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Cisco DNA Center vs Datadog comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
Cisco DNA Center offers ROI through time savings despite its cost with a user rating of 4/5 to 7/10.
Sentiment score
7.0
Datadog enhances visibility, reduces downtime, saves costs, and optimizes workflows by integrating features and improving operational efficiency.
Although Cisco DNA Center is expensive, we have seen a return on investment in terms of time savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Cisco DNA Center support is generally well-received, though some users encounter delays and desire better documentation and consistency.
Sentiment score
7.1
Datadog's customer service is responsive and knowledgeable, though some users report delays with complex queries and phone support.
Overall, Cisco DNA Center rates eight out of ten as a complete solution.
The support for Cisco DNA Center is good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco DNA Center offers scalable network management with effective expansion, despite limited IPv6 support and high licensing costs.
Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog efficiently scales with cloud services, offering seamless expansion, though users highlight the importance of monitoring pricing.
From my experience, we can easily manage numerous devices.
The solution is designed for large enterprise companies.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco DNA Center is generally stable, with users praising its reliability despite minor bugs and stability challenges.
Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog offers reliable and stable performance with minimal downtime, impressive uptime, and efficient monitoring, even during peak periods.
When we communicate problems, they solve them effectively.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco DNA Center needs better integration, pricing, UI, stability, deployment, reporting, training, and troubleshooting for improved usability.
Datadog needs improved performance, interface simplification, clearer billing, better integration, customization, analytics, documentation, security, and mobile app integration.
The AI-driven insights have contributed significantly to faster troubleshooting and predictive analytics.
The client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days.
In future updates, I would like to see AI features included in Datadog for monitoring AI spend and usage to make the product more versatile and appealing for the customer.
The documentation is adequate, but team members coming into a project could benefit from more guided, interactive tutorials, ideally leveraging real-world data.
There should be a clearer view of the expenses.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco DNA Center's high costs and licensing requirements can deter smaller businesses, appealing mainly to large enterprises.
Datadog offers flexible pricing based on usage and organization size, with potential for high costs if not monitored closely.
The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco DNA Center provides analytics, centralized management, and enhanced security with automation, real-time monitoring, and AI-driven network insights.
Datadog offers intuitive, comprehensive monitoring and integrations, enhancing infrastructure and application management with real-time insights and efficient operations.
If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.
The most valuable features include AI-driven insights which make troubleshooting much easier.
Our architecture is written in several languages, and one area where Datadog particularly shines is in providing first-class support for a multitude of programming languages.
The technology itself is generally very useful.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco DNA Center
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (3rd), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 1.4%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 3.1%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Datadog3.1%
Cisco DNA Center1.4%
Other95.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Mahir Öztürk - PeerSpot reviewer
Client history has helped resolve past network issues more efficiently
I mostly use the client history feature of Cisco DNA Center. I didn't use the real-time monitoring capability of Cisco DNA Center because I primarily used it for client history regarding issues and problems. I don't use it for real-time monitoring. If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.
reviewer820579 - PeerSpot reviewer
Single pane of glass, easy to share dashboards, and good for monitoring
We've had some issues where we had Datadog automatically turned on in AWS regions that we weren't using, which incurred a small but steady cost that amounted to tens of thousands of dollars spent over a few weeks. I wish there was a global setting that lets an admin restrict which regions DD is turned on in as a default setup step. Sometimes, the APM service dashboard link isn't sharable. I click something in the service catalog, and on that service's APM default view, I try to share a link to that with a teammate, and they reach a blank or error screen. I wish there was more organization and detail in the suggestions when I use the query editor. I'm never quite sure when the autofill dropdown shows up if I'm seeing some custom tag or some default property, so I have to know exactly what I'm looking for in order to build a chart. It's hard to navigate and explore using the query autofill suggestions without knowing exactly what tag to look for. It's been a bit hard to understand how data gets sampled or how many data points a particular dashboard value is using. We've had questions over the RUM metrics that we see and we had to ask for help with how values are calculated, bin sizes, etc to get confidence in our data.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise82
 

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 ...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
 

Also Known As

DNA Center
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. Datadog and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.