Cisco is the behemoth of the networking industry. Chances are if you run a business, you’ve used Cisco equipment in your company in some fashion.
But what is the best place to sell Cisco equipment when you’re done with it? In this article, we’ll cover some of your options, as well as some common road blocks that people run into in the process.
To elaborate, selling networking equipment can be a bit different than selling other IT equipment such as servers, memory, drives, and cpus. Switches and firewalls are not always “plug and play” as licensing can be problematic to transfer. This may bring the question, “where can I sell my cisco switch?” or “where can I sell my Cisco networking switch?” Continue reading to find out the best places to sell all cisco equipment.
Learn More | The Best Places To Sell Used Servers.
The Best Place to Sell Cisco Equipment – Your Options:
Cisco Buy-Back Program
Cisco backs the secondary IT market, similarly to how Toyota backed the pre-owned car market.
Secondhand networking equipment typically lacks a warranty and may be incompatible with the buyer’s network. Many secondhand Cisco products were also being disposed of irresponsibly.
Cisco wanted to avoid these issues, so they support, sponsor, or endorse different buyback providers that will purchase your used Cisco gear.
When you go through the locater, check the “Cisco certified refurbished equipment” box.
Depending on the reseller, the purchase prices aren’t always as generous as you’d like, so you’ll likely want to get quotes from more than one before committing to anything.
Cisco doesn’t buy back the equipment themselves in most cases, but they do provide pick up for end of life hardware recycling if you find that your equipment is no longer valuable.
eBay
eBay is a mecca for consumer product sales. With switches and firewalls, warranties and network compatibility throw a monkey wrench into the mix.
With resale, Cisco does not honor a secondhand warranty. Additionally, some buyers may not understand the implications of the firmware currently installed on the device or its configuration.
As a result, they may buy networking equipment from you that is not compatible with their network. This can cause payment disputes and tank seller ratings.
eBay also charges significant seller fees, and unless you have an established reputation on eBay, buyers can be hard to come by.
Craigslist
Craigslist is risky and not recommended.
For one, you’re two anonymous parties, and there are no security measures if something goes wrong.
If you get scammed there’s no help. If you do use Craigslist, only meet in person in a public place and use cash.
While Craigslist is not recommended, you do keep all of the profits if you somehow sift through the scammers to find a legitimate buyer.
However, that legitimate buyer is likely to be on the hunt for a bargain anyways, so the profits are marginal anyway.
You have much better options than Craigslist. So for most people, Craigslist will not be the best place to sell Cisco equipment.
Reddit is another platform with no safety measures, but it can be more reliable than Craigslist. You can scout out users by searching their post history and comments.
If a user does not have a post history and it’s a brand new account, do not deal with them for any reason.
If you’ve got some experience with Reddit, the hardware swap subreddit can be a fairly easy place to find buyers.
Mods do a pretty good job, and there are some regulations that require users to verify their identity with timestamped pictures.
While we don’t recommend Reddit as a primary option, for some consumer products it can be an effective way to quickly find buyers online.
As always with fairly unregulated marketplaces, YMMV depending on how thorough you are when vetting buyers.
Broker Bin
For an established business selling to other businesses, Broker Bin may be the best place to sell cisco equipment. There are numerous drawbacks, however.
It can be time consuming to sign up and begin using the platform. Additionally, consumers don’t qualify to use it, though there are ways around that.
However, if you are eligible to use broker bin, it is a fairly comprehensive secondary market for used IT equipment that, once figured out, can provide very reasonable returns on your used networking equipment.
It’s also a fairly safe platform to boot. Despite this, if you’ve got a bulk quantity of networking equipment it can be more time consuming than you would prefer.
Weighing all these pros and cons, for many enterprises it will be the best place to sell Cisco equipment.
We also have a post on where to sell all your extraneous computer parts beyond Cisco equipment.
You Can Sell Cisco Equipment with an IT Asset Disposition Service
If you’ve ever Googled “sell X type of IT equipment” you’ll typically see a few of these IT asset disposition, or ITAD, companies.
They provide a convenient service, though not typically if you only have one or two systems to sell. They are generally your best option to sell wholesale quantities of networking equipment.
ITAD companies can handle all of the equipment logistics and come on site to pick up your equipment. They may not pay as well as consumer rates, but you’re selling all of your equipment all at once so the time savings typically more than make up for it.
Have Cisco Equipment to Sell?
exIT technologies provides trusted ITAD services to numerous fortune 1000 companies and government agencies. We have years of experience dealing with used Cisco equipment.
If you have a large quantity of equipment to liquidate, we’ll pay fair prices. We also handle all of the leg work to turn your equipment into cash today.
You can sell used Cisco equipment to us, easily.
Just fill out our form with your equipment details, and we’ll be in touch with you soon.
We also provide data center liquidation and data center decommissioning services for large lots of all types of equipment.
If you require on-site pickup and full logistics services, we’ll be happy to help you out.