

SolarWinds NPM and NetMon are two prominent network monitoring solutions competing in the network infrastructure monitoring category. While both offer extensive capabilities, SolarWinds NPM seems to have the upper hand due to its robust functionalities and comprehensive monitoring expertise.
Features: SolarWinds NPM is renowned for its real-time network device monitoring, custom alerting system, and integration with tools like NetPath and PerfStack. It provides flexibility through modular pricing, allowing users to customize feature purchases based on needs. Additionally, its ease of deployment and SNMP monitoring capabilities are highly appreciated by users. NetMon excels in traffic analysis with built-in deep packet analytics and is notably praised for its simplicity and threat detection efficiency.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM could enhance its interface and reduce configuration complexity. A more intuitive alert configuration and streamlined detailed monitoring processes are suggested improvements. The software is also perceived as resource-intensive and costly when adding modules. NetMon, on the other hand, could enhance its integration with various tools and improve cost efficiency. Enhancements in database compatibility and user experience are also desired by users.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM supports both on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments, praised for ease of setup but noted for demanding system requirements. Customer service is generally supported by the Thwack community, though direct support may face delays. NetMon offers flexibility with on-premises and private cloud deployment options. Customer feedback indicates satisfactory support, highlighting slow response times for non-urgent issues.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM is considered expensive, notably when additional features require separate purchases. However, it delivers significant ROI by enabling cost savings through precise infrastructure management. NetMon, despite its cost, is valued for its cost-performance efficiency, delivering robust visibility and threat detection through its deep packet analysis capabilities.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| SolarWinds NPM | 4.4% |
| NetMon | 0.4% |
| Other | 95.2% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 2 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 7 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 59 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 33 |
| Large Enterprise | 84 |
NetMon offers significant capabilities in log aggregation, traffic analysis, and real-time network insights. Its ease of use accommodates both entry-level and advanced functionalities, enhancing network visibility and threat detection.
NetMon provides seamless analytics with its real-time dashboards and advanced AI integration. The platform is designed for comprehensive monitoring and detailed analysis, making it indispensable for identifying network traffic, origins, destinations, and facilitating threat detection through lateral traffic visibility. Despite its powerful analytics and customization features, improvements in product integration, customer support, and pricing could increase its competitive edge. Connectivity, topology visualization, and server performance are areas noted for enhancement. Integration with protocols like Gflow and Netflow might alleviate agent-based restriction challenges. NetMon sends correlated data to LogRhythm SIEM for enhanced threat analysis and is used for tasks like traffic analysis and DPA.
What are NetMon's key features?NetMon is widely adopted in industries requiring detailed traffic monitoring and security, such as finance and healthcare. Its capabilities in traffic type identification and correlated analysis make it essential for environments where detecting irregular patterns is critical. It's utilized for network security through comprehensive analysis and integration with SIEM systems.
SolarWinds NPM is a network monitoring solution that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages quickly and efficiently. The solution is a powerful tool that can help you increase service levels, reduce downtime with multi vendor network monitoring, simplify the management of complex network devices, improve operational efficiency, and much more.
SolarWinds NPM Features
SolarWinds NPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SolarWinds NPM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SolarWinds NPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SolarWinds NPM solution.
PeerSpot user Andrew N., Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical, says, “The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.” He also adds, “From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. And, The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
Daniel S., Systems and Data Warehouse Supervisor at MMSD, mentions, “The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.”
A Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm explains, “As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service.”
Dinesh N., Digital Innovation at Bobcat Company, states, “The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.”
Fazal A., Implementation & Support Specialist at 360Factors, comments, “We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down. In the event an interface goes down, we have multiple reports that include availability monitoring, network uptime monitoring, and network downtime monitoring. These reports are on multiple schedules such as the end of the day, end of the last business day of the week, monthly, and quarterly. This gives us the ability to provide reports to our management and let them know the performance of our network.”
We monitor all Network Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.