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NIKSUN NetVCR 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

NIKSUN NetVCR
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
99th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of NIKSUN NetVCR is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.4%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Himanshu Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
High performance, quick packet monitoring, and helpful support
The solution could improve by having automatic mitigation. For example, as soon as a problem occurs the solution alarms and mitigates the situation immediately. In a feature release of the solution they should add features related to automation and remediation. Automation would help increase level of security the solution provides.
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

"The unique selling point of NIKSUN is its ability to scale and its reporting capabilities. NIKSUN captures the packets at a very high speed, from one GB to 160 Gbps also. It offers report granularity in nanoseconds."
"The most valuable features of NIKSUN NetVCR are its performance and forensic capabilities. Additionally, the information that the solution provides is highly detailed and useful. When dealing with network traffic packets can be sent at a high speed causing some security issues, but this solution is able to rapidly monitor the packets providing security."
"The solution is user-friendly and has many options for customized monitoring that other tools don't have."
"Monitoring capabilities are at a high level and it is easy to see utilization, access ports, and CPU memory in real time or through a lens for long-term visualization."
"It combines and presents information from many different sources, giving a corporate-wide vision on a single pane of glass."
"The benefit of this solution is the reporting. We're able to report on and see our network in a graphical form. We are able to detect when a device is added to a network."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
"The connectivity of the solution is very good."
"SolarWinds is reasonably priced."
"We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down."
 

Cons

"NIKSUN is a passive solution. It provides you with you data, alerts, reports and the root cause of issues. However, it requires a person to make use of this functionality. If an event is happening and nobody attends to it, the effects of the event could be severe."
"The solution could improve by having automatic mitigation. For example, as soon as a problem occurs the solution alarms and mitigates the situation immediately."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve by adding the deepest inspection, performance networking, and IP address discovery."
"The console could be more user-friendly. It would be better if SolarWinds updated the user interface."
"This product could improve by adding cloud monitoring. I want SolarWinds NPM to do much more integration, and have more involvement in cloud monitoring, like AWS or Google, or Azure. I feel like it requires lots of improvement for cloud monitoring in NPM."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"The initial setup of SolarWinds NPM is complex, and I find it challenging."
"This solution would benefit from expanding on the capabilities within the API."
"There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better."
"The price of the solution can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is high. There is an annual license costs."
"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."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"There is a permanent license and also a subscription level which has annual fees. The price of the solution is fair."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"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."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"Quite highly priced"
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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
No data available
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

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

NetVCR
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Visa, FedEx, CitiGroup, IDC
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about NIKSUN NetVCR vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.