Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs PRTG Network Monitor comparison

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. PRTG Network Monitor

Download the complete report

Helped 831,071 peers since 2012

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

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

36th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (34th)

PRTG Network Monitor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

101

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 4.2%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Sylvain Germe

Application and Network Performance Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Highly scalable, responsive support, but lacking new features

This solution is geared towards on-premise setups, and would not be useful if the company plans to move to the cloud within the next two years, such as Google Cloud for example. If the goal is to monitor bandwidth at remote sites and identify performance issues because the network is under the control, this solution is useful. However, if a company primarily uses cloud-based servers and does not manage the internet connection of its remote sites, the solution becomes less useful. I rate Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten. I have a positive opinion of the tool, but it can be challenging to set up. It is also limited in its applicability to certain use cases. I am familiar with the engineers behind the solution and have a good impression of them. However, I am not pleased with the fact that the company removed many features and raised prices after it was acquired by Accedian.

Read full review

Tochukwu Uzomba

Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited

Efficiently monitor networks across regions with seamless setup and robust feature set

PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational. It is an all-in-one monitoring solution without extra costs. For example, we set it up for an insurance company with branches across Africa. We are able to monitor from Lagos without installing anything in the branches, using the agentless feature. We just put in the IP address and the parameter, and we monitor from those ends. Additionally, all the sensors are very useful. Most people are interested in the bandwidth monitoring sensor to see what bandwidth the users are consuming. The pricing is affordable compared to SolarWinds.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution has helped to improve the interaction between our network, datacenter, and application teams. I have used other tools, but this tool can pinpoint the root cause of my application or network issue in the majority of the cases. So, it helps different divisions or groups in the IT department to troubleshoot together and get an issue resolved. This tool helps a lot in our day-to-day networking application and IT operations."

"It is about finding operational problems. When sites go down, we try to determine who is at fault. While there is not much finger-pointing, the solution is just trying to analyse when there is an outage and where do we start looking to fix it. The very nature of why organization chooses to use the solution is to accelerate the meantime to resolution and find where problems lie to get them rectified as quickly as possible."

"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."

"The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread."

"If [the problem] is something related to HTTP or VoIP, then I can have a quick look into the protocols, a process which gives me some good ideas..."

"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."

"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."

"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"It is easy to use and intuitive, which is really important. It does what it says on the box by giving you a visual of the state of what is going on at any one time."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"We like the alerting system, the SNMP monitoring and the customization of the bandwidth."

"The best feature is that it lets me know what is going on. I need to know if something has gone down, I need to know if something is running very slowly. PRTG tells me that."

"The email notifications are helpful, and the dashboards are user-friendly for people with little network monitoring knowledge."

"The solution is very easy to use and the web provides information with ease."

"The installation is not that complex."

"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."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

Cons

"Because of the policies in Vietnam, we cannot connect the system to the Accedian cloud. It would be good if Accedian could provide a local cloud. In the next release, I would like them to focus on improving and adding more reporting features. This will help the operations teams."

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

"If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either."

"This solution is expensive compared to some others."

"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."

"For the PVX, they are in the process of getting the results to export to cloud and SaaS for analytics. They told me that this will happen later this year. Right now, for the most part, I create that data myself."

"There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change your license to a new one, you have to almost re-buy it completely."

"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good."

"The solution could be better and faster when it comes to performance."

"It would be good if there were better graphical interfaces when you have it on multiple monitors... Because we have so many servers, things can get lost in the fog a little bit. Maybe having a better way of showing different geographies, Flash, etc., would help."

"PRTG Network Monitor can improve by adding prevention and detection features."

"I would like to see a more robust platform and a new dashboard. In addition, the code is good, but it needs improvement."

"In terms of sensors and probes, it would be really cool if PRTG had a purely Azure-based solution. We had to install a probe on one of our cloud servers and then let that probe out from there. It would be really cool if it just monitored Azure without having to install something on the device."

"They should work on syncing the solution with Gmail."

"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."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."

"The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is an expensive solution."

"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."

"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."

"If you look into Riverbed, it's a licensing nightmare. You need to pay for every type of analysis... If you don't look into licensing, Riverbed and SolarWinds are pretty comparable. But if you look into licensing it would not be smart to go for either of them. On the pure, bare-metal basis, it's the same. But when you get the bare metal and a few basic licenses, then you need all those other licenses just to be sure that there's no issue... One of the great things about Skylight is you have them all, and you actually need them all."

"It provides value and the cost is not huge."

"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"All monitoring system is close to the same pricing scheme."

"It is expensive."

"Because we are only on the free version, we have a limited number of sensors. Therefore, we are not monitoring as much as we want to be to obtain historical information."

"Our licensing costs are 10,000 euros over three years."

"In my company now, we are using the free version."

"We are licensed for 2500 endpoints."

"It's an annual license that is based on the number of endpoints that we're tracking and using."

"Licenses are very expensive, so I would like to see cheaper licensing."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

831,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

40%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

54%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Accedian Skylight?

The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Accedian Skylight?

The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It i...

What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?

Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues. I require more tools to file and resolve these issues efficiently.

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it avoid the configuring the device in PRTG. It automatically discover the device an...

What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?

The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?

PRTG comes in different bands: there are options with 500, 1500, 2500, and so on. Pricing is by the number of devices, not by sensor.

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Comparisons

Compared 46% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 18% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 9% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

LibreNMS vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios XI vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More PRTG Network Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

PRTG Network Monitor

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision

No data available

Learn More

Video not available

Cisco

Paessler GmbH

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers real-time application and network performance monitoring, VPN management, and network diagnostics across multiple sites.

Organizations use Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance for active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and troubleshooting performance issues. Deployed both on-premise and in the cloud, it supports IT infrastructure, security, and analytics with end-to-end performance measurement across cloud data centers. The modern, intuitive interface features TWAMP for real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reports, along with insightful dashboards for circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput monitoring.

What are the most important features?

TWAMP: Provides real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reporting.
Insightful Dashboards: Monitor circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput.
Security Integration: Compatible with tools like Splunk for enhanced security.
Application Support: Facilitates comprehensive network performance analysis.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Quick Corrective Actions: Immediate response capabilities for performance issues.
Easy Navigation: User-friendly layouts simplify monitoring and troubleshooting.
Comprehensive Analytics: Advanced tools for in-depth network performance insights.
Cloud and On-Premise Options: Flexible deployment to meet different needs.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance ensures robust performance monitoring and quick diagnostics for VPNs and internet lines. It aids in maintaining the integrity and security of data transference, facilitating active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and performance troubleshooting across geographically dispersed locations, ensuring seamless operation and compliance with industry standards.

PRTG Network Monitor runs on a Windows machine within your network, collecting various statistics from the machines, software, and devices which you designate. PRTG comes with an easy-to-use web interface with point-and-click configuration. You can easily share data from it with non-technical colleagues and customers, including via live graphs and custom reports. This will let you plan for network expansion, see what applications are using most of your connection, and make sure that no one is hogging the entire network just to torrent videos.

To monitor a large IT environment, it's important to be able to scale PRTG up. Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes all the proven capabilities of PRTG Network Monitor, which are enhanced by exclusive ITOps Board for a service-oriented, central overview of multiple PRTG servers.

Sample Customers

T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville

Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. PRTG Network Monitor