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Cisco DNA Center vs Icinga comparison

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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
34th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (2nd), Network Automation (2nd)
Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
44th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (17th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (50th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 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 1.1%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center0.7%
Icinga1.1%
Other98.2%
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

"The monitoring is very valuable to me."
"The solution helps with the management and orchestration of campaigns. It helps with visibility and analytics. I also like its SDA configuration."
"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."
"Deployment is easier than it was five or six years ago."
"We can monitor all devices and get the required information using the product."
"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
"It offers automation, security enforcement, analytics, and integration with other Cisco technologies, making it a key driver for efficient network operations and compliance with security protocols."
"It is a stable solution."
"I would recommend Icinga; it's an open-source solution, it's quite easy and simple to use, and checks can be run with Python code and Shell Script code."
"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."
"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"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."
 

Cons

"It's a very good product, however, it comes with a very high price."
"I would like is to have a small information pointer available. It could be a plus feature that I want to implement. When I hover my mouse over the user interface, it should provide a brief explanation. It would be helpful to have it incorporated into the UI."
"Requires more focus on the digital side of things."
"The cost is very high."
"From the recent DNA point of view, there are some stability challenges with Cisco, but very minor."
"When it comes to deploying wireless fields, integrating defaults into the DNS interface can be challenging."
"Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable."
"What could be improved is the licensing cost of Cisco DNA Center. It's a little bit expensive."
"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."
"Sometimes, it is very hard to keep an overview of what's happening."
"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"It needs Trap SNMP. I saw the documentation for Zabbix, that it has its own built-in product which handles SNMP traps, and there's nothing similar in Icinga or Nagios. I think this feature is most important for me."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We have a three-year license with them."
"The price could be better. It's a very expensive tool."
"Cisco DNA Center is too expensive."
"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."
"The product is very costly."
"We get a yearly license at the time we buy the product."
"The solution is free to use."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"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."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"The solution is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
University
12%
Financial Services Firm
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: September 2026.
915,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.