We performed a comparison between Cisco DNA Center and PRTG Network Monitor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"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 is very versatile in terms of analytics."
"We have many people from the team who manage a lot of devices. By using Cisco DNA Center, it has taken some of that burden away, we are impressed with it. We did the investment in CAPEX, but in the OPEX was very low."
"The most valuable features of Cisco DNA Center are wireless assurance and visibility."
"It gives us automation capabilities for pushing out the configuration to branch networks. It also provides visibility into the health of user network devices."
"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 simple to manage and it is all done from a single dashboard."
"The product gives a consolidated view."
"There was only one feature I liked about PRTG Network Monitor a lot, and that was bandwidth monitoring, though, in the newer versions of the tool, that feature is now a bit lacking. Pricing for PRTG Network Monitor is also not as expensive. It's a good tool, even for beginners."
"Ease of set-up – it is quick and easy to add a probe and start collecting data from a device."
"PRTG is integrated on Windows."
"The technical support seems to be quick, clever, and has a comprehensive knowledge base online, which is fantastic."
"The remote probe feature in PRTG Network Monitor helps you monitor remote systems or your network at a lower cost than other solutions."
"The most valuable features of PRTG Network Monitor are the threshold notification when certain traffic increases and goes beyond the defined threshold. The up and down status email notifications and other notifications are useful. Additionally, it is user-friendly, and customizable, and there are many features available."
"It allows us to directly add individual VMs independently."
"The most valuable features of PRTG Network Monitor are user-friendly, and the graphical interface is good for all the network devices that are mapped in this organization. It's very easy to find reports for any devices that we are looking for."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"As a user, it would be good if I could plug in controllers, suites, and devices from other vendors to Cisco DNA Center."
"The product doesn’t have good monitoring capabilities."
"From the recent DNA point of view, there are some stability challenges with Cisco, but very minor."
"An area for improvement in Cisco DNA Center is the latency in data correlation. For example, sometimes, when an issue happens, and I check the logs, I can't find the corresponding log. There's a delay in log replication, so this is what needs improvement in Cisco DNA Center. Reporting in Cisco DNA Center could also be improved because it only has a few templates, and you can't customize it based on your requirements. There aren't many options available in Cisco DNA Center regarding reporting, versus Cisco Prime, which has excellent features for different levels of detailed reports. I'd like to see real-time data replication in the next release of Cisco DNA Center, similar to what's done in Meraki. Data in Meraki is real-time with no delay, so data is immediately replicated in the cloud. Currently, there's a lag in Cisco DNA Center, and addressing that lag is the enhancement I'd like to see in Cisco DNA Center. The solution also needs to be more user-friendly."
"What I want to see in Cisco DNA Center in the future is more support for other platforms so that you can manage third-party products, such as Fortinet."
"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."
"The network, data center, and SD-WAN are all being treated as different services, but I would like to have only one solution to manage all of them."
"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."
"This product can be improved by updating the net flow interface. The one that is in place works – I can get all the information I need from it – but it is a little bit clunky."
"PRTG Network Monitor could improve by having a feature to allow uploading of preset standard network switch configurations and the ability to monitor the SLA configuration, such as uptime for the switches or internet connectivity. This would be very useful."
"I've encountered a challenge in my functions, particularly in adding and printing."
"While the desktop app is good, they could slightly improve it. We would like it to be a single pane of glass. At the moment, you can only see certain portions of information. You have to scroll through to make it more granular. We want them to develop the desktop app to be more user-friendly."
"PRTG access works best from the web GUI. There are dedicated apps on Windows/Android/iOS, but they are slow and don’t work as well as the web GUI."
"PRTG Network Monitor can improve the reports. In the reports, you have to give an alert for that SMS and email, the emergency calls and downtimes have to be reported accordingly. You have to enable email services or an SMS gateway service to receive more alerts at the proper time."
"The desktop app is the one area where it do with some improvement. From a user's perspective, I would like to be able to get more out of the desktop app as opposed to where we are now with it."
"The free version only gives us 100 free sensors to use. It would be nice if there was double that."
Cisco DNA Center is ranked 25th in Network Monitoring Software with 37 reviews while PRTG Network Monitor is ranked 5th in Network Monitoring Software with 96 reviews. Cisco DNA Center is rated 7.8, while PRTG Network Monitor is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco DNA Center writes "Practical implementation of VXLAN is good and provides centralized control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of PRTG Network Monitor writes "It's an all-in-one solution, and net flow is included in the licensing ". Cisco DNA Center is most compared with Cisco Prime, Aruba Airwave, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, Huawei eSight and Juniper Mist Wired Assurance, whereas PRTG Network Monitor is most compared with Zabbix, Centreon, Nagios XI, SolarWinds NPM and ManageEngine OpManager. See our Cisco DNA Center vs. PRTG Network Monitor report.
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