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ControlUp 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

ControlUp
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
33rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (5th)
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 (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.8%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Richasvi Tripathi - PeerSpot reviewer
Used to monitor several devices, but most reports do not give information of all the devices
We have approximately 10 to 20 feature requests pending on the vendor side. Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices. In our case, we are monitoring 200000 devices. So, we need details for all those devices, but that is limited to 100, which they have improved to an extent in some reports. I'm thinking of one feature request for ISPs because the dashboard does not provide a detailed list of ISPs, and it provides the wrong list. I feel some firewall issues are blocking that, and the team cannot send that detail. That may be the case. One feature request pending on the vendor side is the data format change. Once you see a detail in the report, it is mentioned in some other format, which is hard to analyze sometimes.
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

"When using ControlUp, the core feature that we have found valuable is its UI. It is a valuable tool to view the analysis reactions of a base core Level 2 or Level 1 team so that they can complete the necessary troubleshooting."
"The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities."
"The visual look of the interface is very easy to understand what is happening and somewhat why it's happening."
"Integration with Netscaler and Scoutbees can provide a proper end-to-end analysis of the user's experience and give us a real ROI."
"The most valuable features in ControlUp are endpoint monitoring and the many features that are available."
"It shows you so many details of what's going on in that log-on that, if there's a problem, you can identify it in five minutes."
"Security, uptime, and reduced capital expenditures are the main reasons we use ControlUp. So basically, the money that we consume is based on the amount of time we are using a service."
"ControlUp is beneficial as it provides a web interface through which you can access all your infrastructure—servers, devices, and VDI infrastructure—all on the same platform. It supports gathering all infrastructure components in a single, unified dashboard. This helps you identify performance issues or high resource utilization, allowing quick troubleshooting. I appreciate the solid interface that ControlUp offers."
"SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks."
"Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up."
"The product is scalable."
"The nice thing about SolarWinds is that it's kind of all-in-one. I can manage the status of my networking devices, whether they are up or down, I can see how much traffic is going across an interface, and I can run a report that tells me exactly what that traffic is."
"For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
"A product that is well-tested and trusted in demanding situations."
 

Cons

"The most common complaint that I have heard, at least within our organization, is about reporting. They have their own reporting. It's just that it doesn't yet include everything that you can look at within the application. You can only report on specific metrics or collections."
"There was some lag earlier, and reports pulled from the dashboard would sometimes be half an hour old. But now, the information provides real-time status, which is greatly appreciated. Overall, I've seen improvement in the product."
"It can be improved by including script-based scheduling."
"Something I would love to see from a partner perspective would be maybe a way to do this in a surface hosting provider."
"Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices."
"The graphical user interface needs to be improved from version to version."
"ControlUp could improve the integration. Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring has better integration."
"Solve is a quick and intuitive tool for quickly mapping data together, however, once you have the view of the data that you like, it is difficult to share this with colleagues."
"The solution's network discovery and node addition processes need more work."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market."
"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."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Personally, I would say that the only thing I could compare it to is another monitoring tool that we use, Nagios."
"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."
"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
"It is expensive."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"Quite highly priced"
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"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
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
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ControlUp Real-time?
Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive. It is a cheap tool because it is deployed to many devices where I work.
What needs improvement with ControlUp Real-time?
There is area for improvement, maybe in the reporting. It could use some work in reporting.
What is your primary use case for ControlUp Real-time?
My use cases include everything, and I don't mean that facetiously. I mean everything. We manage the servers, manage user sessions, manage everything. We monitor monitoring and take actual actions,...
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

B/E Aerospace, North Carolina SECU, Vancouver Island Health Authority, University of Florida
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about ControlUp vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,957 professionals have used our research since 2012.