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Kentik vs NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
33rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (17th)
NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
34th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON - PeerSpot reviewer
Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup
The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.
Leandro Di Maria - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers real-time monitoring capabilities, which help businesses optimize their operations
The tools are part of managed environments, but when the capabilities of the routers need to be increased, we use NETSCOUT to manage things at an international level. The tool's user interface is okay. It would be great if the tool could provide alerts during attacks in Spanish. In the next release, if the traffic analysis could send our company an alert before an attack starts, it would be even better. Before an attack starts, seeing the traffic behavior and activities would be great. The tool should also share alerts since it is an area where the product has certain shortcomings.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The drill-down into detailed views of network activity helps to quickly pinpoint locations and causes. All the information is there."
"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."
"The most valuable feature is being able to pull traffic patterns; to and from destinations. We're able to understand where our traffic is going, our top talkers from an AS set, as well as where our traffic's coming from."
"I am able to do a lot of work on the visualization end to create different visualizations and different ways to get information out of it."
"One of the valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."
"We're pretty happy with the API functionality. It's web, and it's very simple to set up queries. It has served us well and you don't need to be an expert on the API or the product to set these things up."
"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."
"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."
"I like the single pane of glass view because it presents everything in one window, obviously. You can see it all. With a quick glance, you get a pretty good snapshot of what's going on in a particular situation."
"I like the single pane of glass view. I like being able to go to one place instead of having to hunt around for everything."
"This is a very reliable and complete solution for troubleshooting and monitoring environments."
"The most valuable features of this solution are monitoring and maintaining traffic queuing, as well as seeing who is using the bandwidth."
"The solution's technical support team consists of good engineers and technicians."
"The most valuable feature of NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE is the network troubleshooting analysis. You can pinpoint an issue before it could shut down the network."
 

Cons

"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."
"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."
"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable. Kentik is valuable, don't get me wrong, but if it had an actionable piece to it..."
"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."
"We had faced some issues during an outage and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools. It took time to resolve these issues, which is why I give them eight points."
"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."
"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."
"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."
"In terms of additional features, I would like to see better event notification. Right now, we put in an email address to receive an alert and it receives every event and every alert that comes out. We need something a little more granular."
"The price of the solution could be reduced."
"Before an attack starts, seeing the traffic behavior and activities would be great. The tool should also share alerts since it is an area where the product has certain shortcomings."
"The GUI interface and dashboards could be more attractive to the customer."
"Usability is the area with the biggest room for improvement. We've found that with NETSCOUT, while it's a fantastic product, the usability is a major factor because there are just way too many clicks. It's obvious, from our experience, that the people who are developing the product aren't using it."
"They require a lot of manual effort as traffic flows, networks, and formal times change."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."
"The tool is cheaply priced."
"The price of NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE is high. The other solutions are less expensive but we cannot depend on the other solutions, they are not as stable."
"The tool's price is okay. On a scale of one to ten, I rate it as a five, where one means it is not expensive, and ten means it is the most expensive."
"Cost is contracted on a yearly basis. There is no additional cost beyond the standard licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.
What needs improvement with Kentik?
There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE?
The tool's price is okay. On a scale of one to ten, I rate it as a five, where one means it is not expensive, and ten means it is the most expensive.
What needs improvement with NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE?
The tools are part of managed environments, but when the capabilities of the routers need to be increased, we use NETSCOUT to manage things at an international level. The tool's user interface is o...
What is your primary use case for NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE?
I use the solution in my company to analyze international traffic.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
nGeniusPULSE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Banco Votorantim
Find out what your peers are saying about Kentik vs. NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.