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Pulseway vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

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
55th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (19th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (13th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pulseway is 0.2%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.4%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Pieter Plas - PeerSpot reviewer
A solution with a great monitoring system and ability to control access remotely
The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment depends on the size of a customer. We make the customer in the enterprise server, and there is a download per customer for the installation package. We can also roll it out very easily, and when we install it on one or two systems, it explores the network for more systems. We can then fire a deployment package on the other systems. So in one hour, we can do a lot. Most of the time, 90% of the work is very easy, and the last 10% are the business-critical systems from a customer. Also, we manually install important customer systems, like special applications where we like to monitor specific services in the server itself.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We like the patching of the window updates in the client's systems. You can automatically do updates with a single click."
"The setup is simple."
"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."
"It gives you remote control and has a mobile app."
"The stability is fantastic."
"SolarWinds is reasonably priced."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates."
"Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support."
"It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there."
"The most valuable feature is the way it monitors the environment, and how user-friendly the console is for the end-user. The interface is also very easy and it captures all the information very well."
"Being able to easily, and quickly obtain disc space statistics from servers and determine how much was free or used on various volumes."
 

Cons

"There are some bugs or glitches."
"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."
"The solution does not allow you to make a script for just one customer."
"GUI needs to be improved and the solution lacks a process for monitoring VOIP calls."
"They have good technical support but it's not excellent."
"The SolarWinds notification and alerting configuration could be simplified as it would be easier to find if it was within the NPM web application instead of in a separate client application."
"The price of the solution can be improved."
"The solution could be more secure."
"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."
"The product is scalable, but at a cost. Extra modules have to be purchased for each extra server. The initial set up isn't complex, but will require someone who is experienced with the network monitoring system"
"It is difficult for stakeholders to translate technical requirements, which results in difficulties selecting a platform or implementing a solution."
"SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"Quite highly priced"
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
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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%
Real Estate/Law Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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: June 2025.
860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.