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Pulseway vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Pulseway
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
74th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (28th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (17th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pulseway is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Pulseway0.7%
Other95.7%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2132892 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Hogan's Systems Consulting, LLC
Great notifications, a wide variety of features, and excellent monitoring capabilities
It would be nice if it also had a desktop application, similar to the phone app, which would allow me to monitor and control computers from my desktop. It's nice to be able to do things remotely using my phone; however, in many cases, it would be very helpful to be able to do things from a desktop or laptop computer. This would be especially useful for things like remote access to computers. It's too hard to do much on a Windows computer using a tiny phone screen. Being able to do things from a desktop or laptop computer would be much more productive.
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

"It has been very helpful to get notifications about various issues with my servers and network to help me take action to resolve problems before they become major issues."
"The solution has great workflow and server modules."
"We like the patching of the window updates in the client's systems. You can automatically do updates with a single click."
"It gives you remote control and has a mobile app."
"The setup is simple."
"Using this platform has allowed us to reach and assist our remotely based clients, regardless of their location provided they have an internet connection."
"One of the applications I have used the most was to troubleshoot users and I've never faced difficulties or issues with the application itself."
"They provide a lot of features; it's good and easy software."
"With SolarWinds, it’s easy to monitor everything and, with a little setup, everyone can help out."
"Awesome product with a lot of info available and great support team."
"I believe the ease of setup and use, including everything, from the initial installation to the discovery of devices is the most valuable."
"The benefit of this solution is the reporting; we're able to report on and see our network in a graphical form, and we are able to detect when a device is added to a network."
"At the moment, our main tool is SolarWinds NPM, and we keep using it, especially for monitoring cloud devices."
"SolarWinds Orion NPM tracks bottlenecks in your network infrastructure and lets you troubleshoot them before a disaster happens."
"The solution provides comprehensive monitoring that includes proactive items such as advance notifications and engineer tickets for code breaks, allowing engineers to quickly resolve issues before major outages occur."
"Technical support from SolarWinds is the best."
 

Cons

"They have good technical support but it's not excellent."
"There are some bugs or glitches."
"Sometimes the speed is a problem. When I've been remote controlling people, from time to time, there were some issues with people in Hong Kong."
"GUI needs to be improved and the solution lacks a process for monitoring VOIP calls."
"It would be nice if it also had a desktop application, similar to the phone app, which would allow me to monitor and control computers from my desktop."
"Remote Desktop Assistance for Mac endpoints - not having this functionality is a major inconvenience in having to have two systems for clients using this platform."
"Support needs to be improved because we've sometimes had to wait 24 hours to get a response."
"However, the solution does not allow you to make a script for just one customer, so it would be great if that is improved."
"The console could be more user-friendly. It would be better if SolarWinds updated the user interface."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"With regards to suggested areas of improvement for the product, I would like to see the price come down, and in addition I think the network element mapping tool is not as robust as it should be."
"The solution is considered expensive."
"IPAM. We wish it would work with Cisco CNR and help us manage all of our DHCP servers from a centralized platform."
"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."
"Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier."
"Scalability is a bit tricky because it requires more gateways in order to get the performance you may need. It also requires a lot of licensing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is expensive."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"Price could be improved on"
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
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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
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
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

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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

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dell, Canon, Siemens, Harvard University, Northwestern University
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Pulseway vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
919,919 professionals have used our research since 2012.