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Observer GigaStor vs ThousandEyes 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

Observer GigaStor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
84th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (14th), Network Packet Broker (NPB) (6th)
ThousandEyes
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Observer GigaStor is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThousandEyes is 1.6%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ThousandEyes1.6%
Observer GigaStor0.5%
Other97.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Jeroen-Dubbelman - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Bitrate
Aids significantly in the threat-hunting process and provides a score-based evaluation of user experience
There are many valuable features, but understanding end-user response times stands out. It provides a score-based evaluation of user experience, helping customers quickly pinpoint whether issues originate from the network, server, client, or application. Additionally, it facilitates in-depth analysis of application dependencies. The retrospective network analysis capability of Observer GigaStor has been beneficial. It's a pivotal feature for network performance solutions. However, I prefer to consider the entire solution suite - GigaStor, along with GigaFlow and Apex - for comprehensive network visibility and monitoring. So, I prefer to integrate all three solutions to provide the best visibility. They complement each other well, with Apex aggregating and correlating data from both GigaStor and GigaFlow to enhance environmental understanding and troubleshooting efficiency.
Siddumanisria Mindi - PeerSpot reviewer
Network engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Monitoring has transformed internet visibility and speeds up resolving external service issues
ThousandEyes needs to specify unit consumption forecasting or scaling testing and deeper app analytics. It needs deeper out-of-the-box Layer 7 code or database-level insights. Additionally, it should unify the GUI with broader Cisco platforms and flatten the learning curve, adding better correlation with local laptop system metrics such as endpoint depth, CPU, RAM, or processes. ThousandEyes isn't designed to be a full-blown SNMP monitoring tool for on-premises infrastructure. While it tracks network paths effectively, it doesn't provide deep local device telemetry such as switch port buffer utilization, fan status, or power supply health. For full internal device monitoring, you'll still need to pair it with traditional tools such as SolarWinds or Cisco Catalyst Center.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to capture packets. It is not only for monitoring. That is very important for a company that wants to keep an eye on the packets, the transactions, the flows..."
"Go take a look at it. It's a great product and has great capabilities."
"If you have the opportunity, I would strongly encourage you to get it, because it makes the IT experience easier and more flexible, by providing the ability to see things in your networks like the directory packet label."
"It's able to capture packets and, after a long time, you can come and use that information; to check, to analyze - everything you would want to do. So it's very good and helpful if you want to protect your data. It is stored in a certain place where you can access it every time you want to analyze it."
"I also have the ability to see an application's performance, to see what's going on, why a network is slow, why this program for this user is experiencing a delay or some network issue"
"This solution allows us to see exactly what is going on in the network and we can very quickly solve issues with users."
"It can help to write your rules, organize firewalls, your block, and also your protocols and IP address to come in or out of your network."
"Industry-leading line rates, packet-capture technology and data-mining capabilities are the most valuable features."
"With ThousandEyes, we have reduced the time of investigation for any application issue at the network level, which helps us to focus on the genuine issues rather than simply sitting and troubleshooting network issues that are not actually network issues, and we have reduced almost 76% of the incident count for issues that are not network issues but were application-based issues."
"ThousandEyes actually advanced the troubleshooting part and the monitoring of the devices, or I would say the management of the devices with monitoring and to identify the root cause."
"The company provides excellent service."
"Overall, I would rate ThousandEyes nine out of ten."
"I think the analysis service that Cisco provides is extremely valuable."
"The advice I would give to those looking into using ThousandEyes is about the possibilities it offers to the operations teams, as ThousandEyes is an extremely powerful solution that makes operations able to detect issues effectively."
"The return on investment is immediate, delivering a 40% to 60% reduction in MTTR by eliminating multi-team war rooms and saving hundreds of engineering hours annually through instant ISP path proof, directly protecting business productivity and SaaS SLA accountability."
"The historical timeline feature is what I appreciate most about ThousandEyes because when people report that something occurs at a specific time of day, I can set up a test and capture the issue in action."
 

Cons

"Maybe the graphical user interface could be simplified to allow people to use it more easily. It's already good, but they can work more on it to make it even easier."
"The interface is pretty complex, so for the average user, it takes a while to get up to speed with it. I would like it to be more user-friendly."
"GigaStor feeds into Apex. So, the area where there could be improvement would be in artificial intelligence. For example, the incorporation of more advanced machine learning or AI capabilities could enhance its functionality."
"There are some issues, in our environment that puts processing restraints on the Gigastor when turning on trending data to be sent to APEX."
"I would like to have more than 4TB of storage available in the portable version of this solution."
"Graphics need improvement. Because a lot of the information there you have to input first in some case to have full potential. It could be more automated."
"The Observer Console UI is consistent and stable, but could use some updating to be more modern."
"Stability issues are present in the solution."
"The solution's network and reporting could be improved."
"I chose a six out of 10 because it lacks monitoring features for application performance and database monitoring, especially end-user experience; it excels mainly in network performance monitoring and network device monitoring."
"They only offer synthetic requests."
"Presently, it lacks the ability to integrate with other Cisco products."
"It's an expensive solution."
"Cisco is the standard for anyone wanting something good, the problem with it is the cost and that means that it's not accessible to many smaller companies."
"One improvement I would suggest is regarding the login part, as I have not seen if SSO login integration is available in ThousandEyes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It depends on the requirements you have. There are three types of license. There's the updates license, the work group license, and the workstation license."
"It's quite expensive."
"The solution's pricing is cheap; I rate it a five out of ten."
"It is a quite expensive solution."
"In our company, we incur a yearly expense in our company for the licensing part. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten since it is expensive."
"The solution costs several thousand dollars per year."
"The solution is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or requirements. Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better from a cloud monitoring or APM monitoring perspective. You can check...
What needs improvement with ThousandEyes?
I believe ThousandEyes is working perfectly, but I feel that with more AI integration, it could flag issues with more detailed error information, which would help support engineers immediately pinp...
What is your primary use case for ThousandEyes?
My main use case for ThousandEyes is that it checks our product website, and if it flags that it is unable to log in, it checks for all the components from all the agents, which are from different ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cisco Systems, Hawaiian Telecom, Renown Health, State of Nevada, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, Allstate Insurance, Jack Henry & Associates, United States Airforce, US Bank, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Chicago Board Options Exchange
Wayfair, GitHub, Craigslist, Comcast, SurveyMonkey, Lyft, Box, HP, Zendesk, IO Data Centers, Good Technology, NNTCommunications, Proofpoint, Schneider, Crowdstrike, Avera, Pitney Bowes, InstartLogic, Shutterfly, Shutterstock, Condé Nast, Roche, Jive, Actelion, Brocade, Infor, Okta, JLL, DigitalOcean, Zuora, NetSuite, CloudFlare, One, DemonWare, Quantcast, Carbonite, CareerBuilder, Prosper, Oscar, Slack
Find out what your peers are saying about Observer GigaStor vs. ThousandEyes and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.