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ManageEngine OpManager vs SolarWinds NPM vs WhatsUp Gold 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

As of June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of ManageEngine OpManager is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
ManageEngine OpManager1.6%
WhatsUp Gold2.2%
Other92.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Charles A - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Director at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Reporting features improve operational efficiency while weekend support needs enhancement
Support is moderate and needs improvement, especially during weekends when technicians perform upgrades. During weekends, they need to provide more support to ensure a smooth transition. There is a call for ManageEngine OpManager to scale better in automation and AI functionality. Although the product stability is good, support enhancement is necessary to enable better planning for upgrades and maintenance activities.
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.
EC
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use ManageEngine OpManager to monitor our link status, latency, and errors."
"You can put all of your work on there, they'll send you an email or send you a text. That functionality as a network engineer is the one I like the most. I do like the fact that we can schedule reports. That works too because that's a lot fewer spreadsheets that I have to create."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to reach most of our network devices and get the most from them."
"Defining thresholds and other alerting criteria is fairly simple and would not require a lot of training, which is very useful if you are managing a large environment."
"The solution is easy to deploy; it's also easy to manage and monitor the environment, and instead of being reactive, it's proactive."
"We run weekly and monthly reports to provide exceptions, and it's helped our organization remediate problems proactively."
"Managing platforms and network device virtualization on one platform is beneficial."
"We have been in contact with technical support and are satisfied with the speed of their answers."
"We primarily use the solution for detecting weaknesses and portal connectivity with our client's machines, and we also use it to analyze the stacks of data to figure out where downtimes are and for how long."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"The ease of deployment is great."
"One of the best features is the reports feature."
"Single pane for monitoring scales and creates new business opportunities."
"SolarWinds is one of those tools that work across the spectrum with different products, such as Cisco HP, and it is very customizable."
"It combines and presents information from many different sources, giving a corporate-wide vision on a single pane of glass."
"Solarwinds NPM has lots of features not found in some other network performance monitoring tools e.g. seamless integration with Microsoft Active Directory."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."
"It is stable."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the application monitors that allow for discreet roaming on network devices."
"The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless."
"Our local support team provides excellent service."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The interface in the last few years it has been a lot greater, they are much more user-friendly. I like the interface."
 

Cons

"Based on the high cost, I'd rate the solution six out of ten. I don't know if I would recommend it."
"The main area for improvement for ManageEngine OpManager is its performance."
"ManageEngine OpManager could improve the default dashboards that are available. We are not able to customize them easily and they do not give us the information we need unless we customize them. You need to have the technical knowledge to be able to do it, the customization should be easier."
"The only problem with it is that the setup isn't very intuitive."
"The support for this solution needs to be improved significantly, to the point where we will no longer be using some of the available products because we cannot get the required support for them."
"There are certain things that are not possible to do with Op Manager. It's a solution that still needs time to develop."
"The solution is a bit difficult to configure. There are quite a number of configurations and plugins that you must handle early in the process."
"We would like link monitoring included. At times we need to monitor those specific links closely."
"Map section and Bandwidth."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"Time: A worldwide deployment can be confusing for dispersed users with non-local times. Each node should have a local time (with summer offset if appropriate) & each user should view & report in their local time."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"Better support and integration for vendors other than Cisco."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"GUI needs improvement with a more graphical dashboard."
"This solution didn't do the things we expected, so I don't know the likelihood of scaling it in the future, or continuing to use it."
"Setting up WhatsUp Gold is complicated and not easy because it requires managing SNMP and many complex settings in the devices it's monitoring, and fine-tuning it to fit our needs is also not very easy."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"Adding on services increases the cost and on the version we have there is no option for ATM monitoring."
"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."
"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."
"Improvements are needed in integration, especially for WhatsApp call and messages. Our region heavily uses WhatsApp Messenger for communication, and integration with this platform would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs depend on the number of devices and accounts that are being monitored by the solution."
"Pricing for ManageEngine OpManager depends on the number of nodes you onboard and whatever pricing is reflected on the ManageEngine portal which offers discounts from ten percent to fifteen percent. It purely depends on the sales volume and the negotiation. In my organization, there are about one thousand two hundred nodes which cost around $29,000 per year. There's no additional support fee or maintenance fee from ManageEngine OpManager. Pricing for the solution is highly competitive and I would rate it five out of five. ManageEngine OpManager is one of the most competitive options out there."
"ManageEngine OpManager has a three-tier licensing model."
"We had perpetual licenses. The cost was around 36,000 for OPManager, and then you'd have the yearly maintenance fee of 2,000 or 3,000."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis and the pricing is on the cheaper side."
"The initial cost is low and the add-ons are reasonable."
"The solution's licensing costs are yearly and based on the number of applications."
"As far as cost, it was around six hundred thousand rands ($40,500) for the year, for the renewals. That's the total cost for a four thousand node system including support and maintenance."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"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 most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
"This is a well priced solution."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
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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%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise86
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ManageEngine OpManager?
Based on my experience and use case, the setup cost and price of ManageEngine OpManager is good. However, if it were ...
What needs improvement with ManageEngine OpManager?
ManageEngine OpManager could improve by adding network device control capabilities. The control feature would be more...
What is your primary use case for ManageEngine OpManager?
I am using ManageEngine OpManager for network and server reliability. We have multiple locations, so integrating all ...
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 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 fir...
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 complic...
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...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bonita, Thorp Reed & Armstrong, Galaxy, Fiserv Credit Union Division, Universitas 21 Global, ERP Suites LLC
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, SolarWinds, Auvik and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: May 2026.
899,324 professionals have used our research since 2012.