IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor comparison

IBM and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. IBM is ranked #47 with an average rating of 7.5, while SolarWinds is ranked #31 with an average rating of 7.8. IBM holds a 1.0% mindshare in NMS, compared to SolarWinds’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

Read 54 IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) reviews

3,214 Views
1,768 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Network Device M...

Read 23 SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reviews

789 Views
757 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

SolarWinds Network Device M...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and IBM SevOne Network Performance Management are competing products in network monitoring and performance management. IBM SevOne NPM has an edge due to its comprehensive feature set.

Features: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor offers simple device monitoring capabilities, real-time alerts, and ease of use for basic network oversight. IBM SevOne NPM provides advanced performance analytics, predictive insights, and scalability for larger networks.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds could benefit from enhancements in detailed performance analytics, predictive network insights, and scalability for larger infrastructures. IBM SevOne NPM might improve its user interface simplicity, deployment time, and offer more cost-effective options for smaller businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds provides a straightforward deployment process and effective customer support, suitable for less complex environments. IBM SevOne NPM requires a more detailed setup but offers robust customer support that efficiently supports complex infrastructures with extensive onboarding resources.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is a cost-effective solution with a reasonable setup cost, appealing to budget-conscious organizations. IBM SevOne NPM, with a higher initial setup cost, offers a higher ROI due to its comprehensive capabilities and network management efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

July 2025

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Helped 865,164 peers since 2012

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

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

47th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (20th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (46th), Log Management (46th), Cloud Monitoring Software (30th)

SolarWinds Network Device M...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

31st

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is 1.0%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Grzegorz Nowak

Solution Architect at Wingu

Improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic

We use SevOne to collect and report on network flows SevOne improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic. We can look at bandwidth for specific endpoints on the customer's network and analyze traffic to identify issues. For example, maybe some connectors are unavailable.…

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Vijay Samant

Assistant Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Monitor network utilization and manage bandwidth efficiently with live monitoring and reliable fault management capabilities

I use SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for monitoring network utilization, bandwidth utilization, uptime, and downtime. It also assists in incident management SolarWinds Network Device Monitor provides live monitoring capabilities, which are very useful. Its fault management capabilities are…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We've had great feedback from our customers about SevOne support. They're willing to set up a remote session upon request. You have to go through three tiers of support with most vendors, and they ask a lot of screening questions before they will do a remote session. You need to spend a lot of time before an engineer will host a remote session to look at your problematic system."

"Flexible architecture: You can extend the system and its capacity by attaching another cluster pair."

"The out of the box reports and workflows are pretty good and they meet our requirements well."

"The comprehensiveness of this solution's collection of network performance and flow data is one of the basics in the field for what it does. It meets all of our needs. So for all those areas, for the most straightforward collection capabilities, right up to NetFlow and even telemetry, it meets all those demands. Not only just basic or fundamental SNMP collection capability, but the product also supports what we need for the future with telemetry streaming. So it's very comprehensive."

"Data Insight reporting tool is the most valuable feature. They came up with it a couple of years ago. The most pleasing factor is the dark theme. You don't have a white background. It has templates that you can create for all kinds of reports that you can hit on the fly. It's much better printing of the reports. If you want to send PDFs to people, the reports are actually decent. Whereas for years, the old architecture of the PDFs was rubbish and even our customers said, "We have to manipulate your PDFs because they all have bad margin breaks. SevOne fixed that a couple of years ago with the new Data Insight. It's fantastic."

"Based on my experience, the stability of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is excellent."

"We find that the reporting is particularly valuable in terms of not only communicating with our peer teams but also with the executives."

"The feature that I have found most valuable is the scale-up and scale-down. The scale-up is an operation where the CPU boosts-up and then the memory will boost-up. That works awesomely."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pros

"The alerts we are getting when we start losing connection access have been helpful."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is a straightforward product with valuable functionality."

"In terms of general network monitoring features, I find SolarWinds Network Device Monitor very flexible and comfortable to use. The software itself is extremely useful when it comes to monitoring how our data moves between different networks and environments."

"The deployment process is quick."

"Link monitoring is the most valuable feature of this solution."

"Overall, I rate SolarWinds Network Device Monitor ten out of ten."

"I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process."

"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor are the reports. We are configuring the reports, and the first reports are only about the devices. We are configuring the thresholds in order to monitor all the devices."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor pros

Cons

"Would benefit with the addition of AI modules for proactive data insights."

"SevOne should work with the graphs legend functionality."

"Some similar solutions offer end-to-end visibility."

"There are some tweaks and enhancements that I've already requested. One is to be able to make changes per device rather than as a global setting. That has to do with naming. It's minor."

"When I started using it, I tried adding one of the BroadWorks application servers into SevOne... it created thousands and thousands of objects from that one application server and we immediately ran out of license... It would help, when new objects are discovered, if there were a way to categorize those objects and to pick the part of the object you need..."

"One area that requires a little bit of improvement is the topology of visualization and being able to map out connections, end-to-end. It's able to do that, but it's not as impressive as we would like it to be. We would like to understand the different interface types and the connection points better, through the visualization. Heatmaps also need further development."

"With the administrative management of the appliance, if some object appears from SevOne because something changed in the network or whatever, then as an administrator you will not be aware. If you are using this object in a report, this object will disappear from the report and you will not be aware of it. So, if you have 1,000 reports, you cannot always check these reports everyday to see if objects are missing or information has disappeared. We don't have any information on alerts, saying that something is happening there and maybe we need to take action. If an object was replaced by another one, or if a link was replaced by another one, then the graph needs to be changed because it doesn't exist in the graph anymore. However, we don't have this information."

"There are a lot of pain points. My main problem is that we don't have a high availability system. There are 20 peers. We're going to lose the end-of-life appliances that are old. If we lose a peer and it doesn't come back, we lose all that data. The reason we don't have high availability is because it's double the charge."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) cons

"Integration with different tools, such as ServiceNow and Excel, can be improved."

"The solution is not user-friendly."

"The reporting feature needs improvement because we are unable to configure reports that were included during initial implementation."

"The main disadvantage of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is the licensing cost, which is expensive."

"There is no mobile version of this product, and our team should be able to access it using a mobile device."

"The initial setup of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could be easier. It took us approximately one month to complete the implementation."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve by being more user-friendly. The network has so many features which make it difficult to find how to configure how to use it. It is not simple to customize."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor lacks the granularity of other monitoring tools like LiveNX."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.)."

"Prices per license are not huge, but they exist."

"Although I don't have exact details in terms of cost, my experience has been that SevOne is willing to make a deal with the customer."

"Many tools price things based on the number of KPIs that you're collecting around a device. In many cases, there could be hundreds of metrics that you need to collect. SevOne provides device-level pricing. That gives us the flexibility to turn on, and expand on, the metrics that we're collecting around those devices, without taking a financial hit."

"A blocking point is the high upfront cost because it is challenging to get it accepted and the purchase approved."

"For the value that you get from SevOne, it's worth the price. There are a lot of cheaper alternatives on the market, and even free options. But they require more staff, more resources, and engineers with more advanced knowledge of monitoring. That's what makes SevOne worth the price."

"There are different options available for licensing, with the per-device option being more expensive but more flexible."

"The tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pricing and cost advice

"When compared with other solutions SolarWinds is more expensive."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."

"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."

"The enterprise license is good for the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. However, it is expensive, they should reduce their price."

"The product is expensive."

"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."

"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."

"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Legal Firm

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SevOne Network Data Platform?

There is room for improvement in the integration with different vendors and the reporting capabilities. It would be beneficial to have out-of-the-box integration with third-party vendors and improv...

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What is your primary use case for SevOne Network Data Platform?

The primary use case of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) ( /products/ibm-sevone-network-performance-management-npm-reviews ) is network monitoring. It helps to maintain the infrastru...

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What advice do you have for others considering SevOne Network Data Platform?

To compete with custom-built tools, IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) should accommodate the desired features and be timely in the delivery of feature updates. I would rate the overal...

See all answers

What do you like most about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

I am not a positive person regarding SolarWinds Network Device Monitor.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for impro...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

August 2025

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) report

Download IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

July 2025

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Network Device Monitor product report

Also Known As

SevOne

Network Device Monitor

Overview

The IBM® SevOne Network Performance Management (IBM SevOne NPM) solution helps you spot, address, and prevent network performance issues early with machine learning-powered analytics from a single source. Boost network performance and improve your user application experience by proactively monitoring your multivendor end-to-end network across enterprise, communication, and managed service provider networks.

Transform raw network performance data into intelligent and actionable insights. The IBM SevOne NPM solution goes beyond detection, combining industry-leading expertise and advanced technology to help your IT team plan and optimize your network and act on what matters: improving network performance to provide an exceptional customer experience.

For further information, please visit www.ibm.com/cloud/sevo...

IBM

Network Device Monitor is a free tool that makes it easy to monitor the real-time performance and health of a single device on your network with a desktop dashboard that alerts you when your device is in trouble.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

ATOS, Devereux, Spark New Zealand, Access4, Rogers Communication, Lumen (formerly known as CenturyLink)

Air Rarotonga

Buyer's Guide

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

July 2025

Free Report: IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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