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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
32nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (6th)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (34th), Network Monitoring Software (21st), Server Monitoring (14th), Configuration Management (20th), Log Management (39th), Cloud Monitoring Software (25th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
WhatsUp Gold2.5%
ControlUp0.8%
Other96.7%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Jean-CharlesMoriaud - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Engineer Citrix at EDR Media LLC
Automation capabilities and proactive monitoring have improved infrastructure reliability and reduced troubleshooting time
ControlUp has a lot of automation in it. It detects problems and failures very well. 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. That's one of the strong points of ControlUp. All the automations, and there's a large customer-written automation. You can pick up those automations and use them on your environment, and it helps a lot. This is very good. It's not third-party, but it's external routines and automations that you can download from their website and implement on your side. That's one of the strong points of ControlUp. ControlUp, the way we implemented it, and the goal of ControlUp, is to be proactive instead of starting to work on a problem when it already happens. There are a lot of counters and monitors you can implement that will help you detect problems before they happen.
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 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."
"ControlUp is a very good solution, but when we monitor an environment, it is very difficult."
"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."
"This product's most valuable feature is that it allows you to consume many resources from a centralized tool."
"It has a great career time monitoring tool."
"The visual look of the interface is very easy to understand what is happening and somewhat why it's happening."
"The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities."
"In terms of the public cloud, ControlUp's features make us feel very secure."
"The new version has a lot of improved features."
"The installation and configuration process are easy."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."
"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."
"The user interface is good enough."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
"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."
 

Cons

"Something I would love to see from a partner perspective would be maybe a way to do this in a surface hosting provider."
"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 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."
"The graphical user interface needs to be improved from version to version."
"Integration is always a problem, and we feel that we are doing our best and the service provider thinks they are doing their best. I guess if ControlUp's system could be more capable or if people could understand the integration part, that would be better."
"Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices."
"The on-premises version has limited scalability as challenges occur because the console takes a lot of computer power."
"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."
"Honestly, I do not particularly like WhatsUp Gold. I think we should get rid of 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."
"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."
"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."
"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."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"I might like to see a better interface in the future. It's not necessarily easy to integrate the product with other vendors."
"The tool should focus on increasing its market share, as it is the only area of concern where improvements are needed."
 

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."
"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."
"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"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."
"This is a well priced solution."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
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Top Industries

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

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 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.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

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: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.