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Alluvio AppResponse 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

Alluvio AppResponse
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
59th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (48th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
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 Alluvio AppResponse is 0.4%, up from 0.4% 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

Ahmet Kilic - PeerSpot reviewer
It's a total solution that gives you end-to-end visibility at all levels
I rate Alluvio AppResponse 10 out of 10. If you work for a financial company especially, you probably face problems on the application side. The problem is easy to identify, but you need to determine the root cause. You can solve issues easily via AppResponse because it shows you all the details of your transactions so you can see the real problem in the database, network, software, etc. For example, you can find the solution easily if you create the right dashboard on your site. If you can't find the problem, you can observe or investigate PCAP.
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

"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."
"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 of Alluvio AppResponse is the actual response time for measuring performance."
"The most valuable feature is performance monitoring."
"You need a packet capture device to perform any type of network monitoring. It helps ensure that network overloads don't happen with alerts allowing for proactive decisions."
"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."
"We really like the scalability capabilities."
"The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
"The SolarWinds NPM framework, upon which most of their flagship products are built, empowers a wide variety of admins and users to quickly find value in their installed products."
"It did a good job of the collection and then an investigation of the net flow of information for understanding the applications that were being used at certain locations."
"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."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"It's a very good tool and a very stable tool."
"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is straightforward, but you have to know a little about the product. It's not for everybody to just plug and play. If you know how the solution is implemented then it is straightforward."
"Alluvio AppResponse should improve its ability to expand across multiple operating systems."
"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."
"They need to better integrate with products and solutions from different vendors."
"The recent changes in corporate structure may have caused some decrease in support quality."
"Integration between NPM and APM solutions would improve efficiency. There is no agent on the server site related to AppResponse."
"Technical support needs to be more responsive."
"The recent changes in corporate structure may have caused some decrease in support quality."
"This solution would benefit from expanding on the capabilities within the API."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"The solution could improve in many areas, such as the marketing and description of the products, providing areas of improvement, cloud capabilities, and being able to be more streamlined with the current integration points with other applications."
"We'd like to see a bit more automation in the future."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"The solution could be more secure."
"They don't have a local support team."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is costly for small and medium businesses."
"The solution is no more expensive than other products."
"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."
"The price is a little bit high, especially because we have to pay an import tax."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"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
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
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Performing Arts
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
The most valuable feature of Alluvio AppResponse is the actual response time for measuring performance.
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 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: July 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.