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NetBrain vs SolarWinds NPM 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

NetBrain
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (17th), Network Automation (5th)
SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. NetBrain is designed for Network Troubleshooting and holds a mindshare of 3.1%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 3.6% mindshare, down 4.6% since last year.
Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetBrain3.1%
Wireshark14.3%
AirMagnet Survey PRO10.3%
Other72.3%
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Zabbix5.0%
PRTG Network Monitor3.3%
Other88.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"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."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"I like that SolarWinds NPM is a strong tool for monitoring network devices, switches, and routers. It's also a user-friendly tool. My team also likes how scalable it is."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface."
"The alerting and reporting capabilities of the tool are impressive"
 

Cons

"The solution could integrate more automation."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"Consolidation of platforms would provide a smoother experience."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds added some technical protocols like Modbus. The market needs a simple solution for monitoring a technical device."
"The aesthetic widgets should be dynamic widgets, so the customization can be even more customizable."
"The solution's network discovery and node addition processes need more work."
"The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market."
"Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier."
"If they’re going for a “cover everything” approach, then they need to do so and enable a bit more of the "cover everything approach" within every one of the tools."
"The solution could be more secure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"It is not an expensive product."
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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
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

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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 are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
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 scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about NetBrain vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: May 2020.
883,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.