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Cribl vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

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

Cribl
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
12th
Ranking in Log Management
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (10th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
31st
Ranking in Log Management
28th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (32nd), Server Monitoring (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (30th), Configuration Management (17th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cribl is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cribl1.1%
WhatsUp Gold0.6%
Other98.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Manoj Gowda J - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce log ingestion cost by dropping unnecessary events and customizing pipelines
The best feature in Cribl, when getting logs from some custom application, is the ability to break up logs that pile up together and come as one event. Cribl has a feature called JSON Unroll or Unroll function that allows you to differentiate the events; each event will come ingested as a single log instead of piling it up with multiple events. This is critical as this generally happens in CrowdStrike. This feature helps us significantly. When the ingestion is high from unwanted logs, logs not related to security purposes can be dropped by writing the parser function. By dropping events that are not required for security purpose monitoring, we can reduce the ingestion, which drastically reduces the cost as well. Cribl gives another option where I can store some logs, and when needed, I can pick them up from there. The interface is very handy and not very complicated, yet there are many functions you can perform. You can play around with numerous functions, parse there, and add UDMs to SecOps, which makes it really easy. To simplify the pipeline, when we go to the pipelines, there are vast options. We can make it specific requirements based on the customers. I would prefer a customized or simplified version. Cribl is a very good platform to work with, with lots of features that other platforms don't provide.
Tom Condo - PeerSpot reviewer
If CPU, memory, or disk space is over-utilized, it alerts us immediately via text or email if there is an issue
When it comes to the intuitiveness of the topology mapping feature, our network architect created a vision diagram of our entire network and then created the links tied into the WhatsUp active monitoring to different spots on our topology map. It's one of the more critical functions we do here. We have the map displayed in different places in our room and help desk. We get alerted via emails but we can also see it visually. It does what it says it's going to do. We find this feature very helpful. 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 link. You can go into a particular part of the topology map, scroll in, and see exactly which module it is. All the information is provided. This feature really helps. You can see the correlation between that link and what failed. This feature is very helpful. The interface is fairly intuitive. Some of our users used SolarWinds and Nagios, and WhatsUp is easy in comparison. Once you get set up, the look, feel, and configuration are good. Our network architect had never used it before but he was able to create the Visio and map. It was very simple. He has no problems with it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature in Cribl, when getting logs from some custom application, is the ability to break up logs that pile up together and come as one event."
"Cribl offers other valuable features. For instance, you can replay data from an edge device, store your daily data in a stream, and replay specific event data into Splunk if a security incident occurs"
"Our experience with Cribl has been very smooth; everything runs seamlessly, there are no delays or sluggishness, which I really appreciate."
"Cribl offers easy plugin configurations and source collection settings, allowing us to collect logs from any source."
"Cribl definitely helps with the complexity because you don't have to push for deployment—they provide the interface where you can mimic what the output will look like, and you can see that in real time when setting up the Cribl configuration, which definitely helps considerably."
"The capability to reduce logs in a user-friendly manner is a standout feature. Cribl allows us to view logs live as they are being processed, giving us quick feedback on the changes made."
"Cribl is a very good platform to work with, with lots of features that other platforms don't provide."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."
"This is a good, stable network monitoring solution for devices."
"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the visibility it offers of everything in the network and infrastructure."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
"The interface in the last few years it has been a lot greater, they are much more user-friendly. I like the interface."
"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."
"The user interface is good enough."
 

Cons

"We encountered some issues with the syslog data stream, particularly with handling large databases and extensive data logs."
"Cribl could have developed some version that can give backward compatibility."
"Perhaps more flexibility in terms of metrics would be helpful."
"Their documentation should be updated."
"There have been several administrative issues. Another point is that the browsing functions aren't very intuitive."
"Cribl doesn't have as many packs available"
"There is room for improvement in the documentation and knowledge base, particularly regarding configurations like sources where logs are being ingested"
"There is no alerting mechanism for the leader/worker nodes status."
"The interface needs some work."
"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."
"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."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"Setting up WhatsUp Gold is complicated and not easy because it requires managing SNMP and many complex settings in the devices it's monitoring, and fine-tuning it to fit our needs is also not very easy."
"The tool should focus on increasing its market share, as it is the only area of concern where improvements are needed."
"Users want SMS available via Whatsapp Gold. They don't want to go through third party SMS servers. The solution should work to make this possible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product pricing is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"I would not say it is a cheaply priced tool as it has been doing wonders in the market. The tool has been budget-friendly for organizations."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"This is a well priced solution."
"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."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
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 Cribl?
Cribl is very inexpensive, with enterprise pricing around 30 cents per GB, which is really decent. Organizations looking to ingest terabytes or petabytes of data each day find it quite an inexpensi...
What needs improvement with Cribl?
They've already done many good things with the product, but perhaps they could implement a temporary SIEM solution where we could store logs and display them as a SIEM, though I think that's not th...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
Our main use case for Cribl was SIEM migration, where we merged multiple SIEM solutions to a single SIEM solution. SIEM migration was the most major use case we were looking for. The second use cas...
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

Information Not Available
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 Cribl vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.