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DX Spectrum vs Fortra's Intermapper 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 Spectrum
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (8th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (19th), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)
Fortra's Intermapper
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
80th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 1.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortra's Intermapper is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
DX Spectrum1.6%
Fortra's Intermapper0.5%
Other97.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.
AL
SVP of Networking and Operations at Skywire Networks
It tremendously cuts down our troubleshooting timeframe, but needs advanced SLA monitoring and reporting
They can do a better job with SLA reporting. It does some basic reporting, but it really doesn't offer the ability to monitor devices by groups, customers, or carrier to give an overall health performance of specifically-defined environments. That's where HelpSystems Intermapper could have done a better job. I would love to see advanced SLA monitoring and reporting in this solution. They already have a lot of ingredients. They already have SNMP polling. It is really about what people are looking for from SLA monitoring, especially someone who looks at the network topology. You want to see your endpoints. You want to see half of your endpoints by simply analyzing ICMP or SNMP-based availability of your endpoints. Having an ability to define your group and how you bring devices into your group would be a huge benefit.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CA Spectrum helps our organization improve network service levels, and with Spectrum’s integrated automated fault management and fault isolation features, it helped us reduce MTTR by 50% and costs as well."
"We were able to standardize the internal processes across all internal departments, resulting in almost an elimination of non-standard process flows through our organization."
"The ability to monitor your WAN and LAN infrastructure in a simple GUI."
"CA Spectrum is very useful for event handling and offers a robust manager of managers console."
"It is the perfect monitoring solution for customers' devices."
"Spectrum is the best."
"This tool makes it more transparent to the customers, and they can be alerted and be proactive based on the data we are getting."
"DX Spectrum is a solid solution."
"What is really cool about HelpSystems InterMapper is that because of its SNMP base, you can integrate all different makes and models on the same map. You, of course, can have more than one map, but you have an option to have visibility into the entire network from one centralized system. You can monitor IPs, routers, radios, DC power plants, and UPS. You can do it all from one network management and monitoring solution. That's what really makes HelpSystems Intermapper great. Another great thing about HelpSystems InterMapper is that you can really bundle different probes under one device. You can have a bundled device. You can monitor the physical status of a host based on the IP availability. You can also monitor services and actually see if anything happens. You can quickly determine whether it is the application layer, host layer, or network layer. HelpSystems Intermapper gives such a unique representation of a network. Ever since we started using HelpSystems InterMapper, we don't have to document everything in a detailed format and store it somewhere. Right now, it is really a combination of network topology, network monitoring, and network analyzing. So, in my opinion, it is awesome. When you have your SNMP topology defined, you don't require a dedicated NMS engineer to manage your system, which is another great thing about HelpSystems InterMapper. I see how our operators get so excited by having the ability to map a device or interface and connect interfaces together. HelpSystems InterMapper is also very operator friendly; not just user friendly, but also operator friendly. This is a unique feature, and it works really great."
"Put Intermapper in as your base to start from, hands-down."
"Right now, it is really a combination of network topology, network monitoring, and network analyzing, so, in my opinion, it is awesome."
"It's all today portal-based which is a good feature for us."
"The graphical alerting with the ability to obtain a quick overview of a monitored device is my favorite feature."
"The most valuable features are its: log history, real-time monitoring capabilities, accuracy - the number of false positives is very low, and the mapping features."
"The solution has a couple of features which are really interesting; it's not a fancy or expensive solution but we wanted to have a cost effective one and it's doing its job pretty well."
"It's a nice graphical interface, a nice map, that relates Layer 1 to Layer 3, virtually instantly, to the Helpdesk support staff. It provides a default place to get critical information so we can deploy our staff."
 

Cons

"SpectroSERVER and reporting databases can grow quickly if you don't keep track of trap storms; this can cause SpectroSERVER to crash and performance issues with reporting."
"The documentation of this product is not very easy to understand without any screenshots or application windows."
"Technical support for this product is not so good. It's also not as good as it used to be."
"We have had one support issue that's been open for a couple of months, and it is currently open."
"Occasionally, usually after an upgrade, we see a few issues but these are almost always cleared up quickly by opening a case with CA."
"It's not the best product for availability and outages reporting."
"I'd like to have more dynamic weather map capabilities and network mapping tools."
"Every versions running on Windows Server 2008 (R2) that I've worked after that (versions 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4) have had some issues either with OneClick/Spectro Server communication (hanged alarms for instance) or with global loss of SNMP communication with network devices, or DDMdb increasing indefinitely or with some unexplainable SSDB crashes."
"I have seen instances where Intermapper does not seem to recover from network changes."
"I'd love to see more of the network management side of it coming back into it. If we were able to run scripts to bounce ports on switches, that would be great. It's asking a lot, but it's actually very doable because I do it through scripting into other products. If we could incorporate that directly into Intermapper, that would be fantastic."
"I'd love to see more of the network management side of it coming back into it."
"It's a smaller solution so tools are not as advanced as you would find in a larger solution"
"They can do a better job with SLA reporting. It does some basic reporting, but it really doesn't offer the ability to monitor devices by groups, customers, or carrier to give an overall health performance of specifically-defined environments. That's where HelpSystems Intermapper could have done a better job. I would love to see advanced SLA monitoring and reporting in this solution. They already have a lot of ingredients. They already have SNMP polling. It is really about what people are looking for from SLA monitoring, especially someone who looks at the network topology. You want to see your endpoints. You want to see half of your endpoints by simply analyzing ICMP or SNMP-based availability of your endpoints. Having an ability to define your group and how you bring devices into your group would be a huge benefit."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"The price is very high."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Government
14%
Construction Company
11%
University
7%
Recreational Facilities/Services Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

CA Spectrum
HelpSystems Intermapper
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Greater Media Detroit, University of British Columbia, Don's Farm Supply
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. Fortra's Intermapper and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
903,257 professionals have used our research since 2012.