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Alluvio AppResponse 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

Alluvio AppResponse
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
48th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (45th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Alluvio AppResponse is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.7%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
Alluvio AppResponse0.7%
Other95.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Senior Technical Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Identifies and analyzes performance issues quickly using in-built AI and ML
With Alluvio AppResponse, there is an in-built analytical analysis with AI and ML, which identifies and provides data such as the number of TCP retransmits, web access time, total connection time out, total connections established, and server-side errors. The RTCC response time composition chart is crucial because it helps pinpoint the issue's origin, whether from the server, network, or application side. It's a superb product when compared to SolarWinds SAM, which is agent-based, while Alluvio AppResponse captures all traffic from the core switch.
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

"AppResponse is a total solution that gives you end-to-end visibility into applications at all levels, from Layer 1 to Layer 7. We can trace all those sections: physical, IP, transport, presentation, application, etc. It gives us the full picture."
"Simply moving the focus from the IT infrastructure components to the end user with the result that it drastically reduces the time spent on troubleshooting performance issue."
"It provides us with complete visibility of every packet."
"I have found the AppResponse, which is a packet capture solution, very good. It gives you the ability to drill down back in time. You've got all the packets there. You can troubleshoot it later, not immediately. It's very interesting."
"Each AppResponse implementation made our stability better across our 500+ applications."
"This product helps us to monitor performance of these environments."
"It's a stable product. Riverbed has invested a significant amount of research and development into it, so it's a solid tool overall."
"The most valuable feature is performance monitoring."
"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."
"Solarwinds NPM was always the one that could check most of the monitoring requirements."
"This product is of good caliber and we get better results by using it on our network."
"The stability is fantastic."
"SolarWinds NPM is useful for any company that has business-critical applications running over a network and they want to monitor the network behavior."
"We used it 24/7 and it had a great ROI."
"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 most valuable feature is the user-friendly interface and the ease of deployment."
 

Cons

"Technical support needs to be more responsive."
"The AI features should be addressed in respect of the analysis and intelligence that must be supported and delivered in the tool to predigest the large amounts of data."
"Alluvio AppResponse should improve its ability to expand across multiple operating systems."
"The pricing is on the higher side of things. If they could lower it, that would be ideal."
"The licenses are costly and are done per module."
"It's not able to monitor SAP transactions."
"Need to bring back the NetFlow module for AppResponse."
"The recent changes in corporate structure may have caused some decrease in support quality."
"Going through the wizard to create these new pollers is quite cumbersome if you don't understand what you're doing."
"The reporting module that got integrated into the system itself, used to be a standalone solution and I preferred that."
"The console could be more user-friendly. It would be better if SolarWinds updated the user interface."
"The scalability can be better."
"We previously used WhatsUpGold, which has a fraction of the features for a tenth of the price."
"We also had to be attentive to vulnerabilities, because SolarWinds NPM have some issues in that area. We had to work with our security team, so that they could help us check and backup the data, and check what they needed to secure."
"We encountered an inability to display graphical views of some customized reports."
"The only thing that can be improved is to continually add to the existing capabilities of the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is no more expensive than other products."
"The price is a little bit high, especially because we have to pay an import tax."
"The licensing model is expensive compared to its competitors, but the service it gives to your business, and the data quality, means that it's worth it."
"It is costly for small and medium businesses."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"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 is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
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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
15%
Performing Arts
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise87
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
The pricing of Riverbed Alluvio AppResponse is really high. Very few customers buy Riverbed because many do not have the sufficient budget. Its pricing is comparatively higher than SolarWinds. Rive...
What needs improvement with Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
The reporting models need improvement as most of the time, we have to customize the reports manually. Additionally, a feature similar to SolarWinds AppStack, which provides a holistic view of the i...
What is your primary use case for Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
We are the partner of Riverbed. Once any customer buys the Riverbed product, we deploy and configure it to meet their use cases. Alluvio AppResponse can identify if a page or an application is slow...
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

Riverbed AppResponse, OPNET SteelCentral AppResponse, ACE Live, OPNET, AppResponse Xpert
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

N11.com, OneMain Financial, China Bank, Halkbank, Kaust
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Alluvio AppResponse vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
911,473 professionals have used our research since 2012.