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Kentik vs LiveAction LiveNX comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
35th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (19th)
LiveAction LiveNX
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
52nd
Average Rating
6.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (49th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LiveAction LiveNX is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON - PeerSpot reviewer
Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup
The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.
Mahesh Doshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Very good reporting and alerting abilities but inadequate enhancement support
Before choosing the solution, it is important to rank your requirements from high to low priority. The solution has a lot of features but at a high price. If you will only use 30% of the solution to meet your requirements, then it would be better for you to explore other products. Find the solution that best fulfills your requirements. The solution itself is great. If I could use it properly, then I would rate it a seven out of ten. Unfortunately, support is a factor when determining usability or cost effectiveness. We did not receive the needed support so had to stop using the solution. For that reason, my overall rating for the solution is a five out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is being able to pull traffic patterns; to and from destinations. We're able to understand where our traffic is going, our top talkers from an AS set, as well as where our traffic's coming from."
"The most valuable features have been anything around traffic engineering: being able to determine the source or destination of a surge of traffic, whether it's DDoS-related, or a customer just happened to have a sudden uptick in traffic. Being able to tell where that's coming from or where it's going to enables us to do things based on that."
"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."
"It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics."
"The drill-down into detailed views of network activity helps to quickly pinpoint locations and causes. All the information is there."
"Having the API access allows us to do a great deal of automation around a lot of our reporting and management tools."
"I really love the Data Explorer. I use it all the time to go in and craft exactly what I need to see. I'm able to then take that story and explain it to the executives. I've done that a couple of times and it is helpful."
"The most important feature is cybersecurity."
"The alerting feature is very good because it allows you to set MOS alerts at various network junctures or data points."
"We don't have any complaints about the software. According to my team, it's a very good tool that's very intuitive."
"The intention and the idea of the filter is great."
"All in all, LiveAction LiveNX has become an indispensable tool for maintaining and improving our network's reliability and performance, ultimately supporting our organization's goal of providing timely and dependable delivery services."
"The product has a very good graphical interface."
"Its analytical capability is really good."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to create CLI scripts on the fly to fix any issues. We were using it for QoS modeling to ensure that we were properly modeling QoS, and it basically said here is what you need to fix to get this QoS done, whether it is ACL or something else. It would either push or recommend. If you have the right credentials, you could also push. It is very good if you are a Cisco shop. It gives you reporting, latency, and bandwidth utilization for your applications, so you can do good capacity management planning. There are a lot of pieces that LiveNX can give you. It is a total NPM solution for SD-WAN."
"We provide a tool for our customers to manage their reports. It's an extremely highly featured platform capable of producing a lot of data. We spent quite a long time working with customers and LiveAction to create template reports, and they're very good and configurable. You get a lot of data if you don't configure them."
 

Cons

"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."
"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."
"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable. Kentik is valuable, don't get me wrong, but if it had an actionable piece to it..."
"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."
"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."
"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."
"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."
"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."
"It is not as robust as other NPM solutions. For instance, there is a problem while labeling specific applications. It works well with well-known applications, but when you have to put in new applications that are not very known and set them up with names, ports, URLs, or some protocols, it is not as intuitive."
"The only downside to this software is the price."
"Improved documentation and more responsive customer support can help in addressing issues faster."
"This is a horrible solution and I think everything needs to be improved."
"They need to create a more simplified UI."
"Sometimes the solution does not register devices properly and that is a bug."
"The tool crashes sometimes when we try to pull reports simultaneously."
"The product is weak in multi-tenancy. We have to install multiple instances of LiveAction, whereas we would like to build it once for our customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cheaply priced."
"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."
"It's very expensive."
"We use the free version."
"The solution is fairly expensive compared to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kentik?
It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.
What needs improvement with Kentik?
The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect.
What do you like most about LiveAction LiveNX?
The product has a very good graphical interface.
What needs improvement with LiveAction LiveNX?
The product is weak in multi-tenancy. We have to install multiple instances of LiveAction, whereas we would like to build it once for our customers. Most of these analytical packages have the same ...
What is your primary use case for LiveAction LiveNX?
Primarily, we use the product for monitoring the standard utilization of circuits. The tool has the incredible ability to provide granular details about the traffic passing through an interface on ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
LiveNX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Tampa Electric, Digital First Media, Allscripts, Boxwood Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about Kentik vs. LiveAction LiveNX and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.