understand that they are not prioritizing investments in Cisco Prime as they are encouraging customers to adopt the Cisco DNA Center. This means that we don't anticipate many new features to be added to the product in the future. While we know that we will eventually have to transition to a new solution, in the meantime, we plan to do a quick refresh of our legacy products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"DNA Center is scalable."
"Cisco DNA Center provides operational support, compliance support, security vulnerability detection, and automatic scheduling."
"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
"I think that their LAN automation is a very good feature."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is the AI (Artificial Intelligence) that provides us with valuable information."
"We can monitor all devices and get the required information using the product."
"Automation helps configure devices without manual intervention, enabling zero-touch provisioning."
"The most valuable features were the monitoring, maintenance, and configuration."
"The technical support team is very good."
"The installation is easy."
"Cisco Prime, from a management perspective, has good reporting."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Prime is the heat maps."
"What I found most beneficial from Cisco Prime is that it gives you an insight into what your network does, even when you're not actively monitoring what's going on with your network."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Prime is the heat map."
"It helps us manage and monitor analytics and fix issues."
"It gives you the ability to upgrade switches remotely, schedule the upgrade time, perform backups, and monitor the health of all networks."
 

Cons

"The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI."
"It seems to be a little bit more centered toward wireless than wired. You've got more options you can do wirelessly than you can with the wired switches, but it works for what we need it to do. We would like to see a little bit more about the traffic, and we're looking at what's out there to see about that. We are looking at something that might give us a bit more insight into the actual traffic. If they had the full functionality on the wired side, as they do on the wireless side in terms of being able to view traffic and everything, it would be good."
"Integration with analytic tools and API integrations would be ideal."
"The pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco DNA Center are expensive."
"As a user, it would be good if I could plug in controllers, suites, and devices from other vendors to Cisco DNA Center."
"The cost is very high."
"The weaknesses primarily involve pricing and the ongoing need for increased bandwidth and data throughput."
"One area that needs improvement is the upgrade process."
"The solution is not easy to configure."
"Cisco Prime's initial setup is complex."
"This solution could be improved if it could monitor configuration changes."
"I rate Cisco Prime seven out of 10 for affordability. All Cisco solutions are expensive."
"The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive."
"There is room for improvement in the Access layer."
"Lacking in integration with a SIEM tool."
"I would love for Cisco Prime to show bandwidth usage and consumption, but I can't monitor bandwidth usage at a given time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a three-year license with them."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"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."
"The tool is medium-priced."
"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."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price of Cisco Prime was reasonable because we purchased it as part of a Cisco One package. The package was a bundle of Cisco solutions together, such as Cisco ISE and CMX. The price is reasonable com compared to other solutions."
"You need to get special quotes from the company for each order."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"I would rate the pricing of Cisco Prime a seven out of ten."
"The cost is quite high."
"We update the license every five years."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
What do you like most about Cisco Prime?
The most valuable features of Cisco Prime include its comprehensive functionality as a one-stop solution for basic SNMP port management.
What needs improvement with Cisco Prime?
The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive.
What is your primary use case for Cisco Prime?
We use Cisco Prime for centralized configuration management backups and monitoring.
 

Also Known As

DNA Center
Cisco Prime Infrastructure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Mohawk Industries, Universidad EAFIT, Halton Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: June 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.