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AppNeta by Broadcom vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

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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

AppNeta by Broadcom
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
63rd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
45th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (16th), DX NetOps (3rd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of AppNeta by Broadcom is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
AppNeta by Broadcom0.8%
Other95.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Cliff Chapman - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at Linkstatus Ltd
Excellent support, easy configuration, and a reliable tool to know what the problem is and where the problem is
They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes. Currently, when we have short-duration problems, we use a different tool, but we only use that different tool for short-duration problems. With AppNeta, as long as the problem exists for more than a few minutes, such as within 10 to 15 minutes, we can normally tell where the problem is. However, most of the problems that we deal with are intermittent. They're very rarely a permanent condition that needs to be addressed. That makes it more difficult to troubleshoot. We would look to see at least two or three events and hope they show the same results to raise our confidence that we've actually found the problem, rather than just a problem.
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We get complete, hop-by-hop visibility into the internet and we can know how much latency is taking place from one hop to another. That way, we know whether a particular hop belongs to the ISP, or that it is something owned by our own client's office, or is something to do with the SaaS network."
"Delivery and experience are valuable. The usage in terms of the traffic application captures and other similar things is also valuable."
"This solution helps prove that, if we move to cloud, we'll still be as effective as we are on-premises."
"Since we implemented it, we've seen multiple performance improvements, which in turn results in increases in revenue and efficiency."
"No other company has been able to match AppNeta's capability at the same price point."
"The solution's technical support is very good."
"End-to-End video testing - we would deploy m22s into a client’s network where we plan to deploy a high end video endpoint, allowing us to ensure that the client's network is capable of handling the planned video traffic over 24 hours or 7 days so that we can see the effect of any other traffic on the network, such as nightly backups."
"Pathview is the most valuable feature."
"Solarwind NPM gives you a quick overview of the OT environment, which greatly improves response times on down equipment."
"We are frequently able to attend to issues before our user community and customers are aware that a problem exists."
"I believe the ease of setup and use, including everything, from the initial installation to the discovery of devices is the most valuable."
"SolarWinds makes it easy for us to monitor our environment."
"The most common feedback I receive as a consultant is how the product ultimately finds issues and bottlenecks in the enterprise that the engineers were previously unaware existed."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"One of my clients is a bank; SolarWinds is primarily used in banking to limit network downtime to less than one or two minutes, with all the ATMs connected so the bank can respond quickly when the network is down."
 

Cons

"AppNeta by Broadcom needs to add more features to its dashboards. It also needs to work on providing out-of-the-box reports."
"An area of improvement would be to move back towards what AppNeta used to have directly before the Broadcom acquisition."
"Fully monitoring asymmetrical links is more costly and complex than symmetrical ones."
"Because of the nature of how AppNeta works in terms of using bursts to depict how a network path performs, it is hard to correlate 24 hour performance 100% accurately."
"They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes."
"Cloud monitoring could be better. That's one of the biggest pain points for me. I have shared this feedback with them multiple times, but they're limited to some extent. That's one area where I've seen a problem."
"Billing does not have a user friendly format that allows you to break down the billing of sub-companies and be able to see them with what has been spun up, what subscriptions are currently in use, what has been added new that month and to pull that in an easy to read and easy to import format."
"Alerting. We have so many paths in our environment that it is strictly a reactive tool, not proactive."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"If they did some type of synthetic monitoring, it would have been better."
"There are still huge concerns about security."
"Consolidation of platforms would provide a smoother experience."
"Dependencies: Created dependencies are not visible for management/editing by default until some tweaking is done. It would be better if this is enabled by default."
"They should increase its accuracy rate as SolarWinds's monitoring accuracy is not good if you compare it with other tools, like NNM/ScienceLogic/Zenoss."
"New, web-based interface lacks some features of traditional GUI."
"Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The small probe is probably around $3,000 and the very large probe that they make for massive data centers might be $50,000 or $60,000. It's a subscription model, so the payment is per year."
"It's worth the money."
"I find the solution's price to be fairly good."
"Broadcom software is always a little expensive because they provide quality."
"I inherited this from a different version, and I haven't yet gone through a renewal because we had purchased three years upfront. So, to me, that still remains to be seen. Once it comes up for renewal, we'll see what happens. Especially because now it is Broadcom, it is going to change anyway."
"AppNeta by Broadcom is not expensive."
"We typically don't get involved in the commercial side, but the list price is probably something like $3,000 for a small probe. However, that gives all of the features that the probe can do, whether or not you use them. In the old days, up until two or three years ago, each of the separate features was a separately licensable module so that you could add things that you wanted, and you didn't have to add things that you didn't want. They've changed all that now, and everything the probe can do is a part of the base license."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"Price could be improved on"
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"It is expensive."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise87
 

Questions from the Community

What open source tool can one use to measure bandwidth from one's upstream service provider?
One I am looking closely at is AppNeta. They have an appliance that can digest the flow and do a better job than Netflow. The other one we are using is ExtraHop. This has both a Datacenter Hig...
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

Ebay, Citrix, National Instruments, Marriott, AT&T, Bon-Ton, McDonald's, Netflix, PayPal, Uber, QAD
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about AppNeta by Broadcom vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,630 professionals have used our research since 2012.