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NetFort LANGuardian vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

NetFort LANGuardian
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
95th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of NetFort LANGuardian is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.7%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
NetFort LANGuardian0.4%
Other95.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

it_user172854 - PeerSpot reviewer
Research Special Projects Lead at a university with 501-1,000 employees
Cost effective but when we originally purchased LANGuardian, some features needed further development.
The ability to detect and decipher torrent traffic for the purpose of identifying what some refer to as "copyright violators" Our CIO asked us to track down the source of undesired uploads, which trigger e-mails received by outside bodies regarding what they refer to as "copyright violations",…
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

"Our CIO asked us to track down the source of undesired uploads, which trigger e-mails received by outside bodies regarding what they refer to as "copyright violations", and Languardian was the most efficient and effective tool for the job."
"If you are looking for a solid solution that can be easily deployed then I'd recommend considering Netfort solutions."
"We switched back to SolarWinds because of ease of use."
"This product is of good caliber and we get better results by using it on our network."
"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."
"Can easily be interconnected with other management systems."
"Performance history is the most valuable feature, especially when tracking down a problem."
"It provided visibility into network performance, which at the time we really did not have."
"SolarWinds makes a great product and their support is second to none!"
"What I like about SolarWinds is the application health monitoring system, which is a very good system that I recommend to big companies in the pharmaceutical or the banking industries with large networks and very critical servers."
 

Cons

"Sure, at the time we bought the product, the GUI and graphs/reports/pie charts etc ... were not fully developed."
"It takes a long time to load results. I think it would be great if they fix the slowness issue in the next release."
"Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today."
"I would give technical support a rating of 7 out of 10."
"There have been some versions that have had stability issues, but the current version seems pretty stable."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market."
"This solution would benefit from expanding on the capabilities within the API."
"SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution, aside from the fact that they had a major hack a couple of years ago and effectively allowed the Russian government to completely hack their code, making everyone vulnerable."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"It is expensive."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"It is too expensive."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"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."
"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."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
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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
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
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

LANGuardian
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Armadale, NCG Group, King Faisal Hospital
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about NetFort LANGuardian vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,680 professionals have used our research since 2012.