Pros and Cons of Cisco Catalyst Center 2025

Q: What are Cisco Catalyst Center's top competitors?

Juniper Mist AI , ExtremeCloud IQ , and HPE Intelligent Management Center (IMC) are common alternatives for Cisco Catalyst Center.

Overview

What is Cisco Catalyst Center?

Cisco Catalyst Center delivers a comprehensive, software-defined approach to managing enterprise networks. It simplifies operations by integrating automation, real-time monitoring, security policies, and advanced analytics into a single interface. Designed to support complex networking environments, Catalyst Center optimizes efficiency, enhances…

Learn from top reviewers

Best management of your campus

Rating: 10 out of 10

July 8, 2025

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

I use Cisco Catalyst Center to monitor my entire network of switches, APs, and routing. The product helps me check for problems, verify changes, and improve network quality wi...

Floriano De Souza

Professional - Engineering

Architect solution

Constel

3 years of experience

Catalyst Center DNAC

Rating: 6 out of 10

June 19, 2025

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

We are trying to level up our use of CatC more and more. Currently we are using it for network maps and AP placements, basic assurance, and troubleshooting. I am currently in ...

Dominic Romandi

Engineer - Information Technology

Senior Network Engineer

HCA

1 year of experience

Cisco Catalyst Center is solid

Rating: 10 out of 10

June 16, 2025

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

We use Cisco Catalyst Center to manage our network environment, provision switches using Plug and Play, provision sites, access points. We also use it to provision our Wifi, a...

Andrew Dima

Employee - Information Technology

Network Engineer

City of Carlsbad

3 years of experience

Cisco Catalyst Center old DNA Center

Rating: 9 out of 10

June 16, 2025

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

We use the Cisco Catalyst Center for assurance, troublesooting and to program our switches We are also intgrating it with our WLC-9800-80. We have about 600 switch stacjs and ...

Tony Page

Supervisor - Information Technology

manager network infrastructure

sacred heart university

5 years of experience

Cisco Catalyst Center Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

June 16, 2025

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

I use it every day to monitor whether our switches are working or not to know if our buildings are connected to the network, if the students have connectivity, and if their de...

Jennifer Crowder

Analyst - Information Technology

Network Analyst

Hazelwood Schools

2 years of experience

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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Cisco Catalyst Center

N/A

Unavailable

What is Cisco Catalyst Center?

Cisco Catalyst Center delivers a comprehensive, software-defined approach to managing enterprise networks. It simplifies operations by integrating automation, real-time monitoring, security policies, and advanced analytics into a single interface. Designed to support complex networking…

Entry-level set up fee?

No setup fee

Offerings

Free Trial
Free/Freemium Version
Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Atera

$139

per month per user

What is Atera?

Atera is presented as an Agentic AI platform for IT management, that offers a digital workforce of AI agents that proactively and autonomously support entire IT operations. Atera’s all-in-one IT management platform consolidates RMM, helpdesk, ticketing, and automation, so IT teams and MSPs can…

Pandora FMS

$2,990

100 nodes

What is Pandora FMS?

Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring solution. It is presented as ideal for medium and big-sized environments with at least 100 devices. Users can monitor any device, infrastructure, application, IT as well as business processes and services. It allows business users to obtain information from…

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Product Details

What is Cisco Catalyst Center?

Cisco Catalyst Center delivers a comprehensive, software-defined approach to managing enterprise networks. It simplifies operations by integrating automation, real-time monitoring, security policies, and advanced analytics into a single interface. Designed to support complex networking environments, Catalyst Center optimizes efficiency, enhances security, and ensures seamless connectivity across wired and wireless infrastructures.

Cisco Catalyst Center Features

Supported: AI driven automation
Supported: On Prem or Cloud Deployment
Supported: Unified operations
Supported: Enterprise grade security
Supported: Scalability and extensibility
Supported: Real time monitoring

Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

Cisco Catalyst Center Integrations

Cisco Secure Network Analytics
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Cisco Spaces
Cisco ThousandEyes
Cisco Software-Defined Access (SD-Access)
Third-Party APIs for extensibility

Cisco Catalyst Center Competitors

Juniper Mist AI
ExtremeCloud IQ
HPE Intelligent Management Center (IMC)
Aruba Central
VMware vRealize Network Insight
SolarWinds

Cisco Catalyst Center Technical Details

Deployment Types	On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating Systems	Windows, Linux, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Mobile Application	No
Supported Countries	Global
Supported Languages	English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese

Cisco Catalyst Center Downloadables

Cisco Catalyst Center 2.3.7 Data Sheet

Frequently Asked Questions

Juniper Mist AI, ExtremeCloud IQ, and HPE Intelligent Management Center (IMC) are common alternatives for Cisco Catalyst Center.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.1.

The most common users of Cisco Catalyst Center are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).

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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

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Catalyst Center DNAC

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

June 19, 2025

DR

Dominic Romandi

Senior Network Engineer

HCA (Hospital & Health Care, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

1 year of experience

Pros

Device issue logging and tracking
AP mapping
template editing

Cons

IPAM! This is sorely needed. The basic IPAM interface is terrible, seems like an oversight to simply have an IPAM UI similar to Solarwinds' basic tree.
Event alert customization to really tweak and tailor how alerts are sent and when and with which frequency.
Training for CatC. It isnt particularly new user friendly or organized or comprehensive. A lot of marketing terms and not necessarily real world application or use cases.

Cisco Catalyst Center is solid

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 16, 2025

AD

Andrew Dima

Network Engineer

City of Carlsbad (Government Administration, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

3 years of experience

Pros

Provisions SD-Access really well
Heat maps for wifi are really useful
Keeps a tab on device reachability

Cons

Bugs. Cisco always rushes to get out features and ends up creating bugs. For example, we had a stack that we added a switch to temporarily and removed and now that switch won't get out. TAC was not able to help.
Scalability. Currently we have an appliance for running DNA Center. I think that it could be virtualized.
Integration with Nexus switches

Cisco Catalyst Center old DNA Center

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 16, 2025

TP

Tony Page

manager network infrastructure

sacred heart university (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

5 years of experience

Pros

Baseline loading of new switches
Control of Multiple WLC's allowing sync of configs between them
Problem identifcation
network hardware idenification

Cons

Network Mapping functons
Trunk traffic identifacrtion
dashboards for multiple views

Cisco Catalyst Center Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 16, 2025

JC

Jennifer Crowder

Network Analyst

Hazelwood Schools (Education Management, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

2 years of experience

Pros

My favorite is that I am able to enter commands on the program itself without having to access another program. So I can actually enter into the switches from the program itself and enter commands into the actual switches without having to exit the program to go to another program to access the switches.

Cons

Probably training ability. There has not been a lot of access to training. So for example, my backup in the district, we have been looking for options to get her training and there hasn't been a lot of areas where we can reach out to get training for her other than to get certifications. So training would be nice for just on the specific program.