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Cisco DNA Center vs OP5 Monitor 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
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
OP5 Monitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
72nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (53rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 1.4%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OP5 Monitor is 0.7%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

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…
Harish Venkateshappa - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful online resources, customizable, and highly effective monitoring
The solution is useful for tweaking. However, there have been some negative experiences, such as limited report capabilities. The only report available is in PDF format, making it difficult for teams managing multiple servers to extract data in Excel format. The speaker recommends that the team improve the report capabilities to better serve users. If there are corrupt files the data can be extracted from them. Anyone who wants to see the performance of memory usage, such as whether it's at 80 to 90 percent, can use this tool. However, other tools can provide this information in two minutes, this tool is more time-consuming and the report it provides is not very effective for practical use. When it comes to reports, the tool falls short. During a recent call, it was noted that while the company has distributed servers across the globe, only the master server can accommodate the reports and events, causing delays. If other servers experience issues, the team cannot view the reporting or tag things, such as for troubleshooting purposes. If this aspect was improved it would be an excellent tool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
"Cisco DNA Center is a user-friendly solution."
"Application Assurance works very well."
"I like that we can easily configure any new hardware. It's also easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is the AI (Artificial Intelligence) that provides us with valuable information."
"It does a lot of things automatically, and that's the big thing with it. They're making the software so that you don't need to be as knowledgeable as me on the switching and routing side to get your work done. If you want, you can have DNA troubleshoot your problem for you and give you solutions or fix it itself, if it was something that's just a configuration issue."
"The most valuable features include AI-driven insights which make troubleshooting much easier."
"What I found valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the Software-Defined Access Network, so the entire LAN network can be centralized and managed from a single dashboard. Cisco DNA Center is suitable for centralized management and lets you deploy switches in a centralized fashion. You can also do multiple switch port configurations simultaneously and segregate your traffic into multiple fabrics. Another valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is enhanced security through Scalable Group Tags. Cisco DNA Center can be integrated with your Cisco ISE to enhance the port securities, and this paves the way for Software-Defined Networking in the LAN segment, which is the main advantage of Cisco DNA Center. I also like that you can use Cisco DNA Center for data assurance or correlation. The solution shows your network and client health parameters, which I find convenient for troubleshooting."
"It monitors and continuously tests everything that is of importance to you and your users. It could be everything from monitoring disk space to CPU usage to memory. It could include determining if the response time in your e-commerce platform is quick enough, or whether you have too many bounces from some of the pages on your website. You want to monitor anything that could cost you money or time or resources. You can do that with this system. It's very flexible."
"We can also observe whatever we want, and there are no limitations."
"The API makes it pretty easy to integrate with any system."
"The best feature is that it is very relatable, stable, and scalable. The logger is a part of the software, but it's not the most important point of it."
"OP5 Monitor is a great choice due to its being built on an open-source monitoring tool and provides ample opportunity for customization based on specific support requirements. It is also user-friendly and easy to manage with a wide range of plugins available for use. In comparison to other enterprise tools, such as Micro Focus, OP5 Monitor stands out for its features and cost-effectiveness, making it the best tool in the market. Customization is one of the key strengths of the tool and provides a lot of capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to find support and plugins for the tool through online resources."
"With limited hardware or a virtual machine, you can address a huge network, hundreds of thousands of elements that need to be monitored. Other commercial software is not on that level."
 

Cons

"The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI."
"From the recent DNA point of view, there are some stability challenges with Cisco, but very minor."
"Integration with analytic tools and API integrations would be ideal."
"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."
"Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable."
"The weaknesses primarily involve pricing and the ongoing need for increased bandwidth and data throughput."
"There is a limitation with the number of VRFs that you can have in your network, and this has caused us problems with some customers."
"The product doesn’t have good monitoring capabilities."
"OP5 lacks some visualization, a feature that makes some other products nice. Op5 is built for purpose, which is fine, but if you compare it with some new products, the visualization is not so appealing, especially for management... If you don't need fancy visualizations, OP5 is fine."
"They need to improve the dashboard interface."
"The solution is useful for tweaking. However, there have been some negative experiences, such as limited report capabilities. The only report available is in PDF format, making it difficult for teams managing multiple servers to extract data in Excel format. The speaker recommends that the team improve the report capabilities to better serve users."
"We do not get performance reports properly."
"The user interface is not what we are used to these days, and should be improved."
"IT environments today are in constant flux. This is driven by the newer cloud technologies such as Kubernetes and Docker, etc. The whole Nagios-based monitoring system that OP5 is created on top of, is based on a host-service model. There is a need for a strategy on what to do with more dynamic environments. There is some cool stuff going on in that direction."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."
"We have a three-year license with them."
"The solution is expensive."
"The partnership price is notably high, but it ultimately depends on the chosen business model."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"We get a yearly license at the time we buy the product."
"I do know that Cisco does offer some really good promotions for DNA Center to bring the costs down."
"Cisco DNA Center is too expensive."
"OP5 has a very low price as a solution, compared to many other solutions out there."
"It was not expensive. And because it's less demanding in terms of hardware, you don't have to pay for another SQL or other database license, and you can have a huge installation on one machine..."
"The cost of the license and support are separate. If you want platinum call support, it will cost more than a regular call. I did not opt for it, as it is an additional cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?
The system is working fine for me currently.
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Also Known As

DNA Center
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Svenska Spel, Carus, VGL, Tele2, Viking Line, Clas Ohlson, Vanderlande, Försäkringskassan
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. OP5 Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.