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NetCrunch vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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

NetCrunch
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
78th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
63rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (28th), Log Management (52nd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of NetCrunch is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.7%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
NetCrunch0.7%
Other95.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1038504 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator, Technical Lead at Connectivity Wireless
A network monitoring platform with a useful reporting feature, but permission-based options could be better
The initial setup is fairly easy. Most of it's wizard-based. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to set it up. But if you don't know certain things related to protocols and everything else, it might be difficult. If you know how SNMP works, it'll be fairly simple to set up.
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

"Reporting on NetCrunch is pretty good. It's very similar to SolarWinds. It's just a different interface. The majority of everything there was beneficial."
"Reporting on NetCrunch is pretty good; it's very similar to SolarWinds, just with a different interface, and the majority of everything there was beneficial."
"The setup is very intuitive and quick - it all just took a few minutes we were done."
"SolarWinds core data is organized in a very good way and the solution can easily be interconnected with other management systems to get information not only from networking devices but also applications and servers."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
"Solarwinds NPM has lots of features not found in some other network performance monitoring tools e.g. seamless integration with Microsoft Active Directory."
"It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools."
"We found that it was easy to operate, and it was simple if anyone has entry-level working experience or even if someone is not experienced."
"The most valuable feature is the way it monitors the environment, and how user-friendly the console is for the end-user. The interface is also very easy and it captures all the information very well."
"Provides instant visibility to our support team across all the networks we monitor, allowing us to zero in on the most urgent issues and easily identify root causes of problems."
 

Cons

"Our network is made up of a lot of Cisco devices, and it needs improvements."
"I didn't care for the role-based, permission-based options, which were not the best."
"I didn't care for the role-based, permission-based options, which were not the best."
"There isn't a great deal of flexibility to create custom metrics that can be discovered easily or custom aggregation schemes."
"There were some version releases that had stability issues but the support team was very good at letting us know what we needed to do to fix the issues."
"The solution is expensive and may not be very affordable for startups or smaller companies."
"The stability when multiple modules are added could be addressed. We have the need to restart the monitoring solution on a weekly basis as we've combined NPM with a variety of other SolarWinds utilities."
"The reporting is good, but I want it to be a little easier when creating custom reports. The reports are all on the website now, but it takes some know how to get some to display the way you would like."
"We do see issues, but not so many major ones."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"Another feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"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."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
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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
Construction Company
24%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Agriculture
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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

Ask a question
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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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

manufacturing, banking, utilities, energy, universities, healthcare institutions, school districts, military and police entities, non-profit organizations, 
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about NetCrunch vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.