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Flowmon 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

Flowmon
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Network Detection and Response (NDR) (14th)
SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Flowmon and SolarWinds NPM aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Flowmon is designed for Network Detection and Response (NDR) and holds a mindshare of 1.9%, up 1.5% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 4.5% mindshare, down 5.3% since last year.
Network Detection and Response (NDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Flowmon1.9%
Darktrace22.7%
Vectra AI15.6%
Other59.800000000000004%
Network Detection and Response (NDR)
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.5%
Zabbix11.7%
LibreNMS4.6%
Other79.2%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick identification of network issues enhances performance monitoring
We will try to Proof of Concept (POC) to a client in Taiwan. We just use the features for the Network Performance Monitor (NPM) Flowmon is more easy to understand and helps find network issues more quickly. We need this solution to monitor the network performance. We started using it three…
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

"Flowmon is more easy to understand and helps find network issues more quickly."
"The artificial intelligence and automatic detection system in Flowmon Solution are perfect for every, type of customer, such as government and commerce."
"Flowmon is more easy to understand and helps find network issues more quickly."
"The solution is stable."
"It is an open platform, so in terms of integration, we are quite happy. We can integrate it with other SNMP solutions. We can also integrate it with security solutions, such as a SIEM solution."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of SolarWinds NPM."
"The alerting system in SolarWinds NPM aids in proactive network management."
"SolarWinds NPM provides an overview of network monitoring, extending its capabilities to cover other aspects, such as virtual machines and servers. The platform has features like NetPath, which is particularly beneficial for end-users, offering insights into issues like latency, packet loss, and connectivity problems with routers, switches, or servers."
"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."
"I believe the ease of setup and use, including everything, from the initial installation to the discovery of devices is the most valuable."
"SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
 

Cons

"The licensing price could be better."
"It would be helpful to have more details about the monitoring of the infrastructure. It should have support for SNMP. This is something that is currently not there in the product."
"I do not know the detailed pricing."
"If there was better visualization in Flowmon Solution it would be good."
"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."
"The integration with video apps could be better."
"Technical support and releases are not particularly reliable."
"Robustness of network element mapping tool could be better"
"SolarWinds NPM could improve by adding the deepest inspection, performance networking, and IP address discovery."
"Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier."
"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."
"This solution would benefit from expanding on the capabilities within the API."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fee accrues only once, but that of support is annual."
"The price of the solution could be better."
"It works with a permanent license, and then you can pay for the support. For the gold support, you need to pay yearly."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
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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
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Performing Arts
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Flowmon Anomaly Detection System?
I don't understand the price. I am in deployment, so I do not know the detailed pricing.
What is your primary use case for Flowmon Anomaly Detection System?
We will try to Proof of Concept (POC) to a client in Taiwan. We just use the features for the Network Performance Monitor (NPM).
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

Flowmon Anomaly Detection System
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SEGA
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Flowmon vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.