Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued) vs. N-able N-central

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution is discontinued. Current users are encouraged to explore Cisco Catalyst Center as a modern solution.N/A
N-able N-central
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
MSPs and IT professionals use N-able™ N-central® to monitor and manage devices and complex networks remotely. N-central provides visibility and efficiency as the user's needs scale. N-central can help users: 1. Proactively monitor everything on a customer network—not just servers and workstations—and troubleshoot. 2. Stay on top of threats with features like MFA, antivirus, integrated endpoint detection and response, data backup, disk encryption, email protection,…N/A
Pricing
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)N-able N-central
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)N-able N-central
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)N-able N-central
Features
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)N-able N-central
Monitoring Tasks
Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
-
Ratings
N-able N-central
7.3
6 Ratings
1% below category average
Remote monitoring00 Ratings9.56 Ratings
Network device monitoring00 Ratings8.26 Ratings
Management Tasks
Comparison of Management Tasks features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
-
Ratings
N-able N-central
8.9
7 Ratings
20% above category average
Patch Management00 Ratings8.97 Ratings
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Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)N-able N-central
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Intermapper
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Action1
Action1
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Cisco DNA Analytics and Assurance
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User Ratings
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)N-able N-central
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(12 ratings)
8.5
(25 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
7.6
(3 ratings)
1.0
(8 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)N-able N-central
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
Although Cisco Prime [LAN Management Solution] is a nice tool and no other 4rd party tools can match its native monitoring and managing capabilities still i have given less rating and that's because it is only for Cisco vendor Devices. Hence if you have only Cisco infrastructure then go for it or else look for another 4rd party tool in conjunction with Cisco prime.
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N-able
N-Able is perfect for an MSP environment. It gives all the standard functionality an IT professional needs out of the box and can be configured to show almost anything required. For example, we have configured a dashboard to show when our backups need attention for each customer. This is achieved by running a small script on repeat via N-Central everyday/evening, and the result gives us information on the dashboard to help us identify exactly what is working and what needs looking into.
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Pros
Discontinued Products
  • Wireless file detection and planning mode has helped us expand into new areas of our buildings.
  • Alerting is detailed when we have issues with hardwired and wireless devices, and Rogue Access Points are easily identifiable.
  • Cisco equipment information is much more detailed than other management products' SNMP queries and is an excellent tool for troubleshooting end-device connectivity issues.
  • Our KPI reporting for senior management and centralized management of our WIPS 'Wireless Intrusion Prevention' setup have both benefited significantly from the detailed reporting capabilities.
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N-able
  • Remote tasks - entry-level techs can run basic tasks without physically touching a piece of equipment.
  • Remote support - remote controlling user devices is easy and saves a lot of time with having to initiate a remote session.
  • Management of devices, particularly patch management and anti-virus management - you can automatically approve and deploy patches and schedule automatic AV scans.
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Cons
Discontinued Products
  • Maps. One thing that I miss is the fact that you can't see both wired and wireless equipment in the same topology map. For visualization and troubleshooting purposes, that would help a lot, and I honestly don' t think it's that much harder to implement.
  • I'd love to see an option to show 'live dashboards,' maps, or other visual tools to publish in a NOC room, or even just to broadcast in a big monitor to allow multiple workmates to check that information. Again, I don't think that would be too hard to implement. I remember a similar feature was available in the first versions of the product, way back in the 90's (yes, I'm that old :-) )
  • Sometimes, depending on what screen you are, the solution can be a little slow. I'm not saying the whole system is slow, but sometimes that slowness can bother a little.
  • Talking about areas for improvement, one area I think can be improved is the upgrade process. Even for not so large deployments, it can take a lot of time. Having this time decreased would be the right thing to do.
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N-able
  • Customer support just points to online guides and I feel they aren't helpful.
  • During the trial they turn on a lot of features. In my experience, if you play around with the features, they charge you for them. Keep this in mind if you move forward with N-Able - they will charge for "trialed" services.
  • In my experience, some services that you're being charged for can't be disabled or monitored by you or your team. You only see them on the monthly invoice.
  • In my opinion, the "Scripting Automation" doesn't provide value. You're either going to be writing your own batch or Powershell to make scripting work.
  • In my opinion, monitoring software deployments is painful.
  • The default monitoring template can't be duplicated, edited, or referenced. You'll find that the default monitors in an unusual way and will throw needless recurring alerts into your ticketing system. To avoid this, you need to create a template from scratch which takes many hours to set up.
  • In my opinion, they're more concerned about a quick buck than customer service. "Buyer beware" company.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
N-able
Overall we have liked our solar winds experience, however, as our company has grown to support larger enterprises, this product does not have the functionality that our teams need in order to fully support them. The lack of granularity with backups and lack of ability to support nutanix environments is slowly drawing us into the use of other tools.
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Usability
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
N-able
The user interface is fairly straight forward, with logic groupings for objects. I did not deploy this software, but am one of the daily administrators. Once you get the correct agent package (Which can be a challenge) the integration into AD is not bad. The UI could be more customized, but that may have been a design choice.
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Support Rating
Discontinued Products
We are very happy using Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution for the following reason: 1- Ease of use with the GUI. 2- Very well organized dashboard which can view many statistics on your devices. 3- Customized dashboard for different views ( for technical team and executives ) 4- Schedule configuration templates to use whenever we need on whatever device we want.
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N-able
Every time we have reached out to SolarWinds they are quick to respond, even offering support chat 24/7. Their support team is great and works with you to find solutions to issues. They have taken items we had issues with before and used those to create updates so that the issue is handled better in the future.
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Implementation Rating
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
N-able
Make sure if you your using a vm you follow the instructions for provisioning to the letter or it will be starting from square one
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Alternatives Considered
Discontinued Products
There are various 3rd party tools available in the market which not only supports monitoring of cisco devices but also supports non-cisco devices, even with these capabilities in these 3rd party tools Cisco Prime has maintained a uniqueness in its products being the native tool from Cisco. The uniqueness is about product supportability for given devices and some of the edge features such as configuration management, detailed heatmaps etc
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N-able
Our version of SolarWinds was old and running on old hardware, but it was way easier to setup and do things with. It did not do everything N-able does such as patch management, or at least we didn't have a module to do so if one existed. However it definitely seemed easier to use and possibly more stable.
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Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • It has helped us with our quarterly wireless security testing by pinpointing the location of non-approved access points vs. hunting for them via signal strength.
  • Saves time by helping to identify network health issues before they become a definitive problem causing downtime.
  • With errors detected early, we have noticed our wi-fi network is much more stable thus freeing up our engineer's time elsewhere.
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N-able
  • We have lost hundreds of hours on the phone/emailing support with no resolution for any of our issues
  • We had to move all of our services away which was very painful
  • Staff satisfaction was low having to deal with this company
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ScreenShots

N-able N-central Screenshots

Screenshot of N-able N-central DashboardScreenshot of Remote desktop access with Take Control