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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 Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PRTG Network Monitor4.1%
Zabbix11.4%
SolarWinds NPM4.4%
Other80.1%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.4%
Zabbix11.4%
LibreNMS4.4%
Other79.8%
Network Monitoring Software
Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor2.8%
Zabbix25.1%
Checkmk10.1%
Other62.0%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Adinath Bhokare - PeerSpot reviewer
Has helped detect server failures in real time and improved incident response through clear dashboards
When I use PRTG Network Monitor, it shows which servers go down or crash, displaying real-time reports and related information. We have configured PRTG Network Monitor to trigger an alert if any sensor or server goes down for more than five minutes. PRTG Network Monitor shows cause and effect clearly. For example, when our internet link failed, it displayed which dependent services were impacted. The feature in PRTG Network Monitor improved communication within my team since everyone can see the same dashboard. It saves me from constant manual checks as everything I care about is automatically tracked. PRTG Network Monitor has positively impacted my organization because it shows cause and effect clearly. We can see the real-time dashboard and take immediate action based on that. PRTG Network Monitor helped us detect the failing RAID controller before it completely collapsed, allowing us to avoid potential data loss.
Tochukwu Uzomba - PeerSpot reviewer
Rich modular monitoring capabilities offer tailored monitoring needs with good support
SolarWinds NPM is used for monitoring different solutions like database, infrastructure, and network performance. Each of these requires separate solutions, and SolarWinds provides modular options for monitoring Based on my experiences, SolarWinds NPM can handle large network infrastructures…
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 a very stable solution. There are no bugs, glitches and we have not experienced any crashing."
"The initial setup was easy. We didn't have any issues with the process and everything rolled out smoothly."
"Nice product with an easy interface to use and a large variety of sensors."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard interface. It's very clean, it's very simple to use."
"Ease of set-up – it is quick and easy to add a probe and start collecting data from a device."
"I really love the activity library. It gives the flexibility to discover data and metrics about my interface and data server."
"The reporting module is easy to configure."
"Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the alerts."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"It's a very good tool and a very stable tool."
"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."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers."
"The alerting system in SolarWinds NPM aids in proactive network management."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
 

Cons

"PRTG Network Monitor needs to show bandwidth utilization in proper graphs. It isn't easy to learn."
"PRTG Network Monitor can be improved as there is a lot of manual cleanup needed, which could be reduced."
"PRTG Network Monitor can improve by adding prevention and detection features."
"There are some vendor-specific sensors in PRTG Network Monitor, particularly for older hardware, that don't always provide consistent results."
"Sometimes, it is difficult to drill down further to get information, e.g., if we saw spike in traffic, then we would want to drill down and find out what is causing that spike in traffic."
"I would like to see more updates available in this solution."
"They should work on syncing the solution with Gmail."
"Once you start going above 5000 sensors, things do start to get a bit shaky. There are some best practice out there that you will need to adopt and be aware of."
"There needs to be more integration of widgets, especially for reporting purposes."
"Sometimes there are issues when upgrading to a new version of the product."
"The aesthetic widgets should be dynamic widgets, so the customization can be even more customizable."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market."
"Having more technical and support resources available in Saudi Arabia would be helpful."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license to use PRTG Network Monitor and it is annually."
"The price of PRTG Network Monitor is reasonable for the features that the solution provides. They charge you per monitoring, not per node, it is per port that you need for a device."
"The scalability is there, but smaller companies might need CAM software to be able afford the product."
"PRTG Network Monitor is very expensive."
"We have an unlimited perpetual license, so we just pay support costs and it can scale throughout the organization."
"It's an annual license that is based on the number of endpoints that we're tracking and using."
"It is about £4,500 for the first year, then about another 15 to 20 percent annually after that. So, we are looking at about £1000 running costs a year. When you think about how much an outage costs per minute, it's negligible."
"We pay for a perpetual license and we have a support fee."
"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."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"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."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"The product is expensive."
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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
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business56
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise41
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise20
 

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 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
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: September 2025.
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