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ControlUp vs WhatsUp Gold 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
21st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (5th)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (26th), Network Monitoring Software (24th), Server Monitoring (15th), Configuration Management (20th), Log Management (35th), Cloud Monitoring Software (21st), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.5%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
WhatsUp Gold2.5%
ControlUp0.8%
Other96.7%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2717526 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Delivers comprehensive and customizable system management with increased efficiency
The best features I have found are that it is very customizable, which would be number one, and very extensible through the use of scripts and triggers. The visual look of the interface is very easy to understand what is happening and somewhat why it's happening. It may sound facetious, but it really is everything about it. Everything works exactly the way it's meant to, a dream come true for anyone who's administering systems because it gives you all the information that you want and all the actions you want to take, all in one place. The benefits I have seen from using it so far include the ability to know in advance and take actions based on the information the tool gives you.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The visual look of the interface is very easy to understand what is happening and somewhat why it's happening."
"ControlUp has a lot of automation in it; it detects problems and failures very well, and it's not only monitoring, but it's also detecting, and it could even fix problems with a lot of automation that you can put in place to fix problems automatically before you even detect them."
"ControlUp has an easy installation process."
"Integration with Netscaler and Scoutbees can provide a proper end-to-end analysis of the user's experience and give us a real ROI."
"It has a great career time monitoring tool."
"The most valuable features in ControlUp are endpoint monitoring and the many features that are available."
"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."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."
"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."
"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of resources."
"This is a good, stable network monitoring solution for devices."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides. Additionally, WhatsUp Gold is a Windows-based solution which is a benefit."
 

Cons

"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."
"Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices."
"We'd like to see the mobile app working again so that we can get alerts 24/7. This is especially useful for the person on call."
"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."
"This solution be improved by including load throttling tools. For example, I can identify a service where we spend a lot of CPU but I cannot restrict the service from ControlUp. I have to use another tool like AppSense."
"There is area for improvement, maybe in the reporting. It could use some work in reporting."
"The graphical user interface needs to be improved from version to version."
"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."
"You have to invest a few days to become an expert in this solution."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."
"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."
"One of the biggest things that made us start to look at another product is we're not able to have an end to end monitoring from a user perspective throughout the system and back to the user. All the monitoring is from inside out, we need something that also can give us from outside in."
"The product is old and not updated."
"The interface needs some work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."
"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."
"Personally, I would say that the only thing I could compare it to is another monitoring tool that we use, Nagios."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Healthcare Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ControlUp Real-time?
It is expensive. It is very expensive. I was working in a bank, and even in the bank, which was quite healthy, the ControlUp budget was something we had to defend very harshly.
What is your primary use case for ControlUp Real-time?
I was taking care of a Citrix infrastructure, and as ControlUp is the best monitoring tool for those environments, I was also using ControlUp to monitor those environments.
What do you like most about WhatsUp Gold?
The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

B/E Aerospace, North Carolina SECU, Vancouver Island Health Authority, University of Florida
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about ControlUp vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,546 professionals have used our research since 2012.