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DX Performance Management vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

DX Performance Management
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
43rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure Capacity Planning (1st), DX NetOps (2nd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of DX Performance Management is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.7%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
DX Performance Management0.7%
Other95.6%
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.
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 solution's performance itself is very good because it is a vertical database that loads very fast in comparison to other products."
"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 an 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, and this was the only solution that we really considered at that level."
"Scalability is great."
"It gave us one location, one place to do all of group administration, and to build dashboards, and device administration, inventory counts... it really reduced our overall administrative overhead."
"The network teams have transitioned to becoming proactive in responding to network performance issues, rather than being just reactive to outages."
"It's a solution which is highly recommended."
"What is most useful is visibility."
"There is a good amount of vendor certification which comes with the product. That's all factory-loaded, no need to load any custom-made files. Most of the metrics are calibrated and captured from the devices based on the defaults available from vendor certification."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the alerts."
"SolarWinds NPM is useful for any company that has business-critical applications running over a network and they want to monitor the network behavior."
"In my experience with SolarWinds NPM Quality of Experience dashboard, it fulfilled all of our requirements."
"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
"The ability to pick and chose modules per need, but at the same time close and seamless integration once deployed: While everything is pretty complicated and fast moving, we do not want the monitoring and management software to be complicated."
"The ease of deployment is great."
"Feature rich produce suite that addresses many aspects of BSM."
"The alerting system in SolarWinds NPM aids in proactive network management."
 

Cons

"It needs role-based administration."
"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."
"What we want to see: More integration inside of Spectrum and integration of role-based access."
"Today, tenants are bound to a data collector which requires a lot of networking and resources to configure."
"The certificates are not complete. CA needs to provide more support for the product through certificates."
"I have mixed feeling about the scalability. I feel like there are things which are being put into UIM right now that are not being included in Performance Center that we need to see in Performance Center. We are kind of being driven to buy UIM, and I can't justify it.​"
"For CA PM, there should be a way of easily migrating the reports coming from eHealth going to CA Performance Center, since CA PC is replacing eHealth."
"It would be helpful if CA provided online training for its customers."
"You certainly can have stability issues."
"Another feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"Scalability is a bit tricky because it requires more gateways in order to get the performance you may need. It also requires a lot of licensing."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"Network discovery missed many devices."
"The only thing I don’t like is that NTA license size is tied to NPM’s license size, since my organization's need for NTA is lower than our need for NPM."
"There needs to be more integration of widgets, especially for reporting purposes."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They should provide more scalable licensing for the product."
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."
"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."
"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. ​"
"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."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
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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
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing 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 Enterprise33
Large Enterprise87
 

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 requires manual discovery and rebuilding of the topology, which I hope can be improved.
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 provides network performance stats, such as CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth detai...
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 would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I am just a customer and not a par...
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

CA Performance Management
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 
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Performance Management vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.