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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) (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 (29th), Network Monitoring Software (22nd), Server Monitoring (14th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (39th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.6%, 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 Gold2.6%
ControlUp0.7%
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

"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."
"In terms of the public cloud, ControlUp's features make us feel very secure."
"The high-level view of the estate coupled with powerful administration tools has been great."
"The most valuable features in ControlUp are endpoint monitoring and the many features that are available."
"I would recommend this product because it is straightforward to use and stable."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"There is a flow monitor option, so we can trace the source IP, the destination IP, and top talker feature in this."
"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."
"We've been using it for many years and we use it typically for early warning, as it notifies customers of problems prior to failure."
"The user interface is good enough."
"The new version has a lot of improved features."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
"The documentation is very good."
"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."
 

Cons

"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."
"There is area for improvement, maybe in the reporting. It could use some work in reporting."
"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."
"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."
"It can be improved by including script-based scheduling."
"The on-premises version has limited scalability as challenges occur because the console takes a lot of computer power."
"Something I would love to see from a partner perspective would be maybe a way to do this in a surface hosting provider."
"ControlUp could improve the integration. Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring has better integration."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"Adding on services increases the cost and on the version we have there is no option for ATM monitoring."
"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."
"I think there are a few bugs now. Although they give some resolution for this, we cannot share the network remotely because of our company policy."
"The initial setup of WhatsUp Gold is a medium range of difficulty levels. However, if it is your first time it could be difficult."
"The technical support does not bother to respond."
"Honestly, I do not particularly like WhatsUp Gold. I think we should get rid of it."
"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."
"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 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."
"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 price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"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."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
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 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: June 2026.
900,277 professionals have used our research since 2012.