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Grafana vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 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

Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
29th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (22nd), Server Monitoring (14th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th), Configuration Management (20th), Log Management (39th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 2.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Grafana2.6%
WhatsUp Gold1.3%
Other96.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Unified dashboards have empowered teams and have democratized real-time operational insights
Grafana's snapshot and dashboard sharing features are critical for our remote incident response. During production issues, I generate a public snapshot of a dashboard at a specific point and share the URL in our Slack war room so every engineer can see exactly what the metrics looked like when the error occurred. This helps significantly during the process of finding the root cause in those scenarios. The best features Grafana offers go beyond just pretty charts; it is an integration engine. The fact that I can join data from my SQL database with metrics from Prometheus in the same table is a feature I have not found performed as well elsewhere. My team uses this feature by comparing two different tables from the databases to show one single view, which Grafana is really helping with. In a visualized way, the charts can be displayed on one dashboard, allowing end users who are not familiar with these technical aspects to extract valuable data from it. Grafana has positively impacted our organization by democratizing data within our company. Before using Grafana, only developers could see the system health, but now our product managers and executives have their own high-level dashboards, which has improved cross-departmental transparency and alignment.
EC
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Grafana is the ease to build dashboards from observability construction. Additionally, the page services and integration are good."
"The most important feature of Grafana is its alarm formatting capability."
"The solution can scale well."
"Almost any kind of visualization is possible with Grafana and all dashboards are configurable."
"The most valuable aspect is customization. There are many customizations possible, so I like that."
"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."
"The installation process is easy. We have deployed it on the cloud. I have around 20 to 30 people using the solution in my company."
"If you want a scalable solution, better visualization, optimization, centralized monitoring, and improved troubleshooting, then you can choose Grafana without any doubts in your mind."
"We primarily use the solution to check the state of the network, monitoring thousands of devices and all of the internal network, and it is the first tool we use to see the state of the network for real-time monitoring."
"It is easy to access and discover devices, as well as monitor them automatically. The topology discover is also a useful feature."
"Our local support team provides excellent service."
"Their tech support is very good."
"You have to invest a few days to become an expert in this solution, but after that, it's possible to do almost anything with it."
"The installation and configuration process are easy."
"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the visibility it offers of everything in the network and infrastructure."
 

Cons

"The look and feel of the charting and graph capabilities in Grafana could improve. If they provided a storyboard type of feature as they have in other solutions, such as PowerBI. The multi-tenanted and stitch metrics features could improve."
"I have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation."
"More dashboard is required, out-of-the-box, for OpenNMS."
"The solution has some stability issues because I don't always see proper results."
"In the area of documentation, they must do a better job."
"I rate Grafana a six out of ten."
"The look and feel of the charting and graph capabilities in Grafana could improve."
"Perhaps the display of the trigger limits should be more efficient because it's difficult to see that in a graph."
"The licensing model could be improved. Right now, the levels are too far apart. This causes the solution to be more expensive than it needs to be."
"The technical support does not bother to respond."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."
"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 would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"I am using an open-source version"
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
"I use the open source model so it is free."
"For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"This is a well priced solution."
"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 tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is very reasonable and has excellent community support.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
Currently, I do not think that any improvement is required, but there are multiple use cases.
What is your primary use case for Grafana?
My main use case for Grafana is to create and design dashboards based on the metrics provided by different exporters via Prometheus. We have different exporters, and we are creating different dashb...
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 ...
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.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.