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NETSCOUT vSTREAM 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 vSTREAM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
81st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
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 vSTREAM is 0.3%, down 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

KL
A user-friendly solution that is easy to install and improves visibility
I would like to see improvements made to the user guide. From my personal experience, it is helpful to see a list of steps describing what to do next in different situations. An example is what to do and what to back up in the case of certain types of failure. There are also cases where a customer can't understand specific features. Enhancements to the user guide would be helpful for this. More features for network fragmentation would be helpful.
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

"One of the valuable features is the packet decoding."
"vSTREAM gives us better visibility and reporting about our network infrastructure, allowing for cost-optimization."
"All the features are very good. The monitoring of the equipment, the configuration manager, and the IP address monitoring are great."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its graphical interface and reports."
"One of the best features is the reports feature."
"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the alerts."
"SolarWinds NPM has a colorful UI and many easy-to-use features. It does not need to be configured as much and is also easy to install."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
 

Cons

"Room for improvement exists in filtering in the packet decode."
"I would like for it to have a smaller footprint of the virtual appliance and better performance."
"I would like to see improvements made to the user guide."
"The reporting module that got integrated into the system itself, used to be a standalone solution and I preferred that."
"Technical support can be slow to respond."
"The scalability can be better."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve the graphics of the interface and more customized reporting."
"There isn't support available to us as they don't offer support in our country."
"The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market."
"Each model has different features, so clients need to purchase a separate model for SQL monitoring, database monitoring, network traffic analyzer, HTTP traffic, etc. So each feature they need is in a different model, but customers would prefer an all-in-one solution."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is quite expensive."
"It is expensive."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"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."
"Quite highly priced"
"Price could be improved on"
"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."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
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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
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
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

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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

vSTREAM
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metropolitan Police Agency, Banpara, PropertyRoom.com
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about NETSCOUT vSTREAM vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.