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Cisco DNA Center vs Icinga comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
40th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (47th), Cloud Monitoring Software (31st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 0.7%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 1.2%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center0.7%
Icinga1.2%
Other98.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Mahir Öztürk - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
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.
reviewer2292201 - PeerSpot reviewer
Innovation Service Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have but average multi-tenancy aspect
It's supported by the community. We use Icinga, which is not part of the Open-Source platform but is wrapped into a commercial solution from another provider, a local provider in Italy. Icinga is an open-source platform, so it is supported by the community. It's quite easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have. So it's not expensive, and it's quite a general purpose. We can easily monitor any kind of infrastructure we encounter. The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated. The alerting is the same as any other monitoring platform. It's not a "wow" feature that has changed our lives, but it's perfectly adequate.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I think that their LAN automation is a very good feature."
"Scalability in Cisco DNA Center is good; we are using it for Software-Defined Access solution, and we haven't reached our device limit yet— from my experience, we can easily manage numerous devices."
"The best feature of Cisco DNA Center is the visibility page, where you can see everything on the dashboard, and you don't have to be a technical person to view the issues."
"Automation helps configure devices without manual intervention, enabling zero-touch provisioning."
"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."
"We can monitor all devices and get the required information using the product."
"My advice to others is if you are a large enough company to have the Cisco DNA Center technology, you must try it because for a large enterprise or multi-site organization it's impressive and it saves a lot of money and time."
"What's most valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the ability to manage any Cisco infrastructure and device through it. Setup was straightforward."
"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."
"The most valuable feature is one that not many are even aware of, as Icinga has a self-healing event handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted, and you can configure the handler to take action after the critical alarm without human interaction."
"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."
"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."
"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."
"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"Icinga has multiple automation and integration features. There is an API for everything and a web UI for configurations. The APIs enable you to automate tasks in Icinga. We can also use plugins to talk to the API. The Icinga Director talks to a database in the background, and you can import settings from the CMDB to all systems in Icinga."
 

Cons

"We encountered issues with their response times, which had a big impact on our workflow."
"It's a very hard software to learn. It's very deep, and when we first got it, there wasn't a whole lot of documentation on it."
"An area that needs improvement is the integration with other vendors."
"The solution needs to improve the dashboard."
"Cisco DNA Center was a new technology for us, at the beginning, it was not easy to do, but Cisco did a lot of training with us to a level we could handle everything. The team is managing itself now without the assistance of Cisco."
"The solution’s security side could be improved."
"There are some software problems from version to version. It takes a long time for DNA Center to recognize the video and control access devices."
"From the recent DNA point of view, there are some stability challenges with Cisco, but very minor."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"It is not really adequate for our current needs. It causes additional issues which we have to work around and takes us time that a better solution would not."
"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"The connection between Icinga and Icinga Web."
"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."
"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."
"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco DNA Center is expensive."
"The product is very costly."
"Affordability is a problem because it's created for large enterprises only. So, some customers, even if their engineers want the solution, might have problems with budget limitations."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The price of the solution is expensive. The hardware is licensed on the device, but the hardware on the server is expensive."
"We get a yearly license at the time we buy the product."
"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"We have a three-year license with them."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"The solution is cheap."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is free to use."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
University
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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?
The deployment of Cisco DNA Center was complex due to the fact that on the data center side, we have a Juniper infrastructure, which created some complexity, though not significant. The deployment ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco DNA Center?
In my organization, we currently have some Cisco devices such as access switches, and we also have infrastructure, but that is not part of our responsibility. We do not manage that infrastructure. ...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

DNA Center
Icinga Cloud Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. Icinga and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.