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Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs ThousandEyes comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
45th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (41st)
ThousandEyes
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThousandEyes is 1.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ThousandEyes1.6%
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance0.8%
Other97.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at DYNASAFE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.
Addresses connectivity issues with real-time monitoring while offering good local support
I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and quality use. This involves addressing network device issues, specifically Cisco network devices One…
Siddumanisria Mindi - PeerSpot reviewer
Network engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Monitoring has transformed internet visibility and speeds up resolving external service issues
ThousandEyes needs to specify unit consumption forecasting or scaling testing and deeper app analytics. It needs deeper out-of-the-box Layer 7 code or database-level insights. Additionally, it should unify the GUI with broader Cisco platforms and flatten the learning curve, adding better correlation with local laptop system metrics such as endpoint depth, CPU, RAM, or processes. ThousandEyes isn't designed to be a full-blown SNMP monitoring tool for on-premises infrastructure. While it tracks network paths effectively, it doesn't provide deep local device telemetry such as switch port buffer utilization, fan status, or power supply health. For full internal device monitoring, you'll still need to pair it with traditional tools such as SolarWinds or Cisco Catalyst Center.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark."
"Skylight is not used on a daily basis, but when it's used it usually helps to fix a problem pretty fast."
"Performance Vision saves time diagnosing performance problems and anticipates where investment is needed by pointing to the infrastructure limitations."
"When a remote contact complains about a slow application, we can immediately pinpoint the cause of concern."
"It has clearly saved us money."
"What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy. I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful."
"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."
"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."
"ThousandEyes has positively impacted my organization in terms of network monitoring, network performance monitoring, identifying network graphs and latencies, and monitoring network product availability, which has been very beneficial to our company and projects."
"ThousandEyes actually advanced the troubleshooting part and the monitoring of the devices, or I would say the management of the devices with monitoring and to identify the root cause."
"The historical timeline feature is what I appreciate most about ThousandEyes because when people report that something occurs at a specific time of day, I can set up a test and capture the issue in action."
"ThousandEyes gives companies better visibility, showing effective notes on the network layer and the application's performance for anyone inside or outside the data center, while providing deep visibility on the network, legal support, and user requests."
"It's fairly easy to set up."
"The return on investment is immediate, delivering a 40% to 60% reduction in MTTR by eliminating multi-team war rooms and saving hundreds of engineering hours annually through instant ISP path proof, directly protecting business productivity and SaaS SLA accountability."
"The solution's most valuable feature is network security."
"The authentication overall - including to the VPN and LAN - is excellent."
 

Cons

"The licensing of the virtual pollers is problematic because they are attached to the physical ESX on which they are installed."
"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."
"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."
"We have encountered problems with the license that is connected to the hypervisor on which the virtual appliance is deployed."
"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."
"A lower price and more flexible versions will help the product."
"This solution is expensive compared to some others."
"So scalability, at the moment, is pretty bad for us now, because our modus operandi have totally shifted."
"I feel it needs more holistic integration. It needs more improvement."
"The first thing is that we don't have any option to export the reports."
"It's an expensive solution."
"Regarding needed improvements, I think the user interface could be better. It is sometimes a little confusing and should be very user-friendly, including a guide for how alerts are configured to assist first-time users."
"There is room for improvement in terms of customization and user-friendliness."
"ThousandEyes could be improved by unifying the GUI with the rest of the Cisco products since it remains legacy from its original state when Cisco acquired it."
"ThousandEyes definitely has differentiators versus the peers in the space, as there are other tools that are a bit more user-friendly to configure, especially around enterprise agents; for example, when upgrades are required, it sometimes needs a complete de-installation and re-installation of a newer version, which leads to a bit of administrative overhead from time to time, but overall, it has been an excellent product."
"They only offer synthetic requests, so they should create an agent for users that can track your request."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."
"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"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."
"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."
"It provides value and the cost is not huge."
"The solution is cheap."
"The solution costs several thousand dollars per year."
"It is a quite expensive solution."
"The solution's pricing is cheap; I rate it a five out of ten."
"In our company, we incur a yearly expense in our company for the licensing part. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten since it is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

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 your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?
I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and ...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or requirements. Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better from a cloud monitoring or APM monitoring perspective. You can check...
What needs improvement with ThousandEyes?
I think ThousandEyes can be improved, specifically the licensing model. It's too complex, too expensive, and it takes a lot of time to manage the licensing model. My experience with pricing, setup ...
What is your primary use case for ThousandEyes?
My main use case for ThousandEyes is path monitoring. I use ThousandEyes for path monitoring to see how my traffic is flowing in my network, what the hops are in between, and then see at what hop e...
 

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Wayfair, GitHub, Craigslist, Comcast, SurveyMonkey, Lyft, Box, HP, Zendesk, IO Data Centers, Good Technology, NNTCommunications, Proofpoint, Schneider, Crowdstrike, Avera, Pitney Bowes, InstartLogic, Shutterfly, Shutterstock, Condé Nast, Roche, Jive, Actelion, Brocade, Infor, Okta, JLL, DigitalOcean, Zuora, NetSuite, CloudFlare, One, DemonWare, Quantcast, Carbonite, CareerBuilder, Prosper, Oscar, Slack
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. ThousandEyes and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
916,771 professionals have used our research since 2012.