Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Catalyst Center
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Catalyst Center provides an intent-based platform for managing enterprise networks across campus, branch, and edge environments. It combines automation, analytics, and assurance to streamline IT operations, improve security posture, and reduce manual tasks. With integratedAI/ML-driven insights, policy-based controls, and end-to-end visibility across wired and wireless infrastructures, Catalyst Center empowers IT teams toproactively detect issues, enforce compliance, and accelerate…N/A
Freshdesk
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Freshdesk (a product of Freshworks Inc.) is a customer service solution with enterprise capability. Freshdesk unifies channels, conversations, AI capabilities, customer insights, and advanced ticketing into the Freshdesk Command Center so agents are ready to resolve. With Freddy, People-first AI, customer service teams can take AI agents live in minutes to fully resolve complex and simple queries, get response and resolution assistance from AI copilot, and stay ahead with AI insights.…
$18
per month per user
Pricing
Cisco Catalyst CenterFreshdesk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Growth
$18
per month per agent
Pro
$59
per month per agent
Enterprise
$95
per month per agent
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Catalyst CenterFreshdesk
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Catalyst CenterFreshdesk
Features
Cisco Catalyst CenterFreshdesk
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Catalyst Center
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.4
202 Ratings
2% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.2197 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.1134 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.06 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings7.67 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.3198 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.9198 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Catalyst Center
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.4
179 Ratings
5% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.4162 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.4167 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Catalyst Center
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.8
189 Ratings
10% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.7160 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings9.159 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.5102 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.0188 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.5119 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Catalyst CenterFreshdesk
Small Businesses
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Intermapper
Intermapper
Score 8.4 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Score 9.0 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Catalyst CenterFreshdesk
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(229 ratings)
8.4
(260 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(7 ratings)
8.4
(25 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(17 ratings)
9.0
(42 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(6 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(32 ratings)
8.5
(41 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(192 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
6.1
(7 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(5 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.8
(6 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
6.6
(6 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.4
(5 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Catalyst CenterFreshdesk
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
It’s very well suited for software management of devices. They’ve worked very well with pushing code to devices and scheduling upgrades. It works very well again with assurance and helps us troubleshoot problems with specific end users. Where it’s less appropriate, I guess it would be nice if it could be our one-stop shop for everything Cisco, but it’s really just Catalyst and Meraki. It would be nice if we could actually onboard all our NX-OS and IOS XR devices, and it would still have the same level of manageability that it does on the Cisco Catalyst Center with those other platforms.
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Freshworks Inc
I believe Freshdesk is well-suited for companies that manage multiple accounts, such as those in the Business Process Outsourcing industry. It has all the necessary capabilities, such as ticket management that uses omnichannel to receive ticket requests from service requests (managed internally) in the system, emails, etc. There are also several workflow automations that can be built within the platform/system. What is lacking is the API documentation, which limits the possibilities for further automations. Overall, it is a highly recommended tool for managing employee productivity and timeliness.
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Pros
Cisco
  • I enjoy having a more modern tool for viewing PSIRTs and CVEs on our catalyst devices.
  • I enjoy all the different views I have for my inventory.
  • I think templates work well for zero day configuration.
  • I love the newer features for showing what configuration is going to be changed and deployed before you deploy it.
  • I like that I can see in-band and out-of-band configuration history.
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Freshworks Inc
  • No prior experience with similar platforms is required to use Freshdesk. I found its interface to be quite intuitive, at least for the end user.
  • It's easy to connect with other platforms, so you can sync and manage data from other platforms because the integrations work correctly.
  • Freshdesk's technical support is quite responsive, with short and effective response times. They have easily handled my questions and issues.
  • It has tools for customizing automated chats, answering frequently asked questions before transferring to an agent. Its configuration is extensive and highly customizable.
Read full review
Cons
Cisco
  • Granularity. And so for us, and our use case might not be the same as a majority of customers, but we have a environment which frequently changes. So we're not a traditional corporate environment which stays relatively static or still reprovision. We want to reconfigure our environment to meet whatever the needs of our customers are. And at the moment it's like for some of the ways that we have to configure it, we just want to give something a little tap, but we have to hit it with a sledgehammer, which then often has knock on impacts other services.
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Freshworks Inc
  • Freshdesk is buggy, full stop. I don't know how many support tickets I submitted related to user login.
  • There can be a language barrier with support and sales.
  • There were a couple of hours-long outages that significantly impacted my company's customer experience.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
I think new products are often "half-baked" or over hyped when they release, as was the case with DNAC. We were well ahead of the curve in acquiring it. But as it has matured it is now a fantastic addition to our infrastructure. I think we are easing into a stage where it is hard to envision a large organization NOT having Catalyst Center in place. If for nothing outside of the mapping and troubleshooting aspects; using it as a "source of truth".
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Freshworks Inc
New support agents can learn the system quickly, minimizing training time and maximizing productivity from day one. Agents are more willing to use a system that is simple, reducing resistance to change and ensuring all interactions are logged (a common problem with complex systems). The platform is known for being easy to set up and customize, allowing teams (especially smaller ones) to get started with minimal technical expertise.The platform makes it easy to set and monitor Service Level Agreements (SLAs), ensuring customers get timely responses and helping managers enforce performance standards.
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Usability
Cisco
Cisco DNA Center is going to help us in security, simplicity and ease of administration. Cisco DNA Center is complete management and control platform that simplifies and streamlines network operations. Cisco DNA Center offers a single dashboard for every core function in your network. With this platform, IT can become more nimble and respond to changes and challenges faster and more intelligently.
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Freshworks Inc
Freshdesk is extremely easy to use as implemented it on our own with average technical skills. A lot of the options are straightforward and Freshdesk provides easy-to-understand explanations for some of the more complex-sounding ones. We recently onboarded new specialists and they were able to learn Freshdesk with minimal training.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
I have encountered a lot of errors in the Freshdesk, however, they tend to resolve it on priority or at least they will share the timeline by when this can be resolved. Most of the time the issue has been from the other partner's end. They take time to resolve their vendor issues and they don't have any timelines in case of developed app errors.
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Performance
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
The reports take a lot of time to download if the time period is large. Also, the tickets take their sweet time to open and load. It is not fast as Zendesk. Only 30 tickets are visible in a single go and there isn't any option to select all. If we need to change the pages and dashboards it takes a lot of time to open.
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Support Rating
Cisco
El soporte de CISCO DNA Center es muy bueno, responden a mis dudas pero no he tenido oportunidad de reportar un incidente o determinar un tiempo de respuesta critico. The support of CISCO DNA Center is very good, they answer my questions, but I have not had the opportunity to report an incident or determine a critical response time.
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Freshworks Inc
Because I never worked with a company that responds so quickly to their customer! They are always fast at responding and very open to new ideas and quickly turning them around to include them in future releases. They walk us through when we need assistance and are very good at communicating. Overall top notch support
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In-Person Training
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
In-person training is provided to all the agents and it is very easy to learn the basics of the Freshdesk interface. Solving tickets via dashboards, replying to the guest queries in bulk via Freshdesk. The training which is a bit hard is creating the logic according to the ticket flow and intergeration.
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Online Training
Cisco
It was informative, but the labs were not available long enough for us to get intimately familiar with CCNA before it was closed. The course instructor was well informed and got us as close to ready as she could.
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Freshworks Inc
This tool is no doubt easy to learn but in-person training is a lot better than online training. It takes time to grasp things in the online training, however, in pandemic we have done all the training online. Apart from a bit more time we haven't faced any issues with online training.
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
Was a fairly quick implementation for us. However, we are only doing email integration and not some of the more complex integrations that are possible. One clarification on an earlier question. I selected that Freshdesk doesn't have a given feature, but this is not true. I selected this because there wasn't a selection for I don't use the feature. This is a weakness in the survey.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
We started out with using Cisco Prime infrastructure and we migrated to DNA center or Catalyst Center from Prime Infrastructure. We found that it wasn't apples to Apples migration. It wasn't exactly, it wasn't a direct upgrade. There were a lot of key differences, but yeah, I think that that was probably the most similar thing
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
Compared to Crisp, Freshdesk offers much more organization and is just much more helpful when it comes to having more than one region/team. Not that Crisp is bad, but with Freshdesk, internal communication and collaboration are much easier, which was quite important for our team to grow.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
I was not very involved with the purchase/contract (my company purchased Fresjdesk before I was brought on), but I will say that pricing per agent made it difficult to grow our support team. Additionally, we were kind of disappointed after our upgrade because it didn't solve our pain points as much as we expected.
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
My company had Freshdesk agents from support and success. It's generally difficult to customize permissions for different agent "roles." We were a fully distributed company, so "multiple sites" doesn't apply to us. We found Freshdesk features lacking as we grew our customer base, and adding agents wasn't easy because price steeply increases with number of agents.
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Professional Services
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
- good customer support
- personal contact
- usage limited to basic product features, individually designed solutions seem unlikely
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Yeah, I mean that last one for sure. The software independent of the hardware, I mean, it's just easy. They made it so easy to just, and fast and efficient to upgrade your entire organization within days, weeks, months. And you're not spending, your maintenance windows get a lot shorter. You can schedule more maintenance windows just because you know there's going to be some type of consistency with it and there's just, I'm sure there will be a hiccup one day, but there just hasn't really been too many issues with us using that product, especially for maintenance, window upgrades, things like that.
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Freshworks Inc
  • Increased response times - Client Success maintains at 98% SLA for resolution
  • Categorization of feedback and issues - custom ticket fields make it easier for us to review why clients contact us on a high level
  • Standardization of internal procedures via templates, canned responses and automations
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ScreenShots

Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

Screenshot of AIOpsScreenshot of BaselinesScreenshot of PoliciesScreenshot of HealthScreenshot of Network HierarchyScreenshot of PoE