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Amazon CloudWatch vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon CloudWatch reduces monitoring costs, boosts operational efficiency, is vital for oversight, but not direct revenue, especially for small projects.
Sentiment score
7.2
SolarWinds NPM enhances infrastructure visibility, delivering cost reductions, faster issue resolution, and significant ROI through optimized resource management.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon CloudWatch support is reliable, with varying response times and expertise based on support level, premium ensures faster help.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM support gets mixed reviews, praised for expertise yet noted for delays and aggressive sales tactics.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
While using their cloud and cloud resources, if you have an issue with CloudWatch, you must pay additional monthly fees to get time from dedicated tech support.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon CloudWatch excels in scalability and performance, efficiently managing data and adapts quickly to diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM is scalable, adapts well to infrastructures, but may face performance and cost issues on virtual platforms.
It is already there as a managed service from AWS.
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon CloudWatch is praised for its reliability and performance, though some note occasional data delays and slowness in low-capacity environments.
Sentiment score
7.5
SolarWinds NPM is stable with issues from server limits and bugs, resolved through updates and proper configuration.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better customization, visualization, and integration in CloudWatch, citing high costs, steep learning curve, and scalability challenges.
SolarWinds NPM users report issues with network discovery, UI features, costs, automation, support, and security improvements are needed.
When using third-party dashboards such as Kibana or Grafana and other visualization tools, there should be a way to feed CloudWatch's data and logging capabilities into these visualization tools.
We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch.
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
Features such as taking backup of the devices or configurations of the devices can be included in further versions of SolarWinds NPM.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudWatch pricing is variable, with costs ranging from $25 to $350, depending on usage and AWS service integration.
SolarWinds NPM pricing varies by setup size, with initial costs, tiered licensing, and maintenance fees influencing total expenses.
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time data, AWS integration, efficient monitoring, user-friendly interface, and versatile dashboards for enhanced system performance.
SolarWinds NPM offers ease of deployment, real-time monitoring, customizable alerts, and user-friendly design for efficient network management.
Amazon CloudWatch allows me to set up and view even historical logs, which is one of the features I find valuable.
If there is a CPU spike or system issues, we set alarms to notify us if the system is going down or not reachable.
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
It provides a detailed overview of the network, which is valuable.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th), Log Management (16th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.3%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.4%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.4%
Amazon CloudWatch2.3%
Other93.3%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
Has provided reliable monitoring and alerting through extensive metric tracking and dashboard configuration
Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch. We are also integrating Grafana with the application itself to get the application data and logs. Alternatively, there is AWS Kinesis and Glue where you can scrape the logs and have visualization, but a more easy option is Grafana. If you want to get a proper visual representation to see what is happening, then you need to integrate a third-party tool. Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool.
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…
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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
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
5%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software 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 Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
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 because many companies are starting to use AI-based dashboards. When using third-part...
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 are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
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 scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

No data available
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
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
870,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.