No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cisco UCS Manager vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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 UCS Manager
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
32nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (30th), Network Monitoring Software (23rd), Server Monitoring (15th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (22nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
WhatsUp Gold2.6%
Cisco UCS Manager1.2%
Other96.2%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

RC
Consultant at rcnss
A market leader with an enhanced user interface for seamless experience
There is room for improvement in terms of cost and complexity to set up. It doesn't work straight out of the UCS, so someone who knows what they're doing is needed immediately, and it can be quite confusing. Some settings are still fairly well hidden, even the basic ones. Companies don't really understand how long it takes to set up. Also, when changes are pushed, it can take their phone line off the system for twenty minutes to half an hour. Out-of-the-box functionality is an issue, too. I know that my company is different, however, the basics are always the same. You do your tap lines, zip lines, and stuff like that, then you get your internal phone line system. That can all be automated and scripted, and it's probably part of the automation process. However, I haven't really seen it.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco is globally renowned, which is why it sells so well."
"The solution offers quite good stability; we haven't had a problem at all with it."
"Cisco UCS has different layers of security, and you can do multiple installations of your LIAMs on top of the server and Blade. You can install VMware, Windows Server, Hyper-V, etc."
"Cisco UCS Manager is a very useful product for managing our entire ecosystem for Cisco products."
"The best thing about UCSM and the UCS B-Series servers is its centralization, which means from one location we can configure storage, network and compute for all the servers that will be using it."
"Cisco Infrastructure is one of the top vendors and no one can beat them in terms of switching and routing."
"Cisco UCS Manager is overall a good package because it gives a GUI interface and a CLI."
"We can configure the Cisco UCS Manager, the profiles and interactions with the resource we manage."
"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."
"This is a good, stable network monitoring solution for devices."
"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the visibility it offers of everything in the network and infrastructure."
"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."
"This product has aided us in procurement and is overall a well-priced solution."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
 

Cons

"The pricing aspect should be addressed."
"Cisco depends on other vendors like IBM and HP for the hardware. Cisco should improve its hardware manufacturing in regards to the UCS and the use of other vendor's hardware."
"Its user interface can be improved. It can be more user-friendly."
"In the next release, I would like to see improvements made to their security."
"The pricing can be better."
"Improving functionalities similar to InterSite within UCS Manager would be beneficial."
"I found it a bit of a challenge to get training on UCSM. I've been trying to get that for some time now."
"The installation is very complex."
"The initial setup of WhatsUp Gold is a medium range of difficulty levels. However, if it is your first time it could be difficult."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"Users want SMS available via Whatsapp Gold. They don't want to go through third party SMS servers. The solution should work to make this possible."
"The price could be improved. When we first started using this product, the company was new. The prices were very low then, in comparison with HP OpenView or IBM, but now the policy is too high, relative to the number of devices we have."
"Sometimes it's a little bit slow."
"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."
"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."
"The interface needs some work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You buy the hardware and then you get Cisco UCS Manager for free."
"Cisco UCS is more expensive than Dell and HP, but it is more reliable. I see less issues and it's quite stable."
"Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."
"The pricing for Cisco UCS Manager is okay for its market, so it's a four out of five for me."
"With product discounts which can be negotiated, the product is a great value."
"We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."
"This is a well priced solution."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS Manager?
My experience with the pricing of Cisco UCS Manager ( /products/cisco-ucs-manager-reviews ) is that it is reasonable. Recently, we acquired an excellent bundle with significant discounts, with offe...
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Manager?
For improvements, while the current graphical user interface is satisfactory, it could be further simplified for different tasks. While it has been improved from using Java to HTML, simplifying the...
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS Manager?
Our primary use case involves working with Cisco UCS B-Series ( /products/cisco-ucs-b-series-reviews ), specifically the UCS X modular deployment. We are setting up a new deployment shortly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Manager vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.