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DX Spectrum vs NetMon 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 September 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetMon is 0.4%, up from 0.4% 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 Spectrum1.0%
NetMon0.4%
Other94.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

DickBaker - PeerSpot reviewer
An all-inclusive monitoring solution that adapts to emerging technologies
The product helps to correlate events.  The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability. DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features.  I have been using the product since 2005.  I rate DX Spectrum's stability an eight point five…
AshishDubey - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and scalable tool useful for network behavior analysis, DPA, and network forensic services
I have not worked much on LogRhythm NetMon to be able to comment on what needs improvement in the product since there is another team in our company that is working on the solution presently. LogRhythm NetMon's pricing model is an area of concern that should be made a little bit cheaper in comparison to the other players in the market currently. With players like IBM QRadar that propose QNI or Darktrace in the market, LogRhythm NetMon needs to consider a reduction in its pricing model.
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

"The most valuable feature is the event correlation mechanism."
"​The stability of the product is key. It never breaks, really. The stability and reliability of the Spectrum product have been top-notch.​"
"Generally, I would recommend DX Spectrum because, despite its pricing issue, it is a valuable solution."
"It creates transparency and makes everything work by being more transparent."
"The quick notification of issues, quick alerting because timeliness is always valuable, it's very important for us."
"As the kind of enterprise that straddles the line between telco size and enterprise size, it scales for us, because we're not all the way at telco yet."
"Spectrum is very useful for us, because the product lets us monitor and control all the various components of our infrastructure that support our business from an IT perspective."
"It is easy to understand and determine when and/or where the network is failing."
"It has a very strong artificial intelligence engine."
"The protocols with which you see the traffic for a particular website that a client has in their environment, for example, are valuable. We can monitor whether the traffic is up to the mark or whether they need to add more bandwidth. Also, we can see if we're able to get real-time environment data as well. The customization dashboard is really good. LogRhythm NetMon has its own in-built dashboards which are helpful in guiding customization."
"LogRhythm NetMon's most impressive feature is that it's a bundled package, so you're not just relying on monthly data; you get a six-month view for more comprehensive indicators of compromise. This dual approach is precious. We implement LogRhythm NetMon in our cybersecurity strategy mainly for compliance and correlation of network, user, and decision activities, particularly for network firewalls and access control."
"The most valuable feature is the log, which can be analyzed by our SIEM solution."
"The initial setup is straightforward because we can deploy an open server."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The analytics feature is the most valuable feature."
"NetMon's best feature is traffic analysis."
"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."
"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"A product that is well-tested and trusted in demanding situations."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities."
"SolarWinds is reasonably priced."
"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of SolarWinds NPM."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers."
 

Cons

"I would recommend AI capability built-in so it becomes more predictable and we jump ahead of the curve. This is the one really important feature I would really like to see in any product that provides alarms."
"It doesn’t give you performance metrics: You need CA eHealth for this."
"DX Spectrum needs to incorporate faster support."
"If the integration is simplified or improved, it will be a unique selling point in comparison to the competition on the market."
"OS monitoring needs to be better developed, as well as their services, e.g., cluster monitoring, URLs, etc."
"Its visualization can be improved. It doesn't have a very advanced GUI. It is very basic and simple, but it does work."
"Our consultant was four months on-site doing Spectrum setup and working through issues."
"The platform is complicated to use."
"LogRhythm NetMon's pricing model is an area of concern that should be made a little bit cheaper in comparison to the other players in the market currently."
"The training for this product is not very good and needs to be improved."
"Some of the automated tasks we can perform on QRadar cannot be performed on LogRhythm because the solution has limitations."
"The platform's integration features often need to be improved."
"Sometimes it's hard to find the network devices' self-audit logs."
"Could use a topology diagram which would help get an exact visual."
"The main concern is that LogRhythm has not improved NetMon but instead introduced a separate product, which many customers, including us, would prefer to be integrated into a single platform for easier management."
"I would like to see better integration with multiple products. Integration is not something that is readily available for most of the products."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds. Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team, especially during application-level issues."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"We also had to be attentive to vulnerabilities, because SolarWinds NPM have some issues in that area. We had to work with our security team, so that they could help us check and backup the data, and check what they needed to secure."
"The scalability can be better."
"Sometimes there are issues when upgrading to a new version of the product."
"We are looking to change away from this solution because of the documentation and the solution doesn't have enough integration in our country. The documentation is too weak."
"The solution's customer service is not very good because the support takes too long."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"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 price of this solution is too high, so it should be made more practical and more valuable for the customer."
"NetMon's licensing costs about $85k per year, with some extra costs for support."
"The product is expensive for smaller companies."
"Pricing is okay. There were some competitors that were extremely expensive and there were some which were really inexpensive but LogRhythm stayed in the middle of them."
"I don't have visibility into the pricing of LogRhythm NetMon as it's handled through our commercial partnerships."
"LogRhythm's licensing part is something that depends on the license you want since they offer it on a perpetual and subscription basis."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"Quite highly priced"
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
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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
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise88
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DX Spectrum?
The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has ...
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. O...
What do you like most about LogRhythm NetMon?
It has a very strong artificial intelligence engine.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LogRhythm NetMon?
I don't have visibility into the pricing of LogRhythm NetMon as it's handled through our commercial partnerships.
What needs improvement with LogRhythm NetMon?
The main concern is that LogRhythm has not improved NetMon but instead introduced a separate product, which many cust...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
LogRhythm Network Monitor
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Sera-Brynn
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: September 2025.
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