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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
56th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure Capacity Planning (2nd), DX NetOps (2nd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of DX Performance Management is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.5%
DX Performance Management0.3%
Other95.2%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Sandip Kheni - PeerSpot reviewer
The vertical database loads faster than any other product available
We experience disconnections between the solutions own components. In the last five years, there have been many intermittent connection issues with the four components and we still don't know the reasons. The solution has issues when loading groups that have been created in the application interfaces. It would be nice to have a mobile application. In the current industry and technical word, the mobile phone is the only thing that is always in your hands. Other Broadcom products have mobile applications but the solution doesn't offer one. It would be great to view device parameters and view or download graphs from a mobile device.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It saves time having it all on one place, so you do not have to jump around from different tools and try to merge the data. It is already done for you.​"
"The integration with NetFlow, the NFA solution, so that we can have our flow forensics paired with the SNMP polling performance metrics on the same page."
"The tool helps us understand network performance."
"Customer service is top-notch."
"What is most useful is visibility."
"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."
"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."
"You can have thousands of devices inside and hundreds of thousands of interphases without a problem."
"We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down."
"We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future."
"I love the GUI. Almost everything is accessible through the web interface. It is very user-friendly. It is easy to drag and drop resources wherever you want them."
"The nice thing about SolarWinds is that it's kind of all-in-one. I can manage the status of my networking devices, whether they are up or down, I can see how much traffic is going across an interface, and I can run a report that tells me exactly what that traffic is."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"This solution offers a very good view of our network and allows us to effectively monitor performance."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
"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."
 

Cons

"Spectrum's topology view sometimes does not rebuild automatically when a device is shut down and reconnected."
"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.​"
"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."
"There are some areas in the technology right now, like with VMs, where we are lacking with our abilities to get inside the VM to monitor traffic within the machine."
"Since we are out of registered IP space, we are moving to ipv6 and we expect our vendors to move with us, and they have not delivered yet."
"I would like to have more tasks, graphs, and possibilities for linking to the graphs and reports added to the solution."
"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."
"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."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers."
"The product is scalable, but at a cost. Extra modules have to be purchased for each extra server. The initial set up isn't complex, but will require someone who is experienced with the network monitoring system"
"The initial setup of SolarWinds NPM is complex, and I find it challenging."
"There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better."
"The integration with video apps could be better."
"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."
"The reporting is good, but I want it to be a little easier when creating custom reports. The reports are all on the website now, but it takes some know how to get some to display the way you would like."
"The solution is considered expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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. ​"
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."
"They should provide more scalable licensing for the product."
"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."
"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."
"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."
"Quite highly priced"
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"It is too expensive."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Educational Organization
10%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
 

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 Enterprise84
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DX Performance Management?
The tool helps us understand network performance.
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 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: September 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.