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NetBrain vs SolarWinds NPM vs Statseeker 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetBrain2.8%
Wireshark13.0%
LinkRunner12.7%
Other71.5%
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.4%
Zabbix11.4%
LibreNMS4.4%
Other79.8%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Statseeker0.3%
Zabbix11.4%
SolarWinds NPM4.4%
Other83.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Tochukwu Uzomba - PeerSpot reviewer
Rich modular monitoring capabilities offer tailored monitoring needs with good support
SolarWinds NPM is used for monitoring different solutions like database, infrastructure, and network performance. Each of these requires separate solutions, and SolarWinds provides modular options for monitoring Based on my experiences, SolarWinds NPM can handle large network infrastructures…
JE
We can set up a dashboard to monitor the status of an entire site, which provides more insight into any issues across devices
One engineer is enough for the solution's maintenance. There has been a significant improvement in Statseeker in the last few versions. It includes a wallet map and features we plan to implement when deploying the latest or penultimate versions across all our sites. This will significantly assist in identifying sites surpassing thresholds or KPIs, making issue detection much more accessible. The threshold feature is handy for identifying delays and major outages. This graphical map enables us to quickly assess the scope of nationwide problems, allowing for swift action and efficient reporting to management and service providers. This tool facilitates monitoring by visualizing all network elements with their respective coordinates, highlighting any downtimes or issues through color-coded green for operational, orange for approaching thresholds, yellow for minor alarms, and red for critical issues. The tool is a monitoring tool that helps in identifying problems. It is necessary to have someone trained to set up the dashboards because they might require some programming or specific configuration skills. Once it's configured, it works well. It's not as straightforward as other tools where you plug in the device, and everything works. With Statseeker, you still need to put in some effort to set up your dashboard properly. It requires someone with good training and proficiency in setting up these dashboards. They can benefit the technical and operations teams, providing useful insights into the network and the executive management team to receive reports on the overall network health. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"The ability to customize the views and dashboards is nice. SolarWinds also allows us to access the data via the API. That's probably the feature I liked the most."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of SolarWinds NPM."
"Being able to easily, and quickly obtain disc space statistics from servers and determine how much was free or used on various volumes."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"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."
"It's a very good tool and a very stable tool."
"It is fairly simple and easy to use as an all-purpose network monitor."
"We were having some issues with a certain site, and it was only Statseeker that showed us what the problem was."
"This solution has helped us to proactively identify issues and push some of those fixes down to tier one."
"I like the fact that I can aggregate multiple interfaces into a single graph. It allows me to quickly the summary of traffic for multiple devices which is helpful."
"We're able to recover more expensive ports on our access line devices."
"Being able to look back historically at the uptime and downtime is invaluable."
"The most valuable feature is alerting."
"Device grouping is very easy, and you can discover thousands of devices in a few minutes."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
"In terms of scalability, there is room for improvement. When you start monitoring, if you have so many interfaces and you're trying to monitor them at a faster interval, or a shorter interval, you get to a point where you need to request another node."
"Consolidation of platforms would provide a smoother experience."
"GUI needs improvement with a more graphical dashboard."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve the graphics of the interface and more customized reporting."
"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."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"We decided that we were no longer going to trust that their products have not been capitalized."
"Maybe they could provide a little bit more flexibility on creating custom dashboards."
"That user interface for selecting things needs to be a little more intuitive."
"The user interface needs to be made more intuitive."
"The main issue I've seen, in the last six months to a year, is when I upgrade I seem to be hitting bugs. The upgrade won't go smoothly and I have to engage support. These things happen when you upgrade, it's not the end of the world, but from a stability point of view, the only time I've so far, is during upgrades."
"I would like to see more comprehensive reporting and alerting."
"Technical support for this solution is bad, as is everything with Cisco support."
"More private MIB object support, such as WAN optimisation performance and wireless, would be helpful."
"I would like to see fully automatic updates so that our version is always current."
 

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."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"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."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"It is expensive."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"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."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"Statseeker is pretty cheap."
"We pay a yearly maintenance fee of approximately $40,000 USD."
"This tool would probably be priced well if it had deeper NetFlow capabilities, but for our use case, in particular, we're only recovering ports after ninety days and looking at circuit congestion, it's pretty pricey."
"We paid $5,000 to $10,000 a year in maintenance."
"We now feel the pricing is a good value. Previously we had a just a normal license but now we've got an Enterprise license. Since the Enterprise, it's been a lot better value. We did think it was pretty expensive before, but with the Enterprise license it's almost less than half that price. If you have a number of accounts within the organization that use Statseeker, I would suggest get the Enterprise license."
"We have permanent licenses so there's really no cost, other than ongoing maintenance. When I think about it, that's running us about $20,000 a year."
"The yearly cost varies as per the number of devices being monitored. The cost for 25,000 devices is about $4500."
"We pay somewhere between $5,000 and $8,000 yearly in licensing fees."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise34
 

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 ar...
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 scalabil...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Statseeker?
We are content with our current setup and its features. Additionally, we appreciate Statseeker's responsiveness to ou...
What needs improvement with Statseeker?
There is a need for many developments to mature Statseeker. It should provide a study use case to show how it monitor...
What is your primary use case for Statseeker?
Statseeker provides the basic monitoring status of our network elements, including latency, ping delays, and ping dro...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
With active deployments in over 22 countries and many Fortune 100 firms, Statseeker monitors millions of interfaces in real-time. Some example customers include: FedEx, Optus, Verizon, California State University, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Monash University, Texas A&M University.
Find out what your peers are saying about Auvik, NetAlly, Wireshark and others in Network Troubleshooting. Updated: October 2025.
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