No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

NetBrain vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

"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."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"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."
"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."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"This tool is exactly what we wanted and needed."
"SolarWinds NPM has helped our organization by providing a proactive approach to understanding the current trends in the environment, utilization of the resources, and providing inventory reports of the environment."
"One of my clients is a bank; SolarWinds is primarily used in banking to limit network downtime to less than one or two minutes, with all the ATMs connected so the bank can respond quickly when the network is down."
"Feature rich produce suite that addresses many aspects of BSM."
"I have been able to catch network/server issues before they became critical."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there."
"As far as assisting in being proactive in our network, it's been a great help in helping us maintain a healthy environment and being proactive and making sure things are up to date and upgraded."
"The ease of deployment is great."
 

Cons

"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
"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."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"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."
"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."
"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market."
"The dashboards for this solution could be improved."
"They don't have a local support team."
"SolarWinds should have integrations back into products like ExtraHop, VIAVI, Riverbed, and NETSCOUT."
"My team has had a lot of issues with support."
"There are some issues when trying to monitor multiple networks with the same IP ranges. The solution for this is to purchase additional modules."
"If they did some type of synthetic monitoring, it would have been better."
"SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features."
 

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."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
"There is a permanent license and also a subscription level which has annual fees. The price of the solution is fair."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Troubleshooting solutions are best for your needs.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.