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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 (18th), Network Automation (6th)
SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (2nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. NetBrain is designed for Network Troubleshooting and holds a mindshare of 3.2%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 3.6% mindshare, down 4.5% since last year.
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetBrain3.2%
Wireshark18.4%
AirMagnet Survey PRO9.1%
Other69.30000000000001%
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Zabbix3.9%
PRTG Network Monitor2.7%
Other89.8%
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."
"Once it's up and running and you don't have the strange requirements I had, and you just want some basic maps, it'll work."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"This tool is exactly what we wanted and needed."
"NetBrain is very good when it comes to network mapping, as it looks for different assets within the network available, so router, firewall, applications, et cetera, and it gives you the full mapping, asset mapping along with the full range including the firmware software update and all those things."
"We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future."
"It provided visibility into network performance, which at the time we really did not have."
"We switched back to SolarWinds because of ease of use."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
"It is scalable."
"This solution provides one standardized platform for network device monitoring."
"SolarWinds NPM is generally used for network monitoring for all of the switches, networking equipment, as well as physical and virtual servers in the environment."
 

Cons

"It's okay on the value, a bit expensive for just maps, but makes it a lot easier to see things visually and take it from there."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"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 solution could integrate more automation."
"The user interface is not intuitive enough and needs improvements in certain parts."
"My team has had a lot of issues with support."
"The only other issue I have is that sometimes when upgrading, it becomes complicated to manage the upgrade."
"We had scalability issues. We have several additional servers, too, so upgrading is kind of a pain, but that's with all the other modules, too."
"We encountered an inability to display graphical views of some customized reports."
"SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution."
"The dashboards for this solution could be improved."
 

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."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"There is a permanent license and also a subscription level which has annual fees. The price of the solution is fair."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low."
"It is expensive."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
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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
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction 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 Enterprise86
 

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 Auvik, Wireshark, NetAlly and others in Network Troubleshooting. Updated: June 2026.
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