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SCOM vs WhatsUp Gold 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

SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (4th)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
24th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (26th), Server Monitoring (15th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (19th), Configuration Management (20th), Log Management (35th), Cloud Monitoring Software (21st), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

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 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 (%)
SCOM1.6%
WhatsUp Gold2.3%
Other96.1%
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.
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

"This product is really easy to use and has best monitoring capabilities when used to monitor Microsoft products."
"It has good graphs of what is going on within the operating system."
"Setting up SCOM is straightforward and takes about an hour as long as you have all your firewalls and DNS settings in place."
"Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications."
"It can send messages to our ticketing system."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of Windows and Linux servers."
"It has good graphs of what is going on within the operating system.​"
"The dashboard is in a class of its own, with a whole other range of competing products in management of datacenters and cloud environment."
"The documentation is very good."
"This is a good, stable network monitoring solution for devices."
"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."
"It's a good product, and if one has the expertise to use it, it will be a good investment and it will help IT to save and plan for the future."
"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."
"It is stable."
"It is very good at monitoring the network and keeps us up to date on the status of internal devices."
"Our local support team provides excellent service."
 

Cons

"Non Windows monitoring is fairly weak. Network device monitoring is not reliable."
"The configuration, especially for alerts, are somewhat lengthy."
"SCOM's feature that notifies us when a server is down is not present in recent updates, which has weakened the product."
"Direct integration with third-party tools, like ticketing systems, is lacking but would be beneficial."
"The configurations are difficult. The configuration and thorough day-to-day operations to get them to the level you want takes some time."
"Areas for improvement in my opinion are the resource footprint of the SCOM infrastructure side, the web console (drop Silverlight please!) and a few of the management packs."
"Both SCOM and WhatsUp Gold could use some system enhancements, such as better dashboards."
"If it could have SysLog capabilities and if the Microsoft Management Packs were out of the box instead of a separate download."
"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."
"This product should add other options for monitoring. It does not currently meet the broader needs of the banking industry in the version we have deployed."
"You have to invest a few days to become an expert in this solution."
"Setting up WhatsUp Gold is complicated and not easy because it requires managing SNMP and many complex settings in the devices it's monitoring, and fine-tuning it to fit our needs is also not very easy."
"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."
"I haven't had any issue with stability, except during the upgrade to 2017 when we encountered slow responses."
"The licensing model could be improved. Right now, the levels are too far apart. This causes the solution to be more expensive than it needs to be."
"The licensing model could be improved. Right now, the levels are too far apart. This causes the solution to be more expensive than it needs to be."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"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."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"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."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
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 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 substantial discounts.
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 reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
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 issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one l...
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 first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
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 complicated to manage.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
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 SCOM vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
885,880 professionals have used our research since 2012.