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Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs ThousandEyes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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
43rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (43rd)
ThousandEyes
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (13th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.7%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThousandEyes is 2.4%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ThousandEyes2.4%
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance0.7%
Other96.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Sylvain Germe - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Abdalraheem Asha - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior cloud engineering lead and IT project owner at KDD
Has improved collaboration with providers and pinpointed issues across regional networks
ThousandEyes has been the most user-friendly tool I have seen in the past couple of years, making life easier in troubleshooting and helping us find what's happening while offering vivid options on how to use the agents or the server-side tools with multiple options to trace out the issues. The best features ThousandEyes offers include the ability to place two different points or nodes, such as a server or a node in the cloud in my account, then installing agents and tracing the connectivity which helps me build a perfect user experience to check what's happening while users access my resources. I love the dashboards in ThousandEyes and the way I see the results after placing or doing the tests; this is perfect, and I would say this is the best thing. ThousandEyes has positively impacted my organization by raising the customer experience and positive feedback by over 70% due to the complex situation with local service providers, allowing me to resolve user feedback and issues which enhanced the user experience significantly. I measure the 70% improvement in customer experience through customer tickets and feedback after resolving issues, where previously, users faced problems and limited time on the platform, and after using ThousandEyes, the user time reached up to five to six hours a day, even for teams possibly totaling 30 hours a day.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."
"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."
"For us, the most valuable feature is something called TWAMP that allows for real-time traffic in a way that is 10 times lighter than things like SolarWinds. It's in the sub-milliseconds of accuracy, and you can divide tasks so that you can literally see things like the tagging for Quality of Service. That had been incorrect with the carrier, but there was no way on this planet you'd be able to tell a carrier that they're wrong. I have dozens of scenarios where we found "No, that's not right," and got it resolved instantly."
"I always have the Skylight dashboard on one of my screens... Now you can create your own dashboard, specific to an application, specific to a server, or to something else."
"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."
"The solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."
"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..."
"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."
"The most valuable features of ThousandEyes are the full monitoring capabilities and the ability to identify the exact location of problems in the path between the application and the end-user."
"The installation process is not hard at all."
"The authentication overall - including to the VPN and LAN - is excellent."
"The most valuable feature of ThousandEyes is user-friendliness. It has been essential for us to have a solution that is easy to use."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"ThousandEyes gives companies better visibility."
"The solution's initial setup process was straightforward...In terms of ROI, the solution is worth the money."
"The most valuable features are integration and ease of use."
 

Cons

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."
"Some of the Skylight applications are a little newer, and they're still moving through initial revs. There are certain bugs, but nothing is insurmountable... It will just take a little bit of time for their user interface to get a little bit better."
"It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database."
"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."
"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."
"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."
"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."
"I would like to see some improvements in parts of their synthetic transactions, which includes all the latency, jitter, and throughput. I would like to see some Layer 7 analytics in there. I want to be able to do a DNS request, HTTP GET request, or even SIP call point-to-point or via registration."
"It's an expensive solution."
"The guest portal is hard to use."
"The solution's network and reporting could be improved."
"I would like the product to offer more agility."
"ThousandEyes could improve the dashboards by adding more features."
"I feel it needs more holistic integration. It needs more improvement."
"They only offer synthetic requests."
"Presently, it lacks the ability to integrate with other Cisco products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"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 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 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."
"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."
"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."
"It is a quite expensive solution."
"The solution is cheap."
"The solution costs several thousand dollars per year."
"The solution's pricing is cheap; I rate it a five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
27%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
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 Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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?
ThousandEyes could focus more on end-users than enterprises, as the solution is powerful, and collaboration with multiple cloud providers should be developed for better test traceability, with the ...
What is your primary use case for ThousandEyes?
My main use case for ThousandEyes is troubleshooting, with a specific example being testing connectivity through IXP to ensure the fastest route in collaboration with service providers over the reg...
 

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: December 2025.
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