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 (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), 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 3.3%, up 2.8% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 3.7% mindshare, down 4.4% since last year.
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetBrain3.3%
Wireshark18.8%
AirMagnet Survey PRO8.5%
Other69.4%
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
Zabbix3.7%
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE2.9%
Other89.7%
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

"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"One of the best features is the reports feature."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface."
"Monitoring capabilities are at a high level and it is easy to see utilization, access ports, and CPU memory in real time or through a lens for long-term visualization."
"Its GUI is very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use a few custom properties to manage multiple nodes and alerts; thus, saving hardware resource usage."
"All the features are very good. The monitoring of the equipment, the configuration manager, and the IP address monitoring are great."
"Outages have reduced by probably around 90% because we're able to take and proactively add space to a disk or add processors to a server before users know there's a problem."
 

Cons

"The pricing needs to be improved."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"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."
"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."
"Netbrain must get AWS functionality done."
"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."
"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 console could be more user-friendly. It would be better if SolarWinds updated the user interface."
"Bulk Node attach is chaos."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"Resource utilization is heavy so you need to analyze the server before using it for multiple roles."
"There are some issues when trying to monitor multiple networks with the same IP ranges. The solution for this is to purchase additional modules."
"The only thing I don’t like is that NTA license size is tied to NPM’s license size, since my organization's need for NTA is lower than our need for NPM."
"You could question the scalability. It could be improved."
"I have not had a good experience with technical support because most of the time when I contact them, they first want to know whether you have a license."
 

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."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Troubleshooting solutions are best for your needs.
916,956 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
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

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.
916,956 professionals have used our research since 2012.