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SCOM vs SolarWinds NPM vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SCOM is 1.6%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
SCOM1.6%
WhatsUp Gold2.3%
Other92.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.
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.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Does a great job with Microsoft technologies."
"This solution saves us a lot of work because it reduces the effort that is required in order to start monitoring."
"It can send messages to our ticketing system."
"We are able to do problem determination on runaway processes."
"It has good graphs of what is going on within the operating system."
"This solution allows us to standardize all of the reports for monitoring the network, so it helps a lot for auditing purposes."
"Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it."
"It works better than other products I’ve used – namely SolarWinds, which is cumbersome and error prone for web app monitoring. SCOM is not."
"The most important feature is reporting. The reports that are generated are useful and they save a lot of time with respect to monitoring."
"Network performance is the main issue clients are facing. SolarWinds checks if a node is down, and we can set thresholds for performance metrics. For example, we set it up to get an alert automatically if a value is over 80 percent. It has a full dashboard that covers CP, hard disk, and node monitoring."
"SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong."
"With reporting, we are able to spool ISP WAN links availability for the month and make necessary deductions based on the service level agreement we signed with the service providers."
"If your infrastructure is big, and requires a good kind of reporting tool, then SolarWinds fulfills all these requirements."
"SolarWinds is a great product that can do a lot."
"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
"It is stable, scalable, reliable and not too expensive."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the application monitors that allow for discreet roaming on network devices."
"There is a flow monitor option, so we can trace the source IP, the destination IP, and top talker feature in this."
"We've been using it for many years and we use it typically for early warning, as it notifies customers of problems prior to failure."
"This product has aided us in procurement and is overall a well-priced solution."
"The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one link. You can go into a particular part of the topology map, scroll in, and see exactly which module it is."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The new version has a lot of improved features."
"The user interface is good enough."
 

Cons

"The console feature is very poor, and it would be very good for us if this were improved."
"The solution can be improved by expanding to cloud usage."
"There are some negative points about this product. Sometimes, the capabilities of the software don't appear, and you can't directly see the results."
"All of the areas of reporting are very bad and need to be improved."
"The suite is a monster. Without a clear strategy and fine tuning can produce a lot of noise (unnecessary noise) or miss critical aspects of your environment."
"I would like to see better support for monitoring Unix-based systems."
"The solution should be more user-friendly and offer a better user interface."
"At this point, only monitoring a network device is not good enough."
"Robustness of network element mapping tool could be better"
"There isn't support available to us as they don't offer support in our country."
"The response time of the support team needs to improve"
"Technical support and releases are not particularly reliable."
"The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear."
"The only real caveat that we have or that I have an issue with is when I go on vacation, it's a little hard for me to go and modify alerts so that I don't get alerted about things when I'm on vacation."
"SolarWinds NPM should be more flexible to accommodate specific customer requirements quickly."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"I might like to see a better interface in the future."
"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management. If they succeed in doing this, the solution will cover all the network troubleshooting aspects and will be a benefit."
"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."
"One of the biggest things that made us start to look at another product is we're not able to have an end to end monitoring from a user perspective throughout the system and back to the user."
"The product is old and not updated."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."
"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"There is a permanent license and also a subscription level which has annual fees. The price of the solution is fair."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"This is a well priced solution."
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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
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substan...
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporti...
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 ar...
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 scalabil...
What do you like most about WhatsUp Gold?
The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network is...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information fir...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complic...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.