Kentik vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Kentik and VMware are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Kentik is ranked #33 with an average rating of 9.0, while VMware is ranked #34 with an average rating of 8.8. Kentik holds a 0.8% mindshare in NMS, compared to VMware’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kentik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Kentik

Read 16 Kentik reviews

1,173 Views
546 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 46 vRealize Network Insight reviews

1,328 Views
540 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Kentik

vRealize Network Insight

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

vRealize Network Insight and Kentik compete in network performance management, focusing on visualization and analysis of network data. vRealize appears to have the upper hand in comprehensive network flow visualization and integration with VMware NSX, while Kentik stands out in real-time traffic analysis and DDoS alert handling capabilities.

Features: vRealize Network Insight excels in comprehensive visualization of network flows, assisting with microsegmentation, and integrates seamlessly with NSX. It is also praised for its intuitive design and natural language queries. Conversely, Kentik is recognized for robust NetFlow visualization and traffic analysis, effective DDoS alert handling, and real-time visibility across network infrastructures, along with API integration that enhances traffic pattern insights.

Room for Improvement: vRealize Network Insight users suggest improved integration with more third-party services and enhanced user-friendliness due to complex interfaces and pricing structures. Kentik could offer more actionable insights for traffic anomalies and deeper application performance integration. Both products are noted for high costs, with suggestions for more flexible and cost-effective pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vRealize Network Insight is typically deployed on-premises with strong technical support attributed to VMware's backing. Kentik offers deployment flexibility in private clouds, receiving favorable feedback for reliable support, although its interface could be more user-friendly. Both benefit from strong assistance, with Kentik users reporting lower support engagement needs.

Pricing and ROI: vRealize Network Insight is perceived as expensive yet valuable for reducing operational time and costs, improving labor efficiency through network management. Kentik's pricing is steep, especially for larger deployments, but offers scalability with flexible licensing based on device volume. Both tools provide high ROI by simplifying network management, though users suggest potential cost improvements.

To learn more, read our detailed Kentik vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. vRealize Network Insight

June 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (17th)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

34th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (39th)

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 vRealize Network Insight is 0.6%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON

Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks

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.

Read full review

NiteshKumar1

Principle consultant at Infosys

The tool's configuration is easy and artifacts are easily accessible through professional services and the web

The product is highly regarded, and many customers have been using it along with other VMware products like vSphere and VMware vCloud Usage Insight. However, recently, there's been a trend among customers, especially those using VMware for a considerable period, to explore the potential of migrating to the public cloud. The common concern among these customers is how the VMware products will perform in the public cloud environment. Migrating instances from VMware to different platforms is not easy, especially when dealing with many instances across multiple customers. Customers are keen to maintain the functionality of their existing VMware products but prefer to run them on the public cloud instead of on-premise servers. Our clients for vRealize Network Insight are enterprise businesses. I rate it a nine out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In terms of the solution’s real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, I have not been able to find any other monitoring or netflow visualization tool that gives me the kind of information I get from Kentik. If I need to take a deep-dive into something that I see, it's really easy for me to do that. Whereas with most other things, I have to use five or six other tools to get that kind of data, with Kentik, I have it all in one place."

"Having the API access allows us to do a great deal of automation around a lot of our reporting and management tools."

"Kentik excels in telemetry within data centers and works well in multi-vendor environments."

"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."

"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 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."

"The most important feature is cybersecurity."

"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."

More Kentik pros

"It allows us to see how the network devices function as well as to see network glitches or fluctuations or dropping of packets."

"The solution helps reduce time to value, increase performance, provide deep visibility, and easily manage networks."

"As a troubleshooting tool, it's a level-3 troubleshooting-skills tool and it's very easy to use and very easy to find the information that you need."

"The most valuable feature for me is the different views that you can get when selecting an application or a VLAN. It shows you the traffic flows. It gives you a visual representation of something that, in text, just may not make as much sense."

"The most valuable feature is the profiling of the applications for micro-segmentation... It has made the migration to NSX much easier. Most of the sys admins within the smaller silos, they have no idea what ports are needed to run their stuff at all. I am pretty sure the micro-segmentation would never, ever have occurred without it."

"It especially helps with deploying NSX, that you're not having to manually chase down and figure out what you need to do to microsegment VMs. This gives a nice option where you can say, "Hey, this VM, show me what flows are there." I can export it out and then import it as an NSX rule and job done."

"It allows you to see traffic that you couldn't otherwise see, which is traffic within your Layer 3-bounded network, meaning east-west traffic. It's hard to get that any other way."

"The tool's ease of configuration and use and the availability of information and artifacts through professional services and the web are key factors that customers find valuable."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

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."

"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."

"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 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."

"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."

"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."

"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."

More Kentik cons

"The compatibility with each and every component of the infrastructure is the main thing that I am looking for. I would like them to make sure that it's compatible with different kinds of storage systems, etc. I have seen the compatibility list. I feel it can be more compatible than it is right now."

"I want to see more in terms of microsegmentation. As of now, I can see the rules, but they are not in a readable format that I can convert to microsegmentation and can fit into NSX Manager."

"The only reason I would not give it a nine or a 10 is for cost reasons. It seems to be one of those things that really belongs as part of the product inherently and not as an add-on. That would be my only concern."

"The only issue we have is that the solution does not always capture the host names."

"It just needs to be more reliable and more accurate. At some point, there are some things where it does not match properly."

"The solution can be improved by making it more compatible with other brands, allowing for better integration."

"In a very general way, I would like to see an improvement in interoperability with third-party product, from other vendors."

"There could be some deeper analytics into packet inspection and trace flows. It could use some kind of machine learning to look at Layer 7 traffic for potential malware or corrupt packets."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cheaply priced."

"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."

"It has brought more money into our company."

"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."

"It's a little expensive, but for what you're getting out of the product, you often see the trade-off. It depends on the type of licensing you have. It might be a little too pricey for some."

"The solution has helped us to reduce time, increase performance, reduce costs, and even easily manage networks. We are probably seeing 10 to 20 percent labor savings because we are able to be very specific and focused on what we want to do. It ends up saving the customer money and makes us be more efficient on our cost deliveries."

"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."

"Cost always has room for improvement, you could always make it cheaper. But I think it's a good value for what you pay for it."

"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."

"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

Kentik’s pricing is competitive in the marketplace. It depends on the sizing, and once you have the right sizing, it's usually okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Kentik?

In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area. Specifically, more work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting,...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Kentik?

I have been evaluating Kentik ( /products/kentik-reviews ) against other tools to see what it can provide differently. Primarily, I have used it for network monitoring, specifically in multi-vendor...

See all answers

What do you like most about vRealize Network Insight?

The tool's ease of configuration and use and the availability of information and artifacts through professional services and the web are key factors that customers find valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?

Broadcom is known for increasing product prices, making them expensive compared to what people used to pay. I liken the subscription model to not truly owning what you pay for.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?

Right now, I do not see a specific area for improvement. My main concern is understanding the intentions of Broadcom, which has acquired VMware. Broadcom should improve by going back to what was wo...

See all answers

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Product Reports

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Kentik

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

May 2025

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Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

Overview

Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.

With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.

Kentik

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security. It helps customers build an optimized, highly-available and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. It accelerates micro-segmentation planning and deployment, enables visibility across virtual and physical networks and provides operational views to manage and scale VMware NSX deployments.

VMware

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent.

NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. vRealize Network Insight

June 2025

Free Report: Kentik vs. vRealize Network Insight

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