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Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 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

Google Cloud's operations s...
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (29th), Log Management (30th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 1.0%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations
As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or BigQuery can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings.
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

"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."
"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"
"It's easy to use."
"I like the monitoring feature."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."
"I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates."
"SolarWinds is reasonably priced."
"Can easily be interconnected with other management systems."
"The alerting and reporting capabilities of the tool are impressive"
"The product covers our needs for the basic care and feeding of servers, whether they are physical or virtual."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
"There are a lot of valuable features with SolarWinds NPM. We can receive a lot of detailed data from the monitoring that can use useful for investigations, especially when you are troubleshooting. It is very helpful. Overall it was a very good experience."
"We found that it was easy to operate, and it was simple if anyone has entry-level working experience or even if someone is not experienced."
 

Cons

"The logging functionality could be better."
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"It could be even more automated."
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."
"It could be more stable."
"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."
"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."
"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"I think Solar Winds NPM needs to create a profile with documentation responsibility."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"They have had a rather large security breach in the past. It's cost some companies customers."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"There isn't support available to us as they don't offer support in our country."
"The reporting is good, but I want it to be a little easier when creating custom reports. The reports are all on the website now, but it takes some know how to get some to display the way you would like."
"The price of the solution can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
"The cost could be lower."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
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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%
Computer Software Company
14%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?
If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analytics can be improved.
What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?
I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly use it.
What advice do you have for others considering Google Stackdriver?
The Ops Agent and logging transport feature of the solution have had a major impact on improving application performance. The solution also allows the transport of logs into log buckets, which is h...
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...
 

Also Known As

Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.