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Power Admin PA Server Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

Power Admin PA Server Monitor
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
49th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (20th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Power Admin PA Server Monitor is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.5%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.5%
Power Admin PA Server Monitor0.5%
Other96.0%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2897232 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Manager at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become streamlined and now supports complex enterprise workloads across all clouds
My advice to others looking into using Power Admin PA Server Monitor is that they should examine it carefully as it is a very good product. It has many parameters that you can configure and it is very efficient in power savings. I gave this product a rating of 9.
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

"The possibility to develop your own VB scripts."
"The satellite service installed on remote computers is an easy way to add clients, plus it's easy to deploy and to configure the licence is perpetual and not linked to one computer, so it's possible to remove a licence from one computer and use it on another with no extra cost"
"Power Admin PA Server Monitor is super friendly and easy to use, very efficient, and powerful."
"It did a good job of the collection and then an investigation of the net flow of information for understanding the applications that were being used at certain locations."
"You can monitor performance counters effortlessly."
"SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong."
"This product is extremely flexible and customizable, with significant out-of-the-box monitoring and, with custom properties and some ingenuity, you can get it to do pretty much anything else."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities."
"So far, there hasn't been anything that it hasn't been able to do for us."
"The most important feature is reporting. The reports that are generated are useful and they save a lot of time with respect to monitoring."
"ROI for Solarwinds products is excellent."
 

Cons

"Basic monitoring on Unix was working really well but it didn't really help under machines in Windows Domain Controller."
"The satellite service installation file could be separated from the server one. It would reduce the size of the file, and reduce the time to deploy on weak connections."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
"The solution could improve in many areas, such as the marketing and description of the products, providing areas of improvement, cloud capabilities, and being able to be more streamlined with the current integration points with other applications."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"This is a complex product to set up and I think it's really too detailed and could be simplified."
"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."
"User Interface needs improvement as it is not very attractive."
"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 module UIs can have different features based on what module you're in. I'd love to see feature parity between them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"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."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"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."
report
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915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
18%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise87
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Power Admin PA Server Monitor?
My main use case for Power Admin PA Server Monitor is for enterprise server business usage. I use Power Admin PA Server Monitor in my daily work to track specific enterprise applications for busine...
What advice do you have for others considering Power Admin PA Server Monitor?
My advice to others looking into using Power Admin PA Server Monitor is that they should examine it carefully as it is a very good product. It has many parameters that you can configure and it is v...
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

PA Server Monitor
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sauder Woodworking, Symantec, Microsoft, Skull Candy, NASA, Xerox, Chevron
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Power Admin PA Server Monitor vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.