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PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

Network Monitoring Software
Network Monitoring Software
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Noman-Saleem - PeerSpot reviewer
Detects suden changes but significant pricing concerns affect the effectiveness of network traffic troubleshooting
We use PRTG Network Monitor for monitoring traffic on interfaces and the behavior of network traffic. If there are sudden changes in traffic or any configuration issues, we can sort them out using PRTG. It's very helpful for troubleshooting and monitoring traffic utilization on our interfaces…
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.
VIVEK PATHAK - PeerSpot reviewer
Offering reasonably good dashboarding features but needs to improve the application performance monitoring
My company uses Riverbed for application performance monitoring. I was doing research so that I could understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provide APM capabilities similar to Riverbed, which allows our company to get a packet capture of an entire session, and on the basis of it, we look at the application performance monitoring part. With SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, my company does SNMP polling, so it can drag an entire session, but it focuses more on availability, CPU memory, and server connection status. In Riverbed, my company catches an entire system, so when we deal with two applications, we have end-to-end app visibility. All the application monitoring happens through Riverbed. Our company's main problem is that, as of now, we have two different products in our organization, and we don't want to continue with the multiple products currently. I wanted to understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor already have capabilities like Riverbed, and if they do, then I wanted to figure out why our company should not go with SolarWinds and why we are using products from multiple vendors. My company needs to continue with either Riverbed or SolarWinds. I wanted to see which products are good for the organization and how much I want to continue with Riverbed.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is easy to use and intuitive, which is really important. It does what it says on the box by giving you a visual of the state of what is going on at any one time."
"It allows us to directly add individual VMs independently."
"PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational."
"The solution provides us response times to issues."
"I can customize the port as per my need and the real-time monitoring feature that is already provided to me."
"The solution has excellent redundant features."
"Its proactiveness is its most valuable feature. We already know when we come in, in the morning, if a server or site is down, as opposed to someone telling us."
"It is a very stable solution. There are no bugs, glitches and we have not experienced any crashing."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the vital states of the devices as it provides overall CPU and device health information."
"From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization."
"The initial setup was straightforward. We deployed the solution from new and completed the upgrades."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"We found that it was easy to operate, and it was simple if anyone has entry-level working experience or even if someone is not experienced."
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."
"Identifying the problem statement is easy."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
 

Cons

"PRTG would be improved if it required less memory to run."
"The database needs improvement."
"This solution is a good product so far, but I haven't been using it long enough to know how it could be improved."
"Users need to buy the more expensive licenses if they expect to be able to scale."
"We run it in a cluster, so we have two that run together. The cluster behind it is sketchy at times."
"PRTG Network Monitor is okay to use, but you'll need some time to analyze the data. If it can automatically locate or identify the problem area, it would be more helpful to users."
"PRTG Network Monitor could improve by having descriptions for the tab usages. The dashboards or interface could be easier to understand."
"I've encountered a challenge in my functions, particularly in adding and printing."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"If they’re going for a “cover everything” approach, then they need to do so and enable a bit more of the "cover everything approach" within every one of the tools."
"The dashboards for this solution could be improved. We would like to divide the dashboards to give a clear view to our management team to show what we have and what deficiencies exist in our network."
"The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds. Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team, especially during application-level issues."
"SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license."
"Sometimes there are issues when upgrading to a new version of the product."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."
"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have unlimited devices and sensors, and it is a bit pricey, but we do have unlimited sensors. With all things considered the price is fine, related to the solution itself. PRTG Network Monitor is good value for money."
"The price of PRTG Network Monitor is reasonable."
"We are licensed for 2500 endpoints."
"The scalability is there, but smaller companies might need CAM software to be able afford the product."
"Pricing for PRTG Network Monitor is a nine out of ten. It meets my company's budget and monitoring requirements. My company is on a perpetual license."
"Licenses are very expensive, so I would like to see cheaper licensing."
"When you buy PRTG, everything comes in one bundle. Licensing is very easy."
"If you're looking for a cost effective software I’d suggest this product."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"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."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"It is too expensive."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"The price is too high."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
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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
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it a...
What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?
The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?
The pricing is in the middle. It's not too high, nor too low, but it's reasonable.
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 ar...
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 scalabil...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and App...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
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