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Power Admin PA Server Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

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
74th
Average Rating
6.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (29th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 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

it_user225771 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Network Engineer at a engineering company with 51-200 employees
The setup is straightforward, but t​he satellite service installation file could be separated from the server one.
* The status overview page provides a state of computers monitored and provides quickly what users need to focus on * 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
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 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"
"The possibility to develop your own VB scripts."
"You can monitor performance counters effortlessly."
"There are a lot of valuable features with SolarWinds NPM. We can receive a lot of detailed data from the monitoring that can use useful for investigations, especially when you are troubleshooting. It is very helpful. Overall it was a very good experience."
"One of my clients is a bank; SolarWinds is primarily used in banking to limit network downtime to less than one or two minutes, with all the ATMs connected so the bank can respond quickly when the network is down."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of SolarWinds NPM."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"The product is lightweight in terms of memory use, requiring only 10 megabytes or less."
"SolarWinds NPM is useful for any company that has business-critical applications running over a network and they want to monitor the network behavior."
"SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks."
 

Cons

"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."
"Basic monitoring on Unix was working really well but it didn't really help under machines in Windows Domain Controller."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"Map section and Bandwidth."
"The user should be able to customize the dashboard to their own requirements."
"The initial setup of SolarWinds NPM is complex, and I find it challenging."
"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the short retention period. Currently, it's just for seven days of data, which is very low, making it hard for my organization to keep that data. SolarWinds recommended a seven-day retention period, but my organization needs a fourteen-day data retention period. Hence, I'd like an increase in the retention period or the database limit in SolarWinds NPM because you can't go back to the data for any investigation if seven days have passed. Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the database, which needs to be a bit more mature. I want a modified database in the next release of SolarWinds NPM. I'd also like more options added to groups because, currently, it's very limited."
"Currently lacks integration with SMS services."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"It is expensive."
"It is too expensive."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
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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
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise86
 

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

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: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.