Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BigPanda vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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
6.7
BigPanda optimizes operations with significant savings and efficiency for managing over 10,000 weekly events, outperforming tools like Netcool.
Sentiment score
7.4
SolarWinds NPM quickly proves cost-effective by enhancing network visibility, reducing support costs, and optimizing resource use for profitability.
BigPanda offers significant time-saving, cost-saving, and resource-saving benefits.
BigPanda saves time with its advanced features and manages large environments while requiring fewer resources compared to our previous tool, Netcool.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
BigPanda's customer service is usually responsive and effective, though communication delays and variability in experiences are noted.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM's service is knowledgeable but response times vary, with some customers finding direct support unsatisfactory.
If BigPanda can consistently provide such competent contacts, I would rate the support ten out of ten, otherwise, it is an eight out of ten.
For technical support, we have only had to address password resets and alert mismatching.
Their collaboration was good, and I would rate them nine out of ten.
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
7.0
BigPanda is praised for scalability and integration, with minor licensing concerns and varied experiences with server management.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM is scalable, integrates globally, but managing resources and licensing is essential for effective performance and expansion.
It handles large volumes of alerts without limitations.
We manage a large environment with over 50,000 servers and various monitoring tools like Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk, Nagios, and Datadog.
I rate the scalability of BigPanda at eight.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
BigPanda is highly stable with minimal issues, reliable alerts, and efficient incident management, despite occasional slowdowns during heavy traffic.
Sentiment score
7.5
Proper configuration and adherence to documentation ensure SolarWinds NPM's stability, though upgrades occasionally cause issues requiring support.
BigPanda is now stable.
I would rate the availability of BigPanda at nine because it's almost 99.99% available.
However, when handling critical traffic, the BigPanda site can slow down, which we manage with a load balancer.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
 

Room For Improvement

BigPanda requires enhancement in AI integration, interface design, reporting, observability, and automation to improve user experience and reduce costs.
SolarWinds NPM needs UI enhancements, better integration, responsive support, and more flexibility for improved efficiency and customer satisfaction.
A 'deep dive' analysis feature would be appreciated to give detailed insights such as CPU usage and disk space analysis.
It would be beneficial if BigPanda leveraged AI to solve critical issues related to editing and sending alerts based on enrichment mapping files.
If BigPanda could integrate AI, it would enhance the platform significantly by offering chatbot functionality within the BigPanda UI.
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.
 

Setup Cost

BigPanda offers flexible pricing appealing to enterprises with mid-range costs, seen as more affordable than competitors.
SolarWinds NPM offers scalable, valuable monitoring solutions with flexible pricing, starting from $2,000, based on deployment size and modules.
The pricing for BigPanda is reasonable compared to other event management tools, given its advantages.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
 

Valuable Features

BigPanda enhances incident response with alert deduplication, platform integration, AI/ML, and custom dashboards for improved service reliability.
SolarWinds NPM provides comprehensive network management with customization, scalability, and real-time monitoring to enhance performance and integration.
Its automation has significantly improved incident response times, reducing the process to within one minute.
It can correlate multiple issues within a single device, create a single incident, and thus reduce noise and provide faster resolution.
BigPanda improves service reliability with instant resolution, increased uptime, and reduced mean time to resolution, thus enhancing service quality.
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

BigPanda
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (8th), AIOps (6th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of BigPanda is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.9%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Ankit-Mathur - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers comprehensive alert monitoring and a user-friendly interface but requires manual validation to provide accurate alerts
For new users, I would advise using BigPanda for its comprehensive alert monitoring and integration with ServiceNow. Its mapping capabilities and user-friendly interface make it valuable for incident analysis and prioritization. As users become more familiar with the tool, its full potential will become apparent, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness over time. It is easy for someone to learn to use BigPanda for the first time. We start with basic examples that everyone can understand, then provide verbal introductions followed by hands-on training over two weeks. We encourage making mistakes and asking questions to ensure understanding. It depends on the trainer's approach, but with proper guidance, anyone can learn effectively. Overall, I would rate BigPanda as a five out of ten. For it to be a perfect ten, it would need to consistently provide accurate alerts without requiring manual validation. This means it should effectively suppress similar incidents, eliminating the need for constant monitoring. Once it reaches this level of reliability, BigPanda would be exceptional.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
24%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
6%
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
What do you like most about BigPanda?
One of the most valuable features of BigPanda is its user-friendly interface.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigPanda?
The pricing for BigPanda is reasonable compared to other event management tools, given its advantages.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios, ServiceNow, ITSM, NOC, CMDB Evolved, RemedyIncident Management Process
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about BigPanda vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.