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AppNeta by Broadcom vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

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
64th
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
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 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 3.7%, 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 NPM3.7%
AppNeta by Broadcom0.8%
Other95.5%
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

"Since we implemented it, we've seen multiple performance improvements, which in turn results in increases in revenue and efficiency."
"With one of our federal customers, we deployed these throughout their network and found multiple cases of misconfigured routers and NICs, which allowed the customer to move to a VOIP solution."
"It has helped us to see issues or problems rather than having a customer report them."
"Technical support is exceptional. They are very available, willing to work with our technicians and engineers and very open to providing training to understand their product more thoroughly."
"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."
"Every experience that I have had with them has been outstanding."
"The tool allows us to ensure the capacity, bandwidth, and packet loss of our VPN-based WAN within our thresholds end-to-end, and it is different from SNMP/NetFlow-based monitoring, which we also make use of."
"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."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It improved the way our organization functions by being a consolidated product which I was able to do a lot of the initial data entry and organization with."
"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."
"Single pane for monitoring scales and creates new business opportunities."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use a few custom properties to manage multiple nodes and alerts; thus, saving hardware resource usage."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the following improvements in accessibility: The ability to see the details concerning incidents and their reasons right on the graph, the ability to open those events right from the graph, the ability to see the applications being used at that time."
"The initial setup is complex."
"It needs more improvements in monitoring of video streaming performance as well as more layers of breakdown in the front end performance."
"I would like to see some advanced dashboard features. It could also be integrated with third-party tools. For example, an integration with a reporting solution would be helpful. Out-of-the-box, there are few dashboards or reports. What it does have is useful, but there should be additional dashboards."
"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."
"AppNeta by Broadcom needs to add more features to its dashboards. It also needs to work on providing out-of-the-box reports."
"Instead of integrating with other people, they should expand their interior capabilities."
"The solution is expensive and may not be very affordable for startups or smaller companies."
"SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution, aside from the fact that they had a major hack a couple of years ago and effectively allowed the Russian government to completely hack their code, making everyone vulnerable."
"Failover functionality does not exist without the purchase of the "Fail Over Engine (FoE)" license."
"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."
"Overall speed of the software could be improved as it is incredibly slow at times."
"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the short retention period. Currently, it's just for seven days of data, which is very low, making it hard for my organization to keep that data. SolarWinds recommended a seven-day retention period, but my organization needs a fourteen-day data retention period. Hence, I'd like an increase in the retention period or the database limit in SolarWinds NPM because you can't go back to the data for any investigation if seven days have passed. Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the database, which needs to be a bit more mature. I want a modified database in the next release of SolarWinds NPM. I'd also like more options added to groups because, currently, it's very limited."
"There isn't support available to us as they don't offer support in our country."
"The solution could improve in many areas, such as the marketing and description of the products, providing areas of improvement, cloud capabilities, and being able to be more streamlined with the current integration points with other applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Broadcom software is always a little expensive because they provide quality."
"AppNeta by Broadcom is not expensive."
"It's worth the money."
"I find the solution's price to be fairly good."
"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."
"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 price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"It is too expensive."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
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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
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 Business59
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: June 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.