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Amazon CloudWatch vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.3%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 1.0%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.3%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.3%
Amazon CloudWatch2.3%
Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)1.0%
Other92.4%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactively address issues with seamless monitoring while enhancing custom metrics functionality
We use CloudWatch for monitoring and logging. It helps us monitor our applications' performance, particularly in ensuring that every API hit returns a response within four seconds, which is our SLA. We also monitor invocation errors in Lambda and use CloudWatch alerts to notify us of any issues…
Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations
As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or BigQuery can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings.
Tochukwu Uzomba - PeerSpot reviewer
Rich modular monitoring capabilities offer tailored monitoring needs with good support
SolarWinds NPM is used for monitoring different solutions like database, infrastructure, and network performance. Each of these requires separate solutions, and SolarWinds provides modular options for monitoring Based on my experiences, SolarWinds NPM can handle large network infrastructures…

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 of Amazon CloudWatch is its ease of use and logs. You do not have to go to each separate system to see the logs, such as Syslog and they are located in one dashboard GUI."
"Most of it's around optimizing utilization, their cloud utilization. They're making sure that they're getting the most out of their in-cloud environments and their instances. Making sure that there's no strange behavior in the environment."
"CloudWatch provides essential monitoring capabilities that integrate seamlessly with other AWS services."
"The solution effectively monitors golden signals like CPU, page requests, and queues."
"We can create events and alerts. We use the information to dive down into the infrastructure performance."
"The alarms are one thing I love about AWS CloudWatch. It has alerts that notify us when resource use is approaching the limit."
"The monitoring feature is valuable."
"Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS."
"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"
"It's easy to use."
"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."
"Google's technical support is very good."
"We had some interfaces where the SFP Ports were having some problems after a while. We found which of the SFP Ports was having the error and changed it, so the bandwidth become okay."
"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
"The nice thing about SolarWinds is that it's kind of all-in-one. I can manage the status of my networking devices, whether they are up or down, I can see how much traffic is going across an interface, and I can run a report that tells me exactly what that traffic is."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"The alerting system in SolarWinds NPM aids in proactive network management."
"I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization."
"SolarWinds has greatly helped us, especially in tracing when the SoundCloud Software goes down without any apparent reason."
 

Cons

"The integration with third-party tools must be made easier."
"What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."
"The graphical interface has room for improvement. CloudWatch only gives you a breakdown of what's wrong. However, it would be nice if it could automatically remedy the problems it identifies. You should be able to configure it so that when a specific condition arises, it will take a predefined action."
"It would be beneficial for CloudWatch to provide an API interface and some kind of custom configuration."
"The dashboard and the UI could improve in Amazon CloudWatch. Additionally, they should focus on visibility inside the servers with AI and machine learning integrations. This would allow users who are using the solution to see what is happening within the system better."
"This product lacks some features: real-time data stream monitoring, application performance monitoring, mobile app monitoring, and live dashboards. Its workflows also need improvement."
"The solution should provide human-readable metrics."
"When connecting to Google Cloud, there is no visibility or traceability from Google Cloud into CloudWatch."
"It could be more stable."
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"It could be even more automated."
"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."
"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."
"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver."
"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."
"The logging functionality could be better."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
"The scalability can be better."
"The initial setup of SolarWinds NPM is complex, and I find it challenging."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"In terms of scalability, there is room for improvement. When you start monitoring, if you have so many interfaces and you're trying to monitor them at a faster interval, or a shorter interval, you get to a point where you need to request another node."
"Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier."
"The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market."
"It has covered everything, so no improvement is required at their end. The only thing is the price."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is okay for me."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."
"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."
"The product's cost is relatively inexpensive."
"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing is average."
"The cost could be lower."
"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"It is too expensive."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
4%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Media Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Apart from traceability of network resources, Amazon CloudWatch needs to be more interoperable with other tools becau...
What needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?
If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analy...
What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?
I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly u...
What advice do you have for others considering Google Stackdriver?
The Ops Agent and logging transport feature of the solution have had a major impact on improving application performa...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Microsoft and others in Cloud Monitoring Software. Updated: September 2025.
868,183 professionals have used our research since 2012.