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Dell CloudIQ vs SolarWinds NPM 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

Dell CloudIQ
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
37th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Dell CloudIQ is 0.9%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.5%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.5%
Dell CloudIQ0.9%
Other95.6%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Haseeb Sheikh - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager Enterprise Solutions at a media company with 201-500 employees
Proactive monitoring has improved availability and capacity reporting for my infrastructure
The current features including availability, performance, and capacity are good enough, and I think more of better alerting along with improved thresholds of alerts should be implemented. It is helpful, but it should also include the capability to detect zero-day attacks if there are any. I think the remediation could have been better. For example, if I am upgrading my firmware or BIOS or firmware of the infrastructure, it should give me exact CVSS scores and remediation data provided against the CVSS scores. I think the Dell CloudIQ app could be more interactive. If there is a possibility that I can open tickets or SRs via the Dell CloudIQ app, that would be a good feature.
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best thing about this solution is that you can check for the infrastructure and system updates that you might need to be compliant with the Cloud."
"CloudIQ allows us to monitor our servers centrally, and we can receive notifications in case of issues, like a potential hard drive failure."
"The dashboard is clear and user-friendly."
"Has really nice roll-up dashboards."
"I use Dell CloudIQ for the availability and capacity reporting, which is very helpful in terms of capacity and availability reporting, and if there is any fault or faulty drive or faulty part, I am alerted on time with that, which is the main benefit that avoids any unplanned outage."
"It's convenient because you can access it from a mobile device without needing a laptop."
"This solution would be very helpful for anybody that is solely using Dell equipment."
"The mobile application is the most valuable feature for us; we can monitor all the storages on our phones, and it's really good."
"Being able to provide a history of interface behavior helps the organization in a multifaceted way."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"Technicians are aware of issues and 90% of the time exactly what caused the issue."
"In general, I think SolarWinds is one of the most stable solutions and it has a lot of useful features for network performance monitoring."
"Utilize this product to its full potential, NOC will find it very useful and easy to manage."
"Solarwinds NPM was always the one that could check most of the monitoring requirements."
"We were able to unify our entire company under one monitoring solution that works for everybody, saving a ton of time and significantly speeding up problem-resolution time."
"As a large school district, I can tell you that NPM is very valuable to us."
 

Cons

"If you have a heterogeneous environment, there might be some limitations in coverage since CloudIQ is primarily designed for Dell-based infrastructures."
"Supporting legacy systems is an area that can be improved."
"The reporting capabilities of this solution could be improved."
"The main limitation of CloudIQ is that it is intended to be used exclusively with Dell hardware."
"I think the remediation could have been better."
"Getting through support has become a difficult thing. Dell's support has degraded since they took over EMC. It's a bit difficult to use."
"The process of upgrading could be streamlined."
"It can improve the reporting facility to create custom reports or dashboards."
"Two or three of the core functions are still nested in Win32 apps on the server; but it seems that the foundation was laid in the current website for porting those functions over in the near future."
"SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license."
"Complex and overly detailed setup."
"We had scalability issues. We have several additional servers, too, so upgrading is kind of a pain, but that's with all the other modules, too."
"For example, there have not been many updates to cloud monitoring, containerization or serverless environments."
"The console could be more user-friendly. It would be better if SolarWinds updated the user interface."
"SolarWinds offers some options for scalability, but there is a bottleneck on some features."
"The scalability can be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is more expensive than NetApp which offers file systems in various price ranges."
"I believe it is a free product because we don't pay for it."
"It is too expensive."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
"Price could be improved on"
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise86
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Dell CloudIQ?
The current features including availability, performance, and capacity are good enough, and I think more of better alerting along with improved thresholds of alerts should be implemented. It is hel...
What is your primary use case for Dell CloudIQ?
I moved to a new organization where I am also using Dell CloudIQ. I use Dell CloudIQ to monitor PowerStore as well as Dell PowerEdge servers.
What advice do you have for others considering Dell CloudIQ?
For performance analytics, I have my own NMS in-house that I use. I have deployed a VApp on-premises with all of the servers and storage integrated, and it sends telemetry data directly to Dell. My...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

North Carolina State University
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell CloudIQ vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,588 professionals have used our research since 2012.