Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
68th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
45th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (33rd)
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 (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of ITRS Geneos is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.4%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.4%
ITRS Geneos0.6%
Other96.0%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Durai CT - PeerSpot reviewer
Head FM Monitoring at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
A stable, scalable, and flexible monitoring tool
Real-time data is one of the unique features that ITRS Geneos offers. For example, if there is an impact on a particular server and a particular application, I want to see what the impact is or what the CPU or hardware usage information is, as well as the service in the same application. I can see the real-time data and the impact by accessing ITRS Geneos and looking at the tree. I don't want a tool that tells me when something is broken. I want the tool to tell me when something is going to break. That is the difference between ITRS Geneos and other tools. I want proactive monitoring, not reactive. I don't need to be notified after the fact that something has broken. If something is broken, I get a notification by email, and some of my customers are going to call me. ITRS Geneos provides proactive monitoring. The great advantage of this tool is real-time monitoring. ITRS Geneos not only alerts us but also gives us a real-time view of the data. This is the tool's first great advantage. It is also lightweight and flexible and can adapt to monitor even low-latency systems, which is the tool's second advantage. Another great feature of this tool is its good presentation layer, which allows us to build custom dashboards to present to business stakeholders. This gives them a high-level status of what is being monitored. If we compare ITRS Geneos to other tools, we will find that each one specializes in a specific area, but the ITRS Geneos tool is more comprehensive. This is its great advantage.
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

"The solution is used across the entire investment banking division, covering environments such as electronic trading, algo-trading, fixed income, FX, etc. It monitors that environment and enables a bank to significantly reduce down time. Although hard to measure, since implementation, we have probably seen some increased stability because of it and we have definitely seen teams a lot more aware of their environment. Consequently, we can be more proactive in challenging and improving previously undetected weaknesses."
"ITRS can define rules to alert when certain parameters that you monitor breach a threshold. Rules can be configured to fire recovery actions automatically to clear the alert"
"The great advantage of this tool is real-time monitoring."
"The built-in plug-ins allow administrators to easily configure monitoring components for market data systems such as Thomson Reuters Enterprise Platform and SRLabs Wombat (formerly NYSE)."
"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 also easy to implement. The implementation of Geneos is very easy and interesting. It's not complicated. It's very quick to implement. The installation is very easy. There are many topics about ITRS Geneos that explain more about the features of the function of Geneos."
"This tool allows one to analyse, integrate and customize as per the systems and allows you to set your own rules."
"The filtering in the Active Console is exceptional. Depending on the user base, some people don't want to see server-level errors, so we have filters set up in the Managed Entities view, which allow us to filter out things that certain groups don't want to see, while allowing them to see other things. It's a great real-time monitoring solution. And you can draw graphs immediately, right from the Active Console, whether they're current graphs or historical graphs."
"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"What I've found most valuable about the solution is that it's scalable."
"Through SolarWinds NPM, we discovered some interfaces were having issues, which we subsequently corrected; this has been very helpful for our operations."
"It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"The benefit of this solution is the reporting. We're able to report on and see our network in a graphical form. We are able to detect when a device is added to a network."
"The stability is fantastic."
"As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
 

Cons

"A lightweight version which could host more than 100 gateways, as we can see slowness while loading all our gateways."
"Geneos' application monitoring could be improved a lot. Products like AppDynamics and Dynatrace provide the process thread-level monitoring, but Geneos lacks these capabilities."
"Much of the reporting outside of the user interface is very basic and requires much customization to be useful."
"ITRS have started to make some major changes that we haven't taken on board yet, in the creation of dashboards and more visibility of the metrics that we collect. At the moment, that's something that's lacking, but I know they have addressed it. Still, it’s not that easy to create stuff to help with visibility and dashboarding in Geneos."
"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."
"We all look at the same things - CPU, disk space, paging stats, service status with RAG status on each. That could be provided straight out, saving significant time."
"For the last year or two, I've been asking the vendor about the mobile app. This is something that probably everyone asks when they see the tool and they see how powerful it is. If there is any mobile app for this or if there is any way this tool can be more easily accessible other than having a big client installed, it would be great. I know you can build dashboards, et cetera, but there is no quick and easy way. I should be able to download an app, log in, and see my status. That will put this product above everything else out there. I believe it's on their roadmap."
"Backward compatibility with deprecated features and in system documentation on what configuration areas are needed to be updated."
"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."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
"Sometimes there are issues when upgrading to a new version of the product."
"Technical support can be slow to respond."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve by adding the deepest inspection, performance networking, and IP address discovery."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is priced quite high. There are pricing options for customers based on the size of the environment and plug-ins used by the monitoring system."
"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."
"You will get the best price if you get a single global deal."
"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."
"The licensing cost may seem expensive upfront. However, the service is outstanding, the tool does things that no other tools can do, and the customizability more than makes up for the cost of licensing."
"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."
"The pricing seems reasonable. We're happy enough with it."
"Pricing and licensing is based on the requirements."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"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."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"It is expensive."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
880,511 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
71%
Computer Software Company
5%
Construction Company
3%
Outsourcing Company
2%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

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...
 

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: December 2025.
880,511 professionals have used our research since 2012.