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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
54th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (17th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (13th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pulseway is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Pulseway0.5%
Other95.9%
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

"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."
"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 setup is simple."
"The solution has great workflow and server modules."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"I like the tracking feature to track devices and see where they are connected. This is very practical."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"I would rate the overall solution nine out of ten due to its capabilities, however, its complexity is a major drawback."
"It is scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly interface and the ease of deployment."
 

Cons

"They have good technical support but it's not excellent."
"GUI needs to be improved and the solution lacks a process for monitoring VOIP calls."
"The solution does not allow you to make a script for just one customer."
"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."
"There are some bugs or glitches."
"The response time of the support team needs to improve"
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features."
"It would be beneficial if NPM offered support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), as currently, it does not support this and we are migrating our services there."
"The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear."
"Each model has different features, so clients need to purchase a separate model for SQL monitoring, database monitoring, network traffic analyzer, HTTP traffic, etc. So each feature they need is in a different model, but customers would prefer an all-in-one solution."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Price could be improved on"
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"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."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
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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
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
7%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

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...
 

Comparisons

 

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: March 2026.
883,619 professionals have used our research since 2012.