Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs Zabbix comparison

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Zabbix and Accedian Skylight are powerful monitoring solutions. Zabbix is favored for its pricing and support, while Accedian Skylight stands out for its advanced features.

Features: Zabbix offers customizable monitoring capabilities, extensive templates, and integrations. Accedian Skylight provides sophisticated performance analytics, detailed network insights, and advanced analytics capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Zabbix has a steep learning curve and complex initial setup configurations. Accedian Skylight could improve its integration with third-party tools and specific network diagnostic features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zabbix is free and open-source but challenging to deploy and has slower customer service. Accedian Skylight offers smoother deployment and robust customer assistance, making it more user-friendly.

Pricing and ROI: Zabbix's cost-effective model provides substantial functionality at a low price. Accedian Skylight, though pricier, offers high-quality features and a solid return on investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Zabbix Report (Updated: July 2025).

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Zabbix

July 2025

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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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

46th

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

42nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zabbix

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

9th

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

106

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.8%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 12.7%, up from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin

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…

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B Ahmed

Manager, Information Technology Zara & Inditex at Cenomi

Enables seamless global client monitoring with reliable remote connectivity

I use the solution to provide a perfect environment for remote connectivity with my clients. Many tools that I require for system maintenance are included. I can easily monitor all of my clients throughout the world I did not give much thought to it, however, improvements could be made to Zabbix.…

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"The integration capabilities and APIs are the best part."

"The features I found most valuable are the user interface and a wide range of network devices that are easy to configure."

"The overall functionality of Zabbix is very good. The monitoring of bank applications that Zabbix provides is great. The information is displayed on a dashboard that is easily viewed."

"The flexibility of this solution is amazing."

"The flexible licensing model is one of the solution's most valuable aspects. It really allows for great flexibility for companies."

"The most valuable feature is the alert and alarm monitoring."

"It's one of the best products available."

"We have found that Zabbix is more easy to use than other applications."

More Zabbix pros

Cons

"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."

"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"The stability could be better."

"It should be easy to modify the front end."

"I would like to see a more flexible mobile client, and better HA out of the box."

"I would like for this solution to be more cloud-friendly."

"The main problem with Zabbix is that you have to spend time writing templates for all of the products that you have."

"Its UI needs to be improved a little bit more so that an end-user is also able to handle it. I can handle it, but others should also be able to handle it in a better way. It becomes complex when we are growing and need to add proxies. We need more scalability features and documentation for different use cases. A lot of articles are available, but they need to be in proper documentation. For example, when you have thousands of servers that have to be monitored in different regions of the world, there should be some kind of documentation to describe how you can create proxies and add them. Sometimes, when you are using the database, it can get overloaded. When the network is growing, the number of transactions becomes very high, and the database gets overloaded. There should be information about how to reduce the load on the MySQL database, which is what Zabbix is using. The market is growing a lot, and it should be enhanced for a lot more things. We are currently bringing enhancements at our end for different use cases. For example, when dockerization is going on, how can we check the logs inside the Dockers. We should also be able to monitor and check the number of logins and add features such as SSO login and two-factor authentication as a protocol. These are the security features and concerns that we have to deal with. Currently, we are developing modules to add features to Zabbix, but they should also work on these features."

"The only issue we have had with Zabbix is when we decided to make an update or upgrade."

"Zabbix could improve when it comes to large-scale use cases. Additionally, the inventory could be better when connecting to other solutions, such as ServiceNow. There show to be better integration with other platforms and storage."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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

"This is an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."

"I was using the free, Community Edition."

"It is freeware. We still use the free version of Zabbix."

"The solution is free. However, many open-sourced tools start out free but eventually start charging."

"It is worth every cent to pay or even study to do your own installation."

"For pricing, it's free. We don't pay anything for it. They open-source the code, and people pay for support."

"It is free, which allows us to reduce costs."

"I use the tool's free version."

More Zabbix pricing and cost advice

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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

37%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

What do you like most about Zabbix?

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?

We didn't use the commercial version. We used the free version.

What needs improvement with Zabbix?

I think it's the best solution for monitoring. I don't know any better.

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Icinga vs Zabbix

Compared 7% of the time

NetXMS vs Zabbix

Compared 4% of the time

Nagios XI vs Zabbix

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

July 2025

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Download Zabbix product report

June 2025

Also Known As

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

No data available

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.

Cisco

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.

It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.

With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.

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

1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba