

SolarWinds NPM and PRTG Network Monitor compete in the comprehensive network monitoring solutions category. SolarWinds NPM has the upper hand with its advanced features catering to medium to large enterprises, though PRTG Network Monitor excels in environments that prioritize simplicity and quick deployment.
Features: SolarWinds NPM provides detailed insights into network performance with features like NetPath and real-time data on device performance, making it well-suited for medium to large enterprises. Its capabilities extend to monitoring virtual machines and servers, providing a granular view of infrastructure. PRTG Network Monitor offers a user-friendly design with rich visualization capabilities and a straightforward setup process, appealing to environments where ease of use is critical. It includes an intuitive interface and comprehensive dashboard functionalities.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM needs to address challenges in real-time analytics and enterprise-level scaling. Its integration with other tools also requires enhancement. PRTG Network Monitor's areas for improvement include expanding its enterprise scalability, enhancing detailed reporting capabilities, and broadening its range of sensors and integrations.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM offers flexible deployment options across on-premises and hybrid environments, though its technical support can be inconsistent, especially for enterprise-level clients. PRTG Network Monitor is praised for its straightforward deployment and responsive support, although international market support could improve.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM offers a cost-effective solution for enterprises with modular pricing, but the cost can escalate as more features are added. It provides significant ROI through comprehensive network insights. PRTG Network Monitor has a simpler licensing model that is more cost-effective for smaller businesses, though its shift to subscription models requires careful long-term pricing strategy consideration.
It provides accurate data for utilization, allowing us to monitor and optimize our investments in WAN connection capacity.
After introducing PRTG Network Monitor, we have saved time, and it's easy for everybody to monitor everything.
The implementation reduced our employee resources from 20-25 to 5-6 employees.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
They resolve our queries 24/7.
The setup process is well-documented, making it easy to deploy.
Tutorials are available so I can manage any issue with PRTG Network Monitor easily.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
On a scale of one to ten, scalability is rated as 9.5.
PRTG Network Monitor has the ability to scale and add new devices.
You can install them in each network, even if they are not connected, and it works.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
We haven't needed vendor support for the last three years, which demonstrates the product's stability.
PRTG Network Monitor is stable in my experience, and I have not encountered issues with crashes or downtime.
PRTG Network Monitor is very stable and requires low maintenance.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
The initial auto-discovery added too many unnecessary sensors, so auto-discovery should only take the necessary sensors into consideration.
They need to improve application performance monitoring, error tracing mechanisms, and log management.
PRTG Network Monitor should provide syslog monitoring since it is not available at this time.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
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.
The licensing part is a recurring license for every year, which is very affordable, making PRTG Network Monitor budget-friendly.
Pricing is by the number of devices, not by sensor.
The prices are very high for PRTG Network Monitor.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
It is not too pricey and is adequate.
PRTG Network Monitor already provided me with 100 free sensors, which is enough for my network monitoring.
PRTG Network Monitor has a good dashboard that shows each and every piece of information, so we can easily find out what is happening with the systems.
These reports help me in my day-to-day work, and I rely on them because they provide proof during escalation, with exact downtime logs and related information.
Whenever any node is down in our network, whether it is a server or any network device, we receive information through email that the device is down.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| SolarWinds NPM | 3.6% |
| PRTG Network Monitor | 3.3% |
| Other | 93.1% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 59 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 19 |
| Large Enterprise | 50 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 59 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 33 |
| Large Enterprise | 85 |
PRTG Network Monitor runs on a Windows machine within your network, collecting various statistics from the machines, software, and devices which you designate. PRTG comes with an easy-to-use web interface with point-and-click configuration. You can easily share data from it with non-technical colleagues and customers, including via live graphs and custom reports. This will let you plan for network expansion, see what applications are using most of your connection, and make sure that no one is hogging the entire network just to torrent videos.
To monitor a large IT environment, it's important to be able to scale PRTG up. Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes all the proven capabilities of PRTG Network Monitor, which are enhanced by exclusive ITOps Board for a service-oriented, central overview of multiple PRTG servers.
SolarWinds NPM is a network monitoring solution that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages quickly and efficiently. The solution is a powerful tool that can help you increase service levels, reduce downtime with multi vendor network monitoring, simplify the management of complex network devices, improve operational efficiency, and much more.
SolarWinds NPM Features
SolarWinds NPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SolarWinds NPM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SolarWinds NPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SolarWinds NPM solution.
PeerSpot user Andrew N., Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical, says, “The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.” He also adds, “From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. And, The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
Daniel S., Systems and Data Warehouse Supervisor at MMSD, mentions, “The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.”
A Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm explains, “As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service.”
Dinesh N., Digital Innovation at Bobcat Company, states, “The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.”
Fazal A., Implementation & Support Specialist at 360Factors, comments, “We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down. In the event an interface goes down, we have multiple reports that include availability monitoring, network uptime monitoring, and network downtime monitoring. These reports are on multiple schedules such as the end of the day, end of the last business day of the week, monthly, and quarterly. This gives us the ability to provide reports to our management and let them know the performance of our network.”
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