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DX Performance Management vs PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of DX Performance Management is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 3.3%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
PRTG Network Monitor3.3%
DX Performance Management0.5%
Other92.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1810893 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Operations Specialist at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Flexibility and detailed performance stats enable effective network monitoring
Spectrum is very good at monitoring all network faults and configurations. It enables me to take action based on network issues. The Performance Management provides detailed network performance stats, including CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth. Additionally, Spectrum is flexible and allows me to organize and treat devices uniquely without impacting other devices.
madhan kumar hs - PeerSpot reviewer
software engineer at Capgemini
Alerting precision has reduced incident response times and improved department-level network visibility
The auto-pause sensor during the maintenance window is good without any false alerts, and it prevents me from getting flooded with alerts during planned maintenance, helping department heads understand their own network usage better. It has reduced incident response time by giving clearer ownership of each alert, ensuring alerts go to the proper recipient. SNMP testers and auto-pause are among the best features of PRTG Network Monitor, which is particularly useful for different departments such as HR and finance, where alerts can be filtered accordingly. The alerting features and dashboard of PRTG Network Monitor are very helpful, especially in our industry. However, the dashboard can look cluttered on smaller screens, which is one negative aspect. PRTG Network Monitor has impacted us positively; we have stopped getting flooded with alerts during planned maintenance or unplanned outages. Compared to others, this gives specific alerts very quickly and helps department heads understand their own network usage better, thus reducing incident response time so that each alert has clear ownership.
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

"We're able to present data from multiple back-end collection sources into a single dashboard for the users. So they don't have to go to multiple locations to get data about a particular item, or device."
"Since the implementation of the tool, it has cut down on probably 60% of our outages and letting us know what is going on."
"Scalability is the reason we bought the product to begin with. It was designed from the ground up for carrier-grade services, and we are in effect a MSP ourselves. So we were really interested in looking at something to be able to handle the multi-tenancy and scale as large as possible. This was the only solution that we really considered at that level."
"The ability to very quickly and graphically navigate around, being able to zoom in to a timeframe, apply it to all the other panels... are all very intuitive."
"One feature I like about CA Performance Management is the certification of the devices."
"We have been able to get a little bit better at seeing more things in real time and more just in time, so we're less reactionary."
"Since the implementation of the tool, it has cut down on probably 60% of our outages and letting us know what is going on."
"It's a solution which is highly recommended."
"Over the approximately two years that the company has been using this product, it has been very stable."
"The scalability is good, you can improve a remote host or the clustering, giving you the flexibility to monitor another infrastructure remotely."
"The solution has enabled our IT department to be more cost-effective; it cuts down on downtime, brings to our attention the operational problems that we have so we can focus our attention on those, and constantly ensures our systems are up and running in a solid position, effectively removing the costs attributed to downtime."
"Overall it is a very good tool to use."
"The feature set is very strong compared to other products that I have used; it's great because it does everything that we need it to do, it's easy to use, and it looks great when you present it in an open office environment."
"PRTG Network Monitor is user-friendly and offers flexible alerting systems."
"The alerting is the most valuable feature. I also like the iPhone app. I get alerts in an email on the iPhone app."
"I think net flow is PRTG's most valuable feature because it doesn't cost much for us because the net flow sensor is already included in the PRTG license. We can monitor our traffic in our proxy and router."
"Feature rich produce suite that addresses many aspects of BSM."
"Awesome product with a lot of info available and great support team."
"We found that it was easy to operate, and it was simple if anyone has entry-level working experience or even if someone is not experienced."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"Monitoring capabilities are at a high level and it is easy to see utilization, access ports, and CPU memory in real time or through a lens for long-term visualization."
"Solarwinds NPM has lots of features not found in some other network performance monitoring tools e.g. seamless integration with Microsoft Active Directory."
"The ability to customize the views and dashboards is nice, and SolarWinds also allows us to access the data via the API, which is probably the feature I liked the most."
"Everything has been complete and stable for our needs over the past four years."
 

Cons

"What we want to see: More integration inside of Spectrum and integration of role-based access."
"I think it would be helpful having a more comprehensive set of certifications so that I could natively deploy devices to my environment and the tool would immediately recognize and immediately be able to provide relevant performance information without a lot of tuning on my part."
"This may be available by now but for server space, when it comes to the disk file system, I'd like to see that graphically represented, or the trend, rather than what I'm seeing now."
"Install is done as root, which is a security no-no, and the database IO requirements were not stated correctly, which lead to a year of instability."
"The database should have higher availability in case of an incident."
"DX Performance Management should increase high availability. If one of my two data centers goes offline and the other is operational, I need a seamless transition from the primary to the secondary data center. It's crucial to maintain consistent monitoring of the devices during this transition. Therefore, I require continuous, 24/7 monitoring of my system using this tool."
"I would say the initial setup is complex."
"Some of the individual report views, the way some of the columns sort, there's room for improvement in giving us more flexibility in being able to sort reports based, for example, on what columns the metrics fall under."
"It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good."
"The possibility to export the part of the sensor we made would be helpful."
"Having a Unix implementation or Unix installation could be an improvement. Right now, it's based just on Windows, and that's a problem for some customers."
"I would like to see Office 365 monitoring. Essentially, it doesn't do it."
"The technical support needs some improvement. The response time is slow, we normally get a response the next business day for urgent issues which is long time."
"PRTG access works best from the web GUI. There are dedicated apps on Windows/Android/iOS, but they are slow and don’t work as well as the web GUI."
"Needs ability to monitor standard notification time (notify after X time)."
"Other monitoring tools that I have used are easier to use."
"The cost for monitoring interfaces is ridiculous."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds."
"SolarWinds NPM is very unstable. We often have website loading issues."
"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."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"The reporting module that got integrated into the system itself, used to be a standalone solution and I preferred that."
"For example, there have not been many updates to cloud monitoring, containerization or serverless environments."
"Complex and overly detailed setup."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They should provide more scalable licensing for the product."
"Do your homework and know how many devices you will be managing out of the gate. Be sure to project what your growth will be each year."
"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."
"We purchase a license to use the solution every three years and we have multiple contracts. They have been increasing the price annually. We have a baseline for three years and then we need to pay the difference from the baseline, and we are in the process of negotiating a new price for all the licenses we need. The price overall is affordable."
"We were looking at other vendors in the marketplace for NetFlow, and CA just beat everybody else in price, cost, and the size to implement. ​"
"If you are not too sure about it, try the free version. Then, if you like it, you can go to the paid version and roll it out."
"All monitoring system is close to the same pricing scheme."
"PRTG is now available as PRTG Enterprise Monitor, and the price varies depending on the total number of sensors the customer buys"
"PRTG Network Monitor is cheap."
"The price is pretty comparable."
"I'm paying something like €1000 per year for the maintenance. I've got unlimited sensors."
"The scalability is there, but smaller companies might need CAM software to be able afford the product."
"On a yearly basis, I believe it's between £1,200 and £1,500."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
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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
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise50
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with DX Performance Management?
Spectrum's topology view sometimes does not rebuild automatically when a device is shut down and reconnected. It requ...
What is your primary use case for DX Performance Management?
I have used Spectrum for monitoring all network faults, configurations, and troubleshooting network issues. It provid...
What advice do you have for others considering DX Performance Management?
I would recommend this solution based on its functionality, flexibility, customizability, and ease of use. Overall, I...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?
The pricing was higher at the beginning, but the recurring licensing cost is affordable and reasonable. Overall, the ...
What needs improvement with PRTG Network Monitor?
The reporting features look very technical and that can be improved. If they can change the report so everyone can un...
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 ar...
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 scalabil...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Jack Henry & Assoc, Target, CenturyLink, Bell Canada, BrightHouse Networks, Telus, Unisys, Verizon, Southern California Edison, GEICO, Fidelity Investments, Wells Fargo, American Family Insurance Group, Deutsche Telekom AG 
Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.