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Datadog vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
SolarWinds Network Device M...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
28th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 2.4%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog2.4%
SolarWinds Network Device Monitor0.9%
Other96.7%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Dhroov Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger
Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling
Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.
SG
IT Infrastructure Senior Network Technician at Autoliv
Offers some features but needs better customization and analysis tools
There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for improvement. The features are not as customizable as we would prefer, but they are workable. If configured properly, you can perform a drill-down analysis. However, I have not used this feature much for our infrastructure on the network side.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has democratized our logs and metrics, allowing all engineers to have insight into how our apps perform."
"Datadog's learning platform is second to none."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The platform appeals to companies spanning many industries on a global scale."
"Datadog has positively impacted my organization by shortening our time to resolve incidents because it's a central place for getting all the data that we need for troubleshooting."
"Datadog is far better than any other monitoring tool in introducing any of the new capabilities because they think before Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure before they introduce the concepts."
"For us to have visibility into our app stack and the hardware we run has been highly beneficial."
"Dashboards are the most valuable."
"In terms of general network monitoring features, I find SolarWinds Network Device Monitor very flexible and comfortable to use. The software itself is extremely useful when it comes to monitoring how our data moves between different networks and environments."
"In real-time, we know when there's an issue on our network and it helps us to be proactive to solve the situation."
"The alerts we are getting when we start losing connection access have been helpful."
"Overall, it is a good user experience and the dashboards are very usable."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor are the reports. We are configuring the reports, and the first reports are only about the devices. We are configuring the thresholds in order to monitor all the devices."
"I like the mapping that you could do and the dashboards were very pretty."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it shows you the utilization of devices to allow you to take proactive action before something goes down or reaches the saturation point."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
 

Cons

"The issue with Datadog is that you have to buy the whole suite of different products, and you kind of get stuck in the old utilization of 40% of their suite."
"There are some areas on log filtering screens where the user interface can take some getting used to."
"All solutions have some area to improve, and in Datadog they can improve their overall technology moving forward."
"While I like the ease of use, when compared with Tenable Nessus they could still improve their usability."
"Ingesting data from various sources to monitor the log metrics of the system can always improve so that, if something goes wrong, the right teams are alerted."
"I'd rate Datadog support four out of 10. It was primarily an issue with support in the Asia-Pacific region."
"A tool as powerful as Datadog is, understandably, going to have a bit of a learning curve, especially for new team members who are unfamiliar with the bevy of features it offers."
"We've had some issues where we had Datadog automatically turned on in AWS regions that we weren't using, which incurred a small but steady cost that amounted to tens of thousands of dollars spent over a few weeks."
"The initial setup is a bit complex. It's not for anyone who is a beginner to work in the products to do it."
"In terms of price, it could be less expensive."
"The initial setup of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could be easier. It took us approximately one month to complete the implementation."
"Integration with different tools, such as ServiceNow and Excel, can be improved."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor lacks the granularity of other monitoring tools like LiveNX."
"If everything were in the package so that everything was ready to go out of the box, that would be ideal."
"Integration with different tools, such as ServiceNow and Excel, can be improved."
"The reporting feature needs improvement because we are unable to configure reports that were included during initial implementation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."
"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"The price is better than some competing products."
"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."
"The enterprise license is good for the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. However, it is expensive, they should reduce their price."
"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."
"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."
"I rate the product's price as three to three and a half or on a scale of one to ten, where one means low price, and ten means high price."
"When compared with other solutions SolarWinds is more expensive."
"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise100
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
I am not a positive person regarding SolarWinds Network Device Monitor.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for impro...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
I have experience regarding the AD part, but my focus for the last 15 years has been oriented to the network side. My experience with identity tools comes more from a network perspective. We used N...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Network Device Monitor
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
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Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.