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Actional vs NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Actional
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
73rd
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
SOA Governance (3rd)
NETSCOUT Network & Applicat...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
46th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (29th), Network Troubleshooting (12th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Actional is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability0.8%
Actional0.6%
Other98.6%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

it_user690762 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
Provides speed and scaling in the cloud
Provides speed and scaling in the cloud Effortless scaling Never throws away data Takes action now Delivers analytics at the speed of business Automates and speeds up system discovery I would like to see better marketing. We have used this for four years. There are no deployment issues at this…
HT
Newwork And Collaboration Supervisor at Nafeza
Monitoring has improved bandwidth insights and application diagnosis but setup and costs still need work
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like Cisco, who provides any component next business day, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE took a long time. This needs more improvement. I believe it is expensive. They need to reduce its budget a little bit. Comparing to other solutions, it is very expensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From a testing standpoint, ignoring license and cost issues, it's not a bad product."
"This tool has great scaling capabilities, i.e., no limitations."
"The solution's technical support team consists of good engineers and technicians."
"It catches bigger issues on a weekly basis. That's how often we find something big enough that the only reason we know about it is because of the nGeniusONE. The bigger issues are mostly security-type issues: Odd traffic leaving our network or coming into it, that has found its way past a firewall."
"This solution has cut our overall troubleshooting time by several days."
"It's a consolidated, single tool that talks to multiple platforms. It's not vendor-proprietary; it's independent. It provides interoperability with different products, whether they are routing products, switching products, wireless, wired, load balancing, or proxy. It works with anything you can name."
"The stability of this product is ok."
"I love the single pane of glass view. It makes it easier to not have to navigate everywhere. It allows more simplistic visibility, without having to go from tool to tool to tool, or from window to window to window."
"The ability to be able to do detailed traffic analysis such as top-talkers, application-specific monitoring, and understanding them through patterns, is helpful. We're also able to gain an understanding of voice calls, voice traffic, whether we have packet loss in a certain part of the network or jitter or high latency that might be impacting the network. All of those are nice functionalities."
"When it's implemented properly, and the training is there to use the interface and have it work in your company, and people understand it, it can be very effective."
 

Cons

"My concern is with Automation integration."
"Usability is the area with the biggest room for improvement. We've found that with NETSCOUT, while it's a fantastic product, the usability is a major factor because there are just way too many clicks. It's obvious, from our experience, that the people who are developing the product aren't using it."
"The solution could do more for security. It should offer more security-related features."
"The monitoring and reporting tool needs improvement. Users want more information, such as the level of detail when doing a packet analysis. They want more detail to be able to isolate down to a specific point."
"Initial setup was complex."
"There is a timeout feature that we have been asking for awhile."
"NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE is not integrated with SolarWinds. They work in different ways."
"The feature I am looking for is the Arbor technology, especially to run in parallel with our firewall... It's getting there."
"Between the host analysis and session analysis, there is a limitation of one hour. This can hinder us if a situation occurred ten hours ago."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price is only for acquisition; it's not a licence."
"The platform is expensive."
"Their pricing is very competitive with other solutions... But what I like about NETSCOUT's licensing is that it's shared across all their platforms. They don't create a new licensing scheme for every one of their products. So for nGeniusONE, you buy a certain license level, and it works on all of their products."
"The scalability becomes very expensive quickly."
"It can be scalable. It just costs too much. With a company as big as ours, it gets too expensive to accommodate every single site."
"Like any company, we always want better pricing. The pricing is okay, but it's not a cheap solution. When you want to deploy it across an enterprise as large as ours, you go into seven figures. It's not a cheap solution to get out there."
"This solution has saved us more than $50,000 a month and freed up 30 percent of our bandwidth."
"The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise59
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Regarding its high price, I give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a seven.
What needs improvement with NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
NETSCOUT nGenius, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE, NETSCOUT vSTREAM, NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG, TruView
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Proximus, Air France-KLM, Barratt Developments, Freedom Mortgage
Cerner Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Actional vs. NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.