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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 (44th)
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 (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Alluvio AppResponse is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, 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 NPM3.6%
Alluvio AppResponse0.7%
Other95.7%
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

"The most valuable feature is performance monitoring."
"With some APM solutions, it can take a long time to check a periodic report, but you can get all the necessary details quickly with AppResponse."
"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 full visibility that you get from the backend is excellent."
"It provides us with complete visibility of every packet."
"Excellent for strategic metrics and as a troubleshooting/analysis tool."
"Each AppResponse implementation made our stability better across our 500+ applications."
"Very easy to use and gather value from the start."
"It combines and presents information from many different sources, giving a corporate-wide vision on a single pane of glass."
"If you are almost in the dark, SolarWinds can give you a quick view of what you have and you can start basic monitoring."
"Single pane for monitoring scales and creates new business opportunities."
"SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users."
"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."
"The other valuable system is the DSS (decision support system). If there's a fault in the network, SolarWinds is basically capable of rectifying and resolving that problem on its own without any intervention from an IP assistant or administrator."
"The connectivity of the solution is very good."
"We were able to unify our entire company under one monitoring solution that works for everybody, saving a ton of time and significantly speeding up problem-resolution time."
 

Cons

"Marketing is complex and not well understood, so often this product is not considered a good fit just for a surface look."
"They need to better integrate with products and solutions from different vendors."
"Technical support needs to be more responsive."
"If Alluvio AppResponse reduces its cost, it will be more beneficial for customers to monitor their application and network performance."
"The reporting models need improvement as most of the time, we have to customize the reports manually."
"It's not able to monitor SAP transactions."
"The licenses are costly and are done per module."
"Disks are heavily used for traffic capture and may break times to times but RAID feature avoids any production pause."
"SolarWinds NPM is very unstable. We often have website loading issues."
"Customer Service: 0/10 as there were no knowledge base articles when I used it, and every new patch required customer login to apply."
"SolarWinds NPM should be more flexible to accommodate specific customer requirements quickly."
"The user interface is not intuitive enough and needs improvements in certain parts."
"SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution, aside from the fact that they had a major hack a couple of years ago and effectively allowed the Russian government to completely hack their code, making everyone vulnerable."
"The cost for monitoring interfaces is ridiculous."
"I would say the NPM toolset has room for improvement."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds added some technical protocols like Modbus. The market needs a simple solution for monitoring a technical device."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is no more expensive than other products."
"It is costly for small and medium businesses."
"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."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"Quite highly priced"
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"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."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"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
14%
Performing Arts
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing 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: September 2026.
912,801 professionals have used our research since 2012.