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Kentik vs SolarWinds NPM vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kentik1.8%
Zabbix5.0%
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Other89.6%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Zabbix5.0%
PRTG Network Monitor3.3%
Other88.1%
Network Monitoring Software
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.3%
Zabbix13.4%
Checkmk6.6%
Other76.7%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

SS
Network Engineer III at Fortanix
Integrating synthetic tests and network monitoring enhances traffic pattern visualization
The Kentik support team is good. If you want me to rate them on a scale, I would give them eight. I had a call with the Kentik support team for fifteen minutes, so I'm going to give them eight for now. The reason for giving them an eight is that they are good and address our issues. They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us, including what is needed and what is not. However, when we are working on some real issues with Kentik, I sometimes feel there's a delay due to the busyness of their teams. We faced some outages and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools, so that took a little time to resolve.
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.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility
From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"Having the API access allows us to do a great deal of automation around a lot of our reporting and management tools."
"The most important feature is cybersecurity."
"The biggest thing Kentik has given us is the amount of visibility we have into our own network now and knowing what's going on at a given time."
"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."
"It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics."
"Kentik excels in telemetry within data centers and works well in multi-vendor environments."
"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 solution is user-friendly and has many options for customized monitoring that other tools don't have."
"Our search finally ended at this Orion’s NPM tool which has great scalability and reliability."
"We can sometimes fix a problem before it is even recognized by our user community based on the thresholds we set up for various resources on a production server."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use a few custom properties to manage multiple nodes and alerts; thus, saving hardware resource usage."
"The stability is fantastic."
"One of my clients is a bank; SolarWinds is primarily used in banking to limit network downtime to less than one or two minutes, with all the ATMs connected so the bank can respond quickly when the network is down."
"It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools and available technologies in terms of LMS or EMS."
"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."
"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements, so the threshold gets configured automatically, and it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"The solution can be deployed quickly."
"I have found the visibility into server health with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor very beneficial, which we use on a daily basis."
"It is scalable."
"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."
"It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization."
 

Cons

"We faced some outages and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools, so that took a little time to resolve."
"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."
"There is a large difference between BGP and normal nodes. I don't think this plays out to the best for the customer or Kentik."
"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."
"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..."
"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."
"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."
"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use."
"It has covered everything, so no improvement is required at their end. The only thing is the price."
"In terms of scalability, there is room for improvement. When you start monitoring, if you have so many interfaces and you're trying to monitor them at a faster interval, or a shorter interval, you get to a point where you need to request another node."
"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."
"Better support and integration for vendors other than Cisco."
"The evaluation time for the product is too short especially for large corporations."
"Sometimes there are issues when upgrading to a new version of the product."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"Two or three of the core functions are still nested in Win32 apps on the server; but it seems that the foundation was laid in the current website for porting those functions over in the near future."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good."
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."
"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
 

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."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"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."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"The price is too high."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
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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
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

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 ...
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 K...
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 f...
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 ar...
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 scalabil...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dash...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: March 2026.
885,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.