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OmniPeek 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

OmniPeek
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
46th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (37th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of OmniPeek is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.4%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.4%
OmniPeek0.5%
Other96.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Vinal-Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Architect, internally known as Network Transformation Lead at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real-time analytics and alerts improve application performance and network operations
OmniPeek's ability to convert application visibility into flow helps me quickly understand application performance over LAN, WAN, or wireless. Its real-time analytics, integrated with LiveNX, allow me to monitor business-critical applications and set up alerts for application performance issues. This centralized dashboard and alert system is highly valuable for maintaining network operations.
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

"I believe the most crucial feature of OmniPeek search is the ability to sniff packets based on channel switching."
"OmniPeek's ability to convert application visibility into flow helps me quickly understand application performance over LAN, WAN, or wireless."
"The most valuable feature of OmniPeek is the ability to assign custom color codes to the different packets easily."
"It's a solid piece of software. It's stable."
"The most valuable feature of OmniPeek was the ability it gave us to see the connection procedure."
"The most valuable feature is OmniPeek is user-friendly."
"OmniPeek shows the entire packet flow and structure, particularly in security-related scenarios, whereas Wireshark sometimes fails to capture all packets."
"The most valuable features are the voice bot, which checks the quality of service for voice, and the expert view that gives me insight on what and where to troubleshoot."
"SolarWinds dashboard is very fast. Also, their interface is very good, it looks very user-friendly. The product allows me to see a summary of the network being monitored at a glance."
"We had some interfaces where the SFP Ports were having some problems after a while. We found which of the SFP Ports was having the error and changed it, so the bandwidth become okay."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface."
"The initial setup is easy."
"I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates."
"It's a very good tool and a very stable tool."
"The ability to customize the views and dashboards is nice. SolarWinds also allows us to access the data via the API. That's probably the feature I liked the most."
"SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users."
 

Cons

"OmniPeek doesn't support Linux or Unix installations, which prompted the shift to Wireshark."
"I am not using OmniPeek for automation, we only do manual testing. Automation testing is tedious to do. The automation should be more user-friendly. I have exposed some APIs but the usage is not user-friendly."
"I would like to see the saving feature improved. We have had issues if you do not save your progress then you have to start from the beginning."
"I would like to see the tool work in an open environment the same as how it does in a closed environment."
"I don't see a clear roadmap in the future for improving this software."
"The solution's automation has room for improvement."
"Making it more clear on how to configure the filters, or really automating them, would be an improvement."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve by adding the deepest inspection, performance networking, and IP address discovery."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds added some technical protocols like Modbus. The market needs a simple solution for monitoring a technical device."
"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."
"Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"It would be good to have high security."
"One of the challenges with SolarWinds is that in order to pull the data, we have to have a lot of false positives."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are different types of licenses available."
"The pricing for this solution could be improved, as it is a very expensive product."
"We have only purchased the add-on once and have not paid for any subsequent versions as it was too costly for us."
"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 expensive."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"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."
"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."
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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
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with OmniPeek?
There isn't anything specific that needs improvement in OmniPeek, as it performs better than Wireshark for our requirements. However, OmniPeek could benefit from supporting different platforms. Pla...
What is your primary use case for OmniPeek?
I have been working with the OmniPeek product for almost two years at the start of my career, primarily using it for wireless 802.11 Wi-Fi packets, sniffer, and analysis. My experience with OmniPee...
What advice do you have for others considering OmniPeek?
I didn't explore much about OmniPeek beyond its basic features. OmniPeek is user-friendly and easy to start working with, especially on the Windows platform. For beginners, it is very easy to handl...
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

Savvius OmniPeek
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Apcon, Aruba Networks, Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems, Ekahau, Gigamon Systems, HP, IBM, IXIA, Meru Networks, Napatech, NextComputing, Procera Networks, Qualcomm Atheros, Ralink Technology Corporation, Telchemy
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about OmniPeek vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.