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Kentik vs SolarWinds ipMonitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th)
SolarWinds ipMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
79th
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (63rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 1.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds ipMonitor is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kentik1.7%
SolarWinds ipMonitor0.4%
Other97.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Gcecilio - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a media company with 51-200 employees
Traffic insights have reduced transit costs and support secure, direct connections with providers
The best features that Kentik offers are the ability to identify traffic end-to-end and to know which transit is used, if it goes through any other transit, to see the entire flow, from the subscriber to the content provider and vice versa, from the content provider to the subscriber.I can also determine whether it is symmetric or asymmetric traffic, and if it goes through any provider that has some kind of bottleneck. That is very important. Regarding the security part, which is also possible to handle through Kentik, you can configure it in a way that makes the network more secure and reduces the amount of dirty traffic or attacks received. Kentik has had a high positive impact on my organization. Besides the cost reduction, it has been possible to perform troubleshooting more effectively, and also regarding DDoS-related attacks. In addition to cost reduction, we had a more reliable connection. Since the moment we identified that it was possible to have a direct connection with content providers like CDN77, Cloudflare, and Akamai, we established a direct connection there through a PNI with these content providers, making the network less dependent on an IP transit provider.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at Optimum Origens Inc.
IP address management improves network efficiency but licensing cost could decrease
We are using SolarWinds for NPM and NCM, and we use IP address management for IP address monitoring. It helps us track which IP address is live and which is not. It also provides DHCP reservation and allows us to declare IP addresses for our integration. We have been using it for IP address…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Kentik has positively impacted the organization by providing greater control over certain subjects and enabling monitoring of current traffic."
"We haven't seen anything else that comes even close to Kentik's real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, and we've demo'ed everything under the sun."
"Technical support is second to none."
"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."
"Overall, I would give Kentik nine out of ten stars."
"I really love the Data Explorer. I use it all the time to go in and craft exactly what I need to see. I'm able to then take that story and explain it to the executives. I've done that a couple of times and it is helpful."
"The most valuable features have been anything around traffic engineering: being able to determine the source or destination of a surge of traffic, whether it's DDoS-related, or a customer just happened to have a sudden uptick in traffic. Being able to tell where that's coming from or where it's going to enables us to do things based on that."
"The most valuable feature is the availability of end devices."
"The initial setup is very straightforward and it is easy to add nodes."
"IPAM is used for IP address reservation and tracking, helping us easily identify live IP addresses."
 

Cons

"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."
"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."
"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."
"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."
"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use."
"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..."
"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."
"Kentik can be improved in terms of languages, and visually it could be improved a bit more as well."
"The solution does not include enough features and has some performance issues."
"The licensing cost is high compared to open source tools."
 

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 solution is a bit expensive because the annual license does not include new features that are priced as add-ons."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Media Company
9%
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Healthcare Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been limited because I was not responsible for that in my company, but I have spoken with my boss, and he reported that the licensing mode...
What needs improvement with Kentik?
I do not currently use Kentik's anomaly detection. I had communication with Kentik's technical support through a WhatsApp group. When I faced any issues or there were problems with my Kentik collec...
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
I'm using Kentik for my own internal use. My primary use case is to monitor our equipment and to get a more detailed view of where our inbound and outbound traffic is going.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds ipMonitor?
The licensing cost is high compared to other open-source tools. Being a corporate client, we require corporate licensing, which adds to the cost.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds ipMonitor?
The licensing cost is high compared to open source tools. The state monitoring tools could be improved with AI integration to track IP usage history. There is no local support; we must contact thei...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds ipMonitor?
We are using SolarWinds for NPM and NCM, and we use IP address management for IP address monitoring. It helps us track which IP address is live and which is not. It also provides DHCP reservation a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ipMonitor
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Kentik vs. SolarWinds ipMonitor and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
910,005 professionals have used our research since 2012.