Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. SolarWinds NPM

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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

Instana Infrastructure Moni...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

34th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

23rd

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SolarWinds NPM

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

5th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

160

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.4%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM	3.4%
Instana Infrastructure Monitoring	0.7%
Other	95.9%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Hakimuddin Ronaque

Assistant Manager at Lauren Information Technologies Pvt Ltd

Has the capability to automatically integrate with a large number of products

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. I have not worked much on other technologies, like SAP or VMware's virtualization part, on-prem infrastructure, or cloud infrastructure. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is so fast and easy to adapt that it works fine. I have not explored other operating systems or infrastructure solutions because my company doesn't have that customer scale. Most of our customers are on-prem or on AWS or Azure, but Instana Infrastructure Monitoring adapts to their infrastructure very well. My company came to know how well Instana Infrastructure Monitoring adapts to our customers' infrastructures when we take care of the PoC phase. Around 12 to 15 people in my company use the product.

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Vivek Jaiswal

Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards

Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.

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

"The product is easy to deploy."

"The product's initial setup is easy."

"The ability to customize the views and dashboards is nice. SolarWinds also allows us to access the data via the API. That's probably the feature I liked the most."

"The alerting and reporting capabilities of the tool are impressive"

"Over the last couple of years, they have introduced features like NetPath and PerfStack, which are very helpful for any of the admins to troubleshoot issues and know precisely what is going on in nodes."

"From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization."

"The biggest thing for me is that it provided enough information for me to monitor. It alerts and provides you with the information you need."

"Outages have reduced by probably around 90% because we're able to take and proactively add space to a disk or add processors to a server before users know there's a problem."

"It provides a centralized view on alerts, state, health and performance of the network devices with real time network updates, in-depth traffic reports to pinpoint bandwidth issues before they affect end-users, and helps administrators identify and fix bandwidth issues faster while aiding in capacity planning."

"It's very easy to scale; the scalability is brilliant, and if you need additional monitoring resources or need to plug in your secondary data center, it takes thirty minutes and is easy to use."

More SolarWinds NPM pros

Cons

"The product’s scalability is an area with certain limitations, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Instana Infrastructure Monitoring needs to support monitoring of the .NET framework since it is one of the areas where the solution currently has shortcomings."

"The charge is currently made per module for the product, and there is no option to buy it as a full system bundle which makes it costly."

"Perhaps they could hire more tech support for this awesome product."

"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the short retention period. Currently, it's just for seven days of data, which is very low, making it hard for my organization to keep that data."

"We have not had a lot of opportunities to use technical support. When we did I was not particularly impressed with their response time or expertise."

"There isn't a great deal of flexibility to create custom metrics that can be discovered easily or custom aggregation schemes."

"Bulk Node attach is chaos."

"There isn't support available to us as they don't offer support in our country."

"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."

More SolarWinds NPM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of the tool is around 130 USD per month."

"When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low."

"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."

"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."

"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."

"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."

"Quite highly priced"

"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."

"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."

More SolarWinds NPM pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Construction Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	59
Midsize Enterprise	33
Large Enterprise	86

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

The product is easy to deploy.

What needs improvement with Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

The product’s scalability is an area with certain limitations, making it an area where improvements are required.

What is your primary use case for Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

I use the solution in my company, especially if an application is down and it is considered to be a P1 issue or a critical issue. The network team will blame the application team, while the applica...

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?

From my point of view, SolarWind is the best tool.

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...

NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Comparisons

Compared 16% of the time

Zabbix vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 9% of the time

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 8% of the time

Infraon IMS vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 7% of the time

Nagios XI vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 3% of the time

More Instana Infrastructure Monitoring Competitors

ManageEngine OpManager vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 4% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 3% of the time

DX Spectrum vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 3% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 3% of the time

Entuity vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 2% of the time

More SolarWinds NPM Competitors

Product Reports

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Download Instana Infrastructure Monitoring product report

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring report

SolarWinds NPM

Download SolarWinds NPM product report

Also Known As

No data available

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer

Overview

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring offers a robust solution designed to monitor the performance and health of complex IT environments. Its automated capabilities allow for real-time insights, helping users optimize their infrastructure systems efficiently, maintaining uptime and reliability.

The platform provides comprehensive visibility across distributed systems, facilitating data-driven decisions through its seamless integration and easy deployment. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring supports hybrid and cloud infrastructures, giving teams the control they need to ensure service availability and performance through sophisticated analytics and diagnostics tools. Its real-time alert capabilities and root cause analysis enable users to address issues proactively, minimizing downtime.

What features stand out in Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

Automated Discovery: Identifies and maps applications within IT infrastructure automatically.
Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant insight into application performance and health.
AI-Driven Analytics: Delivers actionable insights based on intelligent data analysis.
Root Cause Analysis: Quickly identifies and pinpoints issues impacting system performance.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Increased Efficiency: Streamlines monitoring processes, reducing manual efforts.
Improved Uptime: Helps maintain high service availability and fast issue resolution.
Enhanced Insights: Leverages data to offer deep learning about system behaviors.
Cost Optimizations: Identifies performance bottlenecks, optimizing resource utilization.

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is implemented across various sectors, including finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. Its ability to adapt to specific industry requirements makes it a valuable tool for operations needing consistent system performance and real-time visibility into their infrastructure health, fostering innovation and operational excellence.

Instana

SolarWinds NPM is a network performance monitoring tool offering a user-friendly interface with customizable dashboards. It provides real-time tracking of device health, latency, and bandwidth utilization, supporting diverse integration and scalability needs.

SolarWinds NPM's robust features include real-time monitoring of network performance and efficient tracking of device health, latency, and bandwidth utilization. The tool is appreciated for its ease of deployment, scalability, and support for integration with other tools. Features like SNMP monitoring, NetPath, and comprehensive reporting enhance its diagnostic capabilities and network visibility. However, users identify areas for improvement such as real-time analytics, advanced customization options, and enhanced scalability for larger enterprises. Better customer support, improved integrations, and security measures are also desired.

What are the key features of SolarWinds NPM?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies navigation and operation.
Customizable Dashboards: Allows personalized data views.
Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant updates on network performance.
Strong Alerting Capabilities: Offers immediate notifications for issues.
Scalability: Supports growth with ease.
Integration: Works smoothly with other tools for comprehensive monitoring.
SNMP Monitoring: Tracks device stats effectively.
NetPath: Helps visualize network paths and performance.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Improved Network Visibility: Enables proactive issue resolution.
Enhanced Diagnostics: Facilitates quicker troubleshooting.
Real-Time Performance Data: Supports informed decision-making.
Ease of Deployment: Reduces setup time and complexity.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Ensures network stability and reliability.
Custom Integration: Adapts to existing IT environments.

In enterprise environments, SolarWinds NPM is deployed to monitor network health and device status, sending alerts for any issues. It provides visibility into network performance, tracking bandwidth utilization and server metrics efficiently. Its applications span from monitoring routers, switches, and firewalls to supporting infrastructure monitoring across industries.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

booxware, drivenow, scopevisio, enevo, TimoCom, mobitech

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. SolarWinds NPM