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NetBrain vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

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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
161
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (2nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. NetBrain is designed for Network Troubleshooting and holds a mindshare of 3.3%, up 2.8% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 3.6% mindshare, down 4.4% since last year.
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetBrain3.3%
Wireshark19.1%
AirMagnet Survey PRO8.3%
Other69.3%
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Zabbix3.6%
PRTG Network Monitor2.5%
Other90.3%
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

"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that you can click once and have a link test, see your network, and get an overall view of your network and its state."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"NetBrain is faster, better and level sets the engineering technical sets."
"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."
"SolarWinds NPM has helped our organization by proactively indicating if we are low on resources for a particular server."
"Technical support has always been great."
"The reports are excellent; they give good graphical information and a lot of great details about everything that's going on in my network, and it's easy to read and understand due to its visual nature."
"Through SolarWinds NPM, we discovered some interfaces were having issues, which we subsequently corrected; this has been very helpful for our operations."
"The most important feature is reporting. The reports that are generated are useful and they save a lot of time with respect to monitoring."
"Without NPM monitoring, we would be in a world of hurt and constantly responding to outages and unexpected downtime."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
 

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."
"If you're comparing NetBrain as an NDR, I would rate it as a four or five, however, NetBrain has a different aspect of looking at things within the network."
"Netbrain must get AWS functionality done."
"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."
"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."
"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
"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 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."
"The admin web site could be a lot faster."
"It would be beneficial if NPM offered support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), as currently, it does not support this and we are migrating our services there."
"GUI needs improvement with a more graphical dashboard."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve the graphics of the interface and more customized reporting."
"New, web-based interface lacks some features of traditional GUI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"It is too expensive."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
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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
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise87
 

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: August 2026.
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