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ClearSight Analyzer 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

ClearSight Analyzer
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
91st
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of ClearSight Analyzer is 0.4%, up from 0.1% 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%
ClearSight Analyzer0.4%
Other95.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

DT
Senior Network Engineer at Montgomery College
Shows question being asked, breaks it down and it'll just show you who's not answering
I wouldn't want the interface to go towards the web because they did have a version that was inside of the TruView product. It was more web-based and, to me, the web-based applications lose the robustness of the intimacy of a true character interface. I liked that they were on that path and I hope that they stay on that path because it just looks like it's a better product. I would like to see a multi-user version where you can have a launch platform and, potentially, instead of buying six licenses you buy 12 seats or something like that. From a centralized platform, you could have multiple users using that particular product in a series of different ways. That's what I'd like to see, rather than having everybody running a standalone one on their own workstation.
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

"This is the best protocol analyzer I've used and I've used some from WildPackets and quite a few other places."
"What ClearSight will do is it actually maps out the conversation for you."
"Without NPM monitoring, we would be in a world of hurt and constantly responding to outages and unexpected downtime."
"We are frequently able to attend to issues before our user community and customers are aware that a problem exists."
"I have been able to catch network/server issues before they became critical."
"The most valuable feature is the vital states of the devices as it provides overall CPU and device health information."
"This is a valuable and powerful product that will provide users with more than they expect, all in one place."
"From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization."
"Everything has been complete and stable for our needs over the past four years."
"Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support."
 

Cons

"I would like to see a multi-user version where you can have a launch platform and, potentially, instead of buying six licenses you buy 12 seats or something like that."
"I was upset when they sold the product to NETSCOUT."
"There are still huge concerns about security."
"The module UIs can have different features based on what module you're in. I'd love to see feature parity between them."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve the graphics of the interface and more customized reporting."
"They don't have a local support team."
"The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market."
"We decided that we were no longer going to trust that their products have not been capitalized."
"The only other issue I have is that sometimes when upgrading, it becomes complicated to manage the upgrade."
"There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was pretty modest because you could get it in different ways. I think the six licenses, at that time, were about $1,000 each. But then again, I work for a school and educators tend to get discounts on things. So maybe it cost us about five or six hundred a copy."
"Quite highly priced"
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"It is not an expensive product."
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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
16%
Healthcare Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise87
 

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

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, SolarWinds, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.