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NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE 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

NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
32nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Leandro Di Maria - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers real-time monitoring capabilities, which help businesses optimize their operations
The tools are part of managed environments, but when the capabilities of the routers need to be increased, we use NETSCOUT to manage things at an international level. The tool's user interface is okay. It would be great if the tool could provide alerts during attacks in Spanish. In the next release, if the traffic analysis could send our company an alert before an attack starts, it would be even better. Before an attack starts, seeing the traffic behavior and activities would be great. The tool should also share alerts since it is an area where the product has certain shortcomings.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the single pane of glass view because it presents everything in one window, obviously. You can see it all. With a quick glance, you get a pretty good snapshot of what's going on in a particular situation."
"The solution's technical support team consists of good engineers and technicians."
"This is a very reliable and complete solution for troubleshooting and monitoring environments."
"The most valuable feature of NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE is the network troubleshooting analysis. You can pinpoint an issue before it could shut down the network."
"I like the single pane of glass view. I like being able to go to one place instead of having to hunt around for everything."
"The most valuable features of this solution are monitoring and maintaining traffic queuing, as well as seeing who is using the bandwidth."
"I like the tracking feature to track devices and see where they are connected. This is very practical."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly interface and the ease of deployment."
"I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization."
"It gives us a map of the network setup and one console to see the entire network."
"It is scalable."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"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."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
 

Cons

"They require a lot of manual effort as traffic flows, networks, and formal times change."
"Before an attack starts, seeing the traffic behavior and activities would be great. The tool should also share alerts since it is an area where the product has certain shortcomings."
"In terms of additional features, I would like to see better event notification. Right now, we put in an email address to receive an alert and it receives every event and every alert that comes out. We need something a little more granular."
"The price of the solution could be reduced."
"The GUI interface and dashboards could be more attractive to the customer."
"Usability is the area with the biggest room for improvement. We've found that with NETSCOUT, while it's a fantastic product, the usability is a major factor because there are just way too many clicks. It's obvious, from our experience, that the people who are developing the product aren't using it."
"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."
"SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"The solution is not always good with new features, so it's take a long time."
"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."
"The only real caveat that we have or that I have an issue with is when I go on vacation, it's a little hard for me to go and modify alerts so that I don't get alerted about things when I'm on vacation."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers."
"It would be nice to have a test to check if you can access a particular device via API without installing it and waiting for a poll cycle. You should have the capacity to initiate a test to see if it was reachable and get the results almost immediately."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost is contracted on a yearly basis. There is no additional cost beyond the standard licensing."
"The tool's price is okay. On a scale of one to ten, I rate it as a five, where one means it is not expensive, and ten means it is the most expensive."
"The price of NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE is high. The other solutions are less expensive but we cannot depend on the other solutions, they are not as stable."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"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."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"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."
"It is too expensive."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
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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
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
6%
Educational Organization
35%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE?
The tool's price is okay. On a scale of one to ten, I rate it as a five, where one means it is not expensive, and ten means it is the most expensive.
What needs improvement with NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE?
The tools are part of managed environments, but when the capabilities of the routers need to be increased, we use NETSCOUT to manage things at an international level. The tool's user interface is o...
What is your primary use case for NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE?
I use the solution in my company to analyze international traffic.
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

nGeniusPULSE
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Banco Votorantim
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.