Kentik vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Kentik and Progress Software are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Kentik is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.7, while Progress Software is ranked #25 with an average rating of 7.0. Kentik holds a 1.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Progress Software’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kentik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

Kentik

Read 22 Kentik reviews

8,240 Views
7,086 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

WhatsUp Gold

Read 25 WhatsUp Gold reviews

15,052 Views
8,279 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Kentik

WhatsUp Gold

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

WhatsUp Gold and Kentik are competing in the network monitoring space. Kentik appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced features and comprehensive analytics capabilities, which justify its higher cost for large businesses.

Features: WhatsUp Gold provides real-time network monitoring, essential alerts, and straightforward tools for quick troubleshooting. Kentik offers advanced network visibility, real-time data analytics, and deep traffic analysis insights for comprehensive management.

Room for Improvement: WhatsUp Gold could improve on its analytics depth, cloud integration, and scalability for larger networks. Kentik might enhance its pricing structure to better cater to small to medium businesses, simplify its deployment for non-cloud environments, and streamline its user interface for ease of use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WhatsUp Gold is noted for simple deployment and responsive support, enabling quick setup. Kentik offers a cloud-based deployment model with specialized support for complex network issues.

Pricing and ROI: WhatsUp Gold is affordable with lower initial costs, making it cost-effective for small to medium networks. Kentik, despite higher setup costs, offers high ROI through its powerful analytics, ideal for large enterprises needing detailed insights.

To learn more, read our detailed Kentik vs. WhatsUp Gold Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. WhatsUp Gold

September 2026

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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

13th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th)

WhatsUp Gold

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

25th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (39th), Server Monitoring (14th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 1.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Kentik	1.5%
WhatsUp Gold	2.0%
Other	96.5%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Gcecilio

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.

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Erik Cheng

Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet

Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains

The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

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

"Technical support is second to none."

"It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics."

"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."

"The drill-down into detailed views of network activity helps to quickly pinpoint locations and causes. All the information is there."

"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."

"Kentik is worth the money to have as a tool."

"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."

"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."

More Kentik pros

"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."

"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."

"It is easy to access and discover devices, as well as monitor them automatically. The topology discover is also a useful feature."

"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."

"In terms of pricing, I'd say that the pricing is nice and the product is good."

"The user interface is good enough."

"The installation and configuration process are easy."

"It's a good product, and if one has the expertise to use it, it will be a good investment and it will help IT to save and plan for the future."

More WhatsUp Gold 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."

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

"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."

"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."

"Sometimes it's difficult to order the dimensions correctly when trying to make Sankey flow diagrams."

"Currently, the way I'm configuring it uses reactive alerts, which means alerts are triggered when an issue occurs. I would prefer more proactive alerts in the future."

"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."

"It also detects anomalies proactively, but the same is not so true when it comes to real network problems, since they tend to just happen."

More Kentik cons

"I might like to see a better interface in the future. It's not necessarily easy to integrate the product with other vendors."

"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."

"This product should add other options for monitoring. It does not currently meet the broader needs of the banking industry in the version we have deployed."

"My understanding is that there are better products out there that do a better job."

"Importing the maps and being able to customize them could be easier."

"One of the biggest things that made us start to look at another product is we're not able to have an end to end monitoring from a user perspective throughout the system and back to the user. All the monitoring is from inside out, we need something that also can give us from outside in."

"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management. If they succeed in doing this, the solution will cover all the network troubleshooting aspects and will be a benefit."

"Sometimes it's a little bit slow."

More WhatsUp Gold cons

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."

"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."

"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."

"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."

"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."

"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."

"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."

"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."

"This is a well priced solution."

More WhatsUp Gold pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Media Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

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...

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What needs improvement with Kentik?

Kentik can be improved by enhancing the alerting system, especially the way templates work and the hierarchy of these alerts.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Kentik?

My main use case for Kentik is as a network monitoring system and flow analysis tool. A specific example of how I use Kentik for network monitoring is monitoring devices or services that go down an...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?

Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?

It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?

My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.

See all answers

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kentik

September 2026

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Buyer's Guide

WhatsUp Gold

September 2026

Download WhatsUp Gold product report

Overview

Kentik provides real-time visibility into network infrastructure, focusing on monitoring, data visualization, and flow analysis to manage traffic patterns efficiently.

With robust analytics capabilities, Kentik offers insights into BGP peering status, aids in DDoS detection, and allows for detailed telemetry through its intuitive interface. The platform's SaaS nature simplifies operations by eliminating server maintenance concerns. Multi-vendor support and synthetic testing enhance network security and performance by simulating customer scenarios, while its API offers automation for querying and reporting tasks.

What are the key features of Kentik?

Real-Time Visibility: Monitors network infrastructure effectively.
Data Visualization: Offers powerful tools for viewing complex data.
Flow Analysis: Analyzes traffic flow for optimal management.
BGP Peering Insights: Provides in-depth peering status checks.
DDoS Alerting: Notifies about potential DDoS threats.
Data Explorer: Aids in understanding traffic patterns.
Synthetic Testing: Simulates scenarios to enhance security and performance.

What benefits can be found in user reviews?

Automation: Users value the flexibility of its API for automating tasks.
Ease of Use: SaaS model streamlines user engagement, eliminating server maintenance.
Flexibility: Report customization and query settings are highly appreciated.
Enhanced Observability: Telemetry and multi-vendor support increase oversight.

Industries implement Kentik for network monitoring, traffic management, and flow data analysis across both on-prem and cloud setups. It proves valuable for detecting DDoS events, managing peering relationships, and optimizing costs, besides managing CDN configurations and performing synthetic tests in diverse environments.

Kentik

WhatsUp Gold stands out with its comprehensive network monitoring, dynamic mapping, and real-time alerts, offering essential tools for managing extensive IT infrastructures.

WhatsUp Gold provides robust capabilities in network visibility through dynamic mapping and NetFlow analysis. The platform's interactive topology aids in pinpointing issues effectively. Auto-discovery ensures complete network device tracking. While offering an intuitive interface and integration with Cisco ServiceNow, users find server performance monitoring useful for incident handling. However, improvements are anticipated in application monitoring and Active Directory integration. The pricing model and customization options leave room for enhancement. Despite these, users benefit from its integrated dashboards for immediate device health checks and network updates, making it beneficial for large-scale infrastructure management.

What features does WhatsUp Gold offer?

Network Monitoring: Provides continuous oversight of network components
Dynamic Mapping: Offers visual representation of network topology
NetFlow Analysis: Delivers insights into bandwidth utilization
Threshold Alerts: Notifies users upon reaching set performance thresholds
Auto-Discovery: Detects devices automatically for complete network coverage

What benefits should users expect from reviews?

Comprehensive Visibility: Enhanced understanding of network elements
Real-Time Monitoring: Immediate insights into network and device status
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive solution suitable for expansive networks
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies the management of complex networks

Organizations in sectors like telecommunications, education, and healthcare utilize WhatsUp Gold for their network monitoring needs. Telecom companies track switches and routers, educational institutions manage bandwidth usage, and healthcare facilities monitor device availability to ensure seamless operations.

Progress Software

Sample Customers

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

Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. WhatsUp Gold

September 2026

Free Report: Kentik vs. WhatsUp Gold

Find out what your peers are saying about Kentik vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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