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DX Spectrum vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
Organizations experienced significant ROI with DX Spectrum, noting enhanced automation, cost savings, efficiency, and effective integration despite high costs.
Sentiment score
7.4
SolarWinds NPM quickly proves cost-effective by enhancing network visibility, reducing support costs, and optimizing resource use for profitability.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Customer service excels with high ratings, but technical support varies; Broadcom acquisition raised concerns over response times.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM's service is knowledgeable but response times vary, with some customers finding direct support unsatisfactory.
Broadcom technical support is very good.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
DX Spectrum is highly adaptable and scalable, effectively supporting growth in diverse environments from small businesses to large corporations.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM is scalable, integrates globally, but managing resources and licensing is essential for effective performance and expansion.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
DX Spectrum is praised for its stability and reliability, with minor issues usually due to incorrect configurations or updates.
Sentiment score
7.5
Proper configuration and adherence to documentation ensure SolarWinds NPM's stability, though upgrades occasionally cause issues requiring support.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
 

Room For Improvement

DX Spectrum users seek a modern interface, enhanced integration, simplified processes, better analytics, and improved support for device certification.
SolarWinds NPM needs UI enhancements, better integration, responsive support, and more flexibility for improved efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Currently, they appear as pop-up messages, but I would prefer having alarm messages shown as a scrolling bar at the taskbar for easier visibility.
The event management should have more deduplication and alert correlation and check the bidirectional communication with ServiceNow.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
 

Setup Cost

DX Spectrum's pricing favors large enterprises, offering flexible but complex licensing, with high costs impacting smaller businesses.
SolarWinds NPM offers scalable, valuable monitoring solutions with flexible pricing, starting from $2,000, based on deployment size and modules.
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds.
PRTG's package offers all features in one bundle, which is cost-effective.
The solution is considered expensive.
 

Valuable Features

DX Spectrum offers comprehensive network monitoring, fault management, scalability, and seamless integration, ideal for managing extensive IT infrastructures.
SolarWinds NPM provides comprehensive network management with customization, scalability, and real-time monitoring to enhance performance and integration.
The interface has the needed configuration for visualization, and it's effective in providing a complete diagram of network links and connections across various stations globally.
The DX Net apps include all kinds of dashboards and integrate with event management tools, network tools, and all these tools from Broadcom.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
It provides a detailed overview of the network, which is valuable.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
 

Categories and Ranking

DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
20th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 0.9%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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…
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.
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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
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 caused us to lose many deals.
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. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.