Grafana vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Grafana Labs and Progress Software are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Grafana Labs is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0, while Progress Software is ranked #37 with an average rating of 7.0. Grafana Labs holds a 2.5% mindshare in APM, compared to Progress Software’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Grafana Labs users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

Grafana

Read 50 Grafana reviews

14,886 Views
13,993 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

WhatsUp Gold

Read 25 WhatsUp Gold reviews

14,156 Views
3,822 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Grafana

WhatsUp Gold

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

WhatsUp Gold and Grafana are two well-regarded network monitoring solutions. WhatsUp Gold leads in comprehensive features and customer service, while Grafana shines in data visualization and flexibility.

Features: WhatsUp Gold offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, including dashboards and alerting systems, an out-of-the-box complete solution, and strong customer service support. Grafana is known for customizable visualization options, extensive plugin support, and superior data integration.

Room for Improvement: WhatsUp Gold needs a more modern look, improved scalability, and better integration capacities. Grafana's complexity of initial setup, steep learning curve, and need for better official support documentation are key areas for enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WhatsUp Gold provides an easier deployment process and robust customer service, making it accessible for organizations without extensive IT resources. Grafana can be challenging to deploy and integrate, requiring more technical expertise and time, but has extensive community support.

Pricing and ROI: WhatsUp Gold is perceived as somewhat expensive initially but offers a good balance of features against its pricing. Grafana's open-source pricing model provides substantial cost savings and is preferred for delivering better ROI due to its powerful analytics and low setup cost.

To learn more, read our detailed Grafana vs. WhatsUp Gold Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Grafana vs. WhatsUp Gold

September 2026

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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

Grafana

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

WhatsUp Gold

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

37th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (25th), Server Monitoring (14th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 2.5%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Grafana	2.5%
WhatsUp Gold	1.3%
Other	96.2%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Vitthal Gole

Devops Engineer at AIQOD

Proactive monitoring has transformed how our teams detect issues and resolve incidents faster

For improving Grafana, the alert configuration could be more intuitive for new users. Dashboard management becomes complex in large environments. So if we have multiple environments and we have to manage our dashboards for them, sometimes it becomes complicated to manage all the dashboards. The learning curve is steep for beginners. More built-in reporting and analytics features would be helpful. Documentation for advanced features could be more detailed. Role-based access management could be simpler to configure. Performance could be optimized for very large dashboards with high cardinality data sources. Grafana could improve its alert configuration workflow and make advanced dashboard management easier for new users. More built-in reporting features would also be beneficial. A simpler onboarding experience for first-time users and more built-in dashboard templates for common monitoring scenarios would be helpful. Grafana is a powerful monitoring platform, but it could improve dashboard organization in large environments, simplify alert management, provide more built-in reporting capabilities, enhance plugin compatibility during upgrades, and offer better AI-driven insights for fast root cause analysis. For example, if we are hitting a CPU metric of ninety to ninety-five percent or a system load of seventy to eighty percent, we have to act on that. But if Grafana suggests something on that metric, such as an AI suggestion, it would be more helpful. We could get an idea of how to solve that issue. For the Grafana dashboards, they could provide more built-in compliance and audit reporting, enhance AI recommendations with clearer explanations of why an issue was flagged, enhance accessibility and keyboard navigation, add more native integrations with emerging cloud and DevOps tools, and improve scalability for very large enterprise deployments. Grafana is a mature platform, but it could benefit from better dashboard version control, simpler environment migration, enhanced AI explanations, more built-in reporting, and improved performance for large-scale deployments with complex dashboards.

Read full review

Erik Cheng

Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet

Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains

The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Grafana saves us hours compared to DataDog."

"The features I appreciate most are the dashboards and the integrations with multiple data sources."

"Kubernetes could help us to better visualize the trend of our data by recording and displaying our history over a chosen duration, such as the last 30 days."

"The solution is adaptable, easy to use, and works well for microservices development."

"It excels in providing comprehensive details when there are downtimes or fluctuations, offering thorough reports."

"The best feature was the creation of graphs and trends to know if the traffic was low or okay."

"It is easy to change and move virtual servers."

"I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins."

More Grafana pros

"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."

"The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one link. You can go into a particular part of the topology map, scroll in, and see exactly which module it is."

"Our local support team provides excellent service."

"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides. Additionally, WhatsUp Gold is a Windows-based solution which is a benefit."

"It is very good at monitoring the network and keeps us up to date on the status of internal devices."

"I use it on premises to monitor my network database. We monitor the link up/down and use the SNMP traps as well."

"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."

"The user interface is good enough."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

"Lacks in-depth graphs and sufficient AI."

"Regarding joining between queries, merging between two queries that give the same information could be simple, and there are some ways to do that, but if there was something even easier, it would be great."

"Multiple dashboards combined into one dashboard has slowed things down for us."

"The product could be improved with a feature that provides detailed error messages when we encounter issues."

"It's difficult to see the trends on the graph when the range is too long."

"Writing queries can be a bit difficult because the syntax must be maintained."

"Grafana could improve by having its own query language. Currently, it uses languages like Prometheus or InfluxDB, which not everyone knows. Their query language should be easier."

"Setting up alerts via Grafana is a bit complicated, and alerting needs to improve."

More Grafana cons

"The price could be improved. When we first started using this product, the company was new. The prices were very low then, in comparison with HP OpenView or IBM, but now the policy is too high, relative to the number of devices we have."

"I think there are a few bugs now. Although they give some resolution for this, we cannot share the network remotely because of our company policy."

"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."

"The new release cadence needs to be improved. It takes a while for them to add new features and functionality. There should be a quicker turnaround with new versions."

"This product should add other options for monitoring. It does not currently meet the broader needs of the banking industry in the version we have deployed."

"I haven't had any issue with stability, except during the upgrade to 2017 when we encountered slow responses."

"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."

"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."

More WhatsUp Gold cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."

"We are using the open-source license."

"We use the open-source version of Grafana."

"The solution is expensive."

"I am using an open-source version"

"I use the open source model so it is free."

"Grafana is free and open source."

"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."

More Grafana pricing and cost advice

"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."

"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."

"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."

"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."

"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."

"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."

"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."

"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

More WhatsUp Gold pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	27

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?

We are using the community edition. We have used the community edition, the open-source edition. So, there were no licensing costs. The setup was straightforward, and the main investment was the ti...

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What needs improvement with Grafana?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Grafana?

The main use case for Grafana is that we are using Prometheus to collect the metrics, and primarily use Grafana for infrastructure and application monitoring. It helps me visualize system metrics t...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?

Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?

It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?

My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.

See all answers

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

NinjaOne vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 2% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs WhatsUp Gold

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Grafana

September 2026

Download Grafana product report

Buyer's Guide

WhatsUp Gold

September 2026

Download WhatsUp Gold product report

Overview

Grafana offers a customizable, user-friendly platform for robust data visualization and integration, enhancing real-time monitoring with extensive alerting and collaboration capabilities supported by an active open-source community.

Grafana stands out for its flexible dashboards and robust visualization options, integrating smoothly with tools like Prometheus. This open-source platform supports diverse environments, aiding in the visualization of IT infrastructure and business analytics. Its alerting system efficiently supports real-time monitoring. While it is praised for its community backing and cost-effectiveness, there is demand for better data aggregation, intuitive interfaces, and enhanced documentation compared to competitors such as Splunk. Simplification of configuration and the interface is sought, alongside improvements in machine learning and reporting features.

What are Grafana's most important features?

Customizable Dashboards: User-friendly, richly customizable dashboards for precise data presentation.
Visualization Capabilities: Strong support for visualizing complex datasets from multiple sources.
Integration Options: Extensive compatibility with data sources and tools like Prometheus.
Alerting System: Efficient real-time monitoring and issue identification.
Open-Source Nature: Supported by a vibrant community, offering a cost-effective solution.

What benefits or ROI should users seek in Grafana reviews?

Adaptability: Supports diverse environments and use cases.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers valuable features at a competitive price.
Community Support: Backed by an active and vibrant open-source community.
Collaborative Platform: Seamless integration with various data tools refining monitoring and analytics efforts.

Grafana is implemented widely across industries for monitoring IT infrastructure and visualizing business analytics. Companies utilize it to analyze server performance or monitor Kubernetes environments and payment transactions. The platform integrates with AWS services and other data sources to ensure observability and system health tracking, focusing on performance metrics through customized dashboards and alerts. Organizations employ Grafana to bolster observability and optimize infrastructure through robust data insights.

Grafana Labs

WhatsUp Gold stands out with its comprehensive network monitoring, dynamic mapping, and real-time alerts, offering essential tools for managing extensive IT infrastructures.

WhatsUp Gold provides robust capabilities in network visibility through dynamic mapping and NetFlow analysis. The platform's interactive topology aids in pinpointing issues effectively. Auto-discovery ensures complete network device tracking. While offering an intuitive interface and integration with Cisco ServiceNow, users find server performance monitoring useful for incident handling. However, improvements are anticipated in application monitoring and Active Directory integration. The pricing model and customization options leave room for enhancement. Despite these, users benefit from its integrated dashboards for immediate device health checks and network updates, making it beneficial for large-scale infrastructure management.

What features does WhatsUp Gold offer?

Network Monitoring: Provides continuous oversight of network components
Dynamic Mapping: Offers visual representation of network topology
NetFlow Analysis: Delivers insights into bandwidth utilization
Threshold Alerts: Notifies users upon reaching set performance thresholds
Auto-Discovery: Detects devices automatically for complete network coverage

What benefits should users expect from reviews?

Comprehensive Visibility: Enhanced understanding of network elements
Real-Time Monitoring: Immediate insights into network and device status
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive solution suitable for expansive networks
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies the management of complex networks

Organizations in sectors like telecommunications, education, and healthcare utilize WhatsUp Gold for their network monitoring needs. Telecom companies track switches and routers, educational institutions manage bandwidth usage, and healthcare facilities monitor device availability to ensure seamless operations.

Progress Software

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.

Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof

Buyer's Guide

Grafana vs. WhatsUp Gold

September 2026

Free Report: Grafana vs. WhatsUp Gold

Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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