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InfluxDB vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

InfluxDB
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
23rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
23rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Non-Relational Databases (2nd), Open Source Databases (9th), NoSQL Databases (3rd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of InfluxDB is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

DeepakR - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source database that can be used to insert data
InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times.
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

"The most valuable features of InfluxDB are the documentation and performance, and the good plugins metrics in the ecosystem."
"The solution is very powerful."
"InfluxDB's best feature is that it's a cloud offering. Other good features include its time-series DB, fast time-bulk queries, and window operations."
"In our case, it started with a necessity to fill the gap that we had in monitoring. We had very reactive monitoring without trend analysis and without some advanced features. We were able to implement them by using a time series database. We are able to have all the data from applications, logs, and systems, and we can use a simple query language to correlate all the data and make things happen, especially with monitoring. We could more proactively monitor our systems and our players' trends."
"The user interface is well-designed and easy to use. It provides a clear overview of the data, making it simple to understand the information at hand."
"The most valuable features are aggregating the data and integration with Graphana for monitoring."
"While I would rate InfluxDB a ten on a scale of one to ten, users should be thoughtful about matching the engine to their specific needs."
"InfluxDB works as expected with excellent scalability and stability, which is critical for our application."
"I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of SolarWinds NPM."
"This solution offers a very good view of our network and allows us to effectively monitor performance."
"It combines and presents information from many different sources, giving a corporate-wide vision on a single pane of glass."
"One of the best features is the reports feature."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"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."
"The product covers our needs for the basic care and feeding of servers, whether they are physical or virtual."
 

Cons

"The solution's UI can be more user-friendly."
"InfluxDB cannot be used for high-cardinality data. It's also difficult and time-consuming to write queries, and there are some issues with bulk API."
"InfluxDB can improve by including new metrics on other technologies. They had some changes recently to pool data from endpoints but the functionality is not good enough in the industry."
"It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster."
"The solution doesn't have much of a user interface."
"One area for improvement is the querying language. InfluxDB deprecated FluxQL, which was intuitive since developers are already familiar with standard querying."
"The error logging capability can be improved because the logs are not very informative."
"It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"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 dashboard of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"The evaluation time for the product is too short especially for large corporations."
"The dashboards for this solution could be improved. We would like to divide the dashboards to give a clear view to our management team to show what we have and what deficiencies exist in our network."
"The integration with video apps could be better."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"InfluxDB recently increased its price. It is very expensive now."
"The tool is an open-source product."
"We are using the open-source version of InfluxDB."
"InfluxDB is open-source, but there are additional costs for scaling."
"You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"Price could be improved on"
"It is too expensive."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
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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
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
35%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about InfluxDB?
InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data ...
What needs improvement with InfluxDB?
It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster. Replicating data for on-prem development and testing is difficult. Having a SQL abstrac...
What is your primary use case for InfluxDB?
InfluxDB is the main component in our large enterprise-scale streaming data application for maritime vessels. We collect position data from vessels around the coast once per second, put it on a Kaf...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ebay, AXA, Mozilla, DiDi, LeTV, Siminars, Cognito, ProcessOut, Recommend, CATS, Smarsh, Row 44, Clustree, Bleemeo
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about InfluxDB vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.