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Fortra's Intermapper vs Kentik 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

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
Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
22nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Fortra's Intermapper is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kentik1.9%
Fortra's Intermapper0.5%
Other97.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
SS
Network Engineer III at Fortanix
Integrating synthetic tests and network monitoring enhances traffic pattern visualization
The Kentik support team is good. If you want me to rate them on a scale, I would give them eight. I had a call with the Kentik support team for fifteen minutes, so I'm going to give them eight for now. The reason for giving them an eight is that they are good and address our issues. They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us, including what is needed and what is not. However, when we are working on some real issues with Kentik, I sometimes feel there's a delay due to the busyness of their teams. We faced some outages and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools, so that took a little time to resolve.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"Right now, it is really a combination of network topology, network monitoring, and network analyzing, so, in my opinion, it is awesome."
"The graphical alerting with the ability to obtain a quick overview of a monitored device is my favorite feature."
"Put Intermapper in as your base to start from, hands-down."
"It's all today portal-based which is a good feature for us."
"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."
"Kentik answers the flow question: what are my flows, where are they are going, and what can I do to better optimize my connectivity."
"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."
"Technical support is second to none."
"In terms of the solution’s real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, I have not been able to find any other monitoring or netflow visualization tool that gives me the kind of information I get from Kentik. If I need to take a deep-dive into something that I see, it's really easy for me to do that. Whereas with most other things, I have to use five or six other tools to get that kind of data, with Kentik, I have it all in one place."
"The biggest thing Kentik has given us is the amount of visibility we have into our own network now and knowing what's going on at a given time."
"Collecting that data and having those metrics first-hand, in real-time, allows us to make an educated decision, versus an uneducated guess."
"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."
"Kentik is worth the money to have as a tool."
 

Cons

"I'd love to see more of the network management side of it coming back into it."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It's a smaller solution so tools are not as advanced as you would find in a larger solution"
"I have seen instances where Intermapper does not seem to recover from network changes."
"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."
"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."
"We faced some outages and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools, so that took a little time to resolve."
"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."
"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."
"There is a large difference between BGP and normal nodes. I don't think this plays out to the best for the customer or Kentik."
"We had faced some issues during an outage and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools. It took time to resolve these issues, which is why I give them eight points."
"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable. Kentik is valuable, don't get me wrong, but if it had an actionable piece to it..."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The tool is cheaply priced."
"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
17%
Construction Company
11%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.
What needs improvement with Kentik?
There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Intermapper
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Greater Media Detroit, University of British Columbia, Don's Farm Supply
Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortra's Intermapper vs. Kentik and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.