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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
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (30th), Network Monitoring Software (23rd), Server Monitoring (15th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (22nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 2.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
WhatsUp Gold2.6%
ControlUp0.8%
Other96.6%
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

"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."
"The visual look of the interface is very easy to understand what is happening and somewhat why it's happening."
"I would recommend this product because it is straightforward to use and stable."
"The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities."
"It has a great career time monitoring tool."
"ControlUp is a very good solution, but when we monitor an environment, it is very difficult."
"ControlUp has improved our organization by giving us full visibility into our systems, so we know what's running, where it's running, what it's doing, and the load on the system."
"The most valuable feature is the granularity of visibility into the resources that are in use by our applications."
"The documentation is very good."
"I use it on premises to monitor my network database. We monitor the link up/down and use the SNMP traps as well."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."
"Auto scanning is most valuable. It looks for rogue devices on your network."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
"In terms of pricing, I'd say that the pricing is nice and the product is good."
 

Cons

"There is area for improvement, maybe in the reporting. It could use some work in reporting."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"ControlUp doesn't allow us to monitor the network infrastructure, so we are obliged to acquire another solution that allows us to monitor the network."
"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 new release cadence needs to be improved. It takes a while for them to add new features and functionality. There should be a quicker turnaround with new versions."
"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."
"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."
"This product should add other options for monitoring. It does not currently meet the broader needs of the banking industry in the version we have deployed."
"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management. If they succeed in doing this, the solution will cover all the network troubleshooting aspects and will be a benefit."
"You have to invest a few days to become an expert in this solution."
"You have to invest a few days to become an expert in this solution, but after that, it's possible to do almost anything with it."
"Sometimes it's a little bit slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."
"Personally, I would say that the only thing I could compare it to is another monitoring tool that we use, Nagios."
"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"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."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"This is a well priced solution."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Healthcare Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

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: April 2026.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.