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ITRS Geneos 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

ITRS Geneos
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
74th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
50th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (48th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of ITRS Geneos is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
ITRS Geneos0.6%
Other95.8%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2127225 - PeerSpot reviewer
Monitoring Specialist at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Does real-time monitoring, prevents failures, and has a reasonable price
Their cloud monitoring solution needs to be improved. I have already given them the feedback that it's not capable of meeting the latest technology needs. It's built like proprietary software. I can't expose the data to ITRS, and similarly, ITRS can't expose the data to the outside world. They have created a boundary. It's a bit binding solution. In the modern world, people like to be able to expose the data to do whatever they want. They can query the data, send it, or pull it. ITRS needs to provide more in terms of the API offering. They have documentation, but they can improve the documentation and provide videos to show how to do monitoring configuration or deployment.
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution has helped provide relief to existing Level 2 teams, allowing them to focus efforts on in-depth problem analysis."
"Real-time log monitoring with desktop alerts is valuable as it tells us immediately when there is an issue."
"The tool is highly customizable and can be tailored to your requirements."
"In my experience, being able to monitor our databases is a valuable feature as we can create our own queries and aren't reliant on the in-built ones."
"We use Geneos to monitor our own development and production environments, and due to its automation capabilities we are able to automatically restart failed processes and alert our developers to issues in our applications and infrastructure without traditional eyes on glass monitoring."
"Geneos gives us visibility on all of our systems at once and we can build dashboard views to monitor transactions moving from one system to another."
"The Netprobe is so lightweight compared to the agents that most monitoring tools use. It's really superior to the competition. The agent that is used by almost every competitive tool takes a lot more system resources. It's slower and it requires a greater effort and more compromises in terms of security to install on the monitored servers. With Geneos, because it lives outside the code, it is far easier and far less taxing on the monitored systems."
"It’s very easy to install and setup, offers high scalability, and has a low resource use."
"The product is lightweight in terms of memory use, requiring only 10 megabytes or less."
"One of the best features is the reports feature."
"It's the best platform for IT management."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
"Being a global company with many highly-sensitive manufacturing lines and process control environments, SolarWinds consistently delivers real-time and accurate views into the deepest parts of our environment."
"SolarWinds NPM has helped our organization by providing a proactive approach to understanding the current trends in the environment, utilization of the resources, and providing inventory reports of the environment."
"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."
 

Cons

"The Geneos configuration has greatly improved since the nascent version 1.0 days, but still requires specialist knowledge and convoluted config debugging when something’s not monitoring as expected."
"We sometimes experienced disconnects of the gateways which was a hard one to resolve."
"The initial setup was a bit complex."
"Data visualization – real time and historical – is a weakness."
"Geneos' application monitoring could be improved a lot. Products like AppDynamics and Dynatrace provide the process thread-level monitoring, but Geneos lacks these capabilities."
"The deployment method for upgrading is a bit tricky. It takes a little bit of manual effort."
"For the solution to stay relevant in the cloud-based monitoring environment Geneos needs more plug-ins with more features. Instead of offering clients workarounds, the solution should have a cloud-based out-of-the-box version."
"It needs to have better middleware integration for things such as application and Microsoft SQL servers."
"There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better."
"Consolidation of platforms would provide a smoother experience."
"SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow."
"I think the graphical environment, the GUI still has to be improved."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."
"The dashboards for this solution could be improved."
"SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You will get the best price if you get a single global deal."
"The pricing seems reasonable. We're happy enough with it."
"Its price is reasonable. It isn't too expensive, and it isn't too cheap, but it also depends on a company's volume and negotiation."
"The organization is not just purchasing a license for the product, but also managing services and professional services from ITRS. Another factor is if the implementation is going to be in production, non-production, or both."
"It is expensive. They have to look at the model around when we move to cloud and how that's going to work. The licensing cost does pay off because of the improvements in support to our business."
"ITRS Geneos is not a cheap tool. It's a moderate price for the banking industry. The reason we are not able to add the ITRS monitoring tool for the non-banking industries, and non-finance industries, is that the pricing is too high."
"Based on feedback from colleagues and friends working in the financial sector, Geneos is relatively costly. Many companies have been switching from Geneos to Dynatrace, Sysdig, or other monitoring tools in the past two years because of the price."
"When I first came in, their pricing was very high. ITRS had a high expectation of what their price should be based on perceived value. I think they have been realizing, more recently, that there are other competitors, so their pricing is a lot better. Licensing for on-premise is okay, however I feel there is quite some work to be done for cloud and containers. We're still working with them to try and work out what that pricing should look like."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"Quite highly priced"
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
67%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction Company
3%
Outsourcing Company
3%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise39
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ITRS Geneos?
The pricing is high. Licensing fees might be around 500$ per server monthly.
What needs improvement with ITRS Geneos?
ITRS Geneos is a legacy system. It predicts or provides proactive measures once an issue is resolved. It doesn't offer any predictive capabilities or root cause analysis. They throw a lot of data i...
What is your primary use case for ITRS Geneos?
ITRS offers multiple products, including upgrades for synthetic monitoring and a SaaS platform. Geneos is used for infrastructure monitoring, covering KPIs such as CPU, memory, processes, network l...
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

Geneos
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ITRS Geneos is used by over 170 financial institutions, including JPMorgan, HSBC, RBS, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Clients range from investment banks to exchanges and brokers.
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about ITRS Geneos vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,011 professionals have used our research since 2012.