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CA Unified Communications Monitor 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

CA Unified Communications M...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
95th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
67th
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Unified Communications Monitoring (6th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of CA Unified Communications Monitor is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.5%
CA Unified Communications Monitor0.2%
Other95.3%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

itarchit489981 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good end-to-end voice quality monitoring and offers valuable features
The solution should have automatic baseline detection. On the per hour, per base, per week. That's usually the best. And on a per individual CI level. I know that they're working on it and when that's available then we will definitely implement it because it will reduce the effort we need to maintain all the products. Right now we have to set thresholds for every location, and it needs to be actually dynamic so if we have better thresholding, we'll have faster alarms across all our locations. We won't have to expend effort on it by resetting or checking them on a regular basis.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Good end-to-end monitoring"
"We use the solution to meet the needs of the customer."
"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."
"It did a good job of the collection and then an investigation of the net flow of information for understanding the applications that were being used at certain locations."
"Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"Everything has been complete and stable for our needs over the past four years."
"The alerting system in SolarWinds NPM aids in proactive network management."
"I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates."
 

Cons

"The solution should have automatic baseline detection."
"All the features and functions of the solution can be improved."
"One of the challenges with SolarWinds is that in order to pull the data, we have to have a lot of false positives."
"The integration with video apps could be better."
"They have had a rather large security breach in the past. It's cost some companies customers."
"We decided that we were no longer going to trust that their products have not been capitalized."
"The price of the solution can be improved."
"The initial setup of SolarWinds NPM is complex, and I find it challenging."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"We also had to be attentive to vulnerabilities, because SolarWinds NPM have some issues in that area. We had to work with our security team, so that they could help us check and backup the data, and check what they needed to secure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
"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."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
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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
No data available
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
 

Questions from the Community

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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

CA UC Monitor
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BBVA Compass
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about CA Unified Communications Monitor vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.