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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
50th
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
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Alluvio AppResponse is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Alluvio AppResponse0.8%
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

"The full visibility that you get from the backend is excellent."
"The most valuable feature of Alluvio AppResponse is the actual response time for measuring performance."
"The most valuable feature is performance monitoring."
"We really like the scalability capabilities."
"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."
"Riverbed's product is a superb product."
"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's a stable product. Riverbed has invested a significant amount of research and development into it, so it's a solid tool overall."
"It paid for itself within six months, when compared to our previous solution."
"As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
"As far as assisting in being proactive in our network, it's been a great help in helping us maintain a healthy environment and being proactive and making sure things are up to date and upgraded."
"Over the last couple of years, they have introduced features like NetPath and PerfStack, which are very helpful for any of the admins to troubleshoot issues and know precisely what is going on in nodes."
"The ease of deployment is great."
"One of my clients is a bank; SolarWinds is primarily used in banking to limit network downtime to less than one or two minutes, with all the ATMs connected so the bank can respond quickly when the network is down."
"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."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
 

Cons

"If Alluvio AppResponse reduces its cost, it will be more beneficial for customers to monitor their application and network performance."
"Alluvio AppResponse should improve its ability to expand across multiple operating systems."
"It's not able to monitor SAP transactions."
"Technical support has been a problem for us. We had trouble with incompatibility during the implementation phase and they were a little bit late when it came to answering us."
"The reporting models need improvement as most of the time, we have to customize the reports manually."
"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."
"The admin dashboard could be easier, as it takes a little bit of time to get used to it."
"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."
"Scalability is a bit tricky because it requires more gateways in order to get the performance you may need. It also requires a lot of licensing."
"SolarWinds NPM should be more flexible to accommodate specific customer requirements quickly."
"It has covered everything, so no improvement is required at their end. The only thing is the price."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers (which have no connection to the public internet)."
"Yes, plenty of those that our systems team has spent hours on the phone with Solarwinds support with trying to rectify."
"Technical support is average. Sometimes it took days to get responses and the responses were via email."
"The solution's customer service is not very good because the support takes too long."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is no more expensive than other products."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"It is too expensive."
"When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low."
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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
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

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 Business60
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: November 2026.
921,338 professionals have used our research since 2012.