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SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability vs SolarWinds NPM 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Obs...
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
38th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.3%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
A unified platform designed to monitor the entire infrastructure
The tool's escalation process needs improvement. More support is needed for the new generation of solutions, particularly SD-WAN support and newer storage components. Additionally, as more vendors move towards API-based monitoring, we anticipate SolarWinds HCO will increase integrations with other solutions. Another area for improvement is reporting. With infrastructure becoming increasingly diverse, the static infrastructures of the past are evolving into dynamic setups. Traditionally, we had wireless in the office, a backend Internet connection, and connections to head offices and data centers. With the advent of SD-WAN, multiple service providers, and cloud-based options, infrastructure is more dynamic. Today, most customers are not using on-premise solutions exclusively; they are opting for Office 365, G Suite, or similar services. Therefore, monitoring requirements are no longer limited to on-premise infrastructure but span diverse environments—some on-premise, some in the cloud. This is why SolarWinds is moving towards hybrid cloud observability. We would like to see more integrations and support for third-party vendors. For example, current support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is limited, and expanding this support would be beneficial.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is straightforward and quick if prerequisites are met, taking only a couple of days."
"I rate my satisfaction with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability at nine out of ten."
"The primary use cases are for customers who require complete infrastructure monitoring. I mean IT infrastructure, which includes network devices, security devices, and server environments, whether physical, virtual, or cloud-based. The platform can manage any infrastructure component that needs monitoring."
"SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability offers very good community support with many documents and best cases for various situations."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds NPM is the performance monitoring to see the memory, and CPU utilization."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future."
"SolarWinds has greatly helped us, especially in tracing when the SoundCloud Software goes down without any apparent reason."
"For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices."
"SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users."
"We had some interfaces where the SFP Ports were having some problems after a while. We found which of the SFP Ports was having the error and changed it, so the bandwidth become okay."
"I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates."
 

Cons

"The solution could improve in areas such as on-premises container monitoring, CICD observability, and providing additional documentation and support files in languages other than English."
"Event management features can be added as it has limited capability to ingest events from external sources."
"SolarWinds HCO platform offers various features spanning components, such as network, security, server, virtual, and application components. Common features include dashboarding, reporting, and alerting. These features provide comprehensive visibility, allowing you to see how one area's issues affect others. For instance, if a network issue impacts server performance, this visibility is crucial."
"The solution could improve in areas such as on-premises container monitoring, CICD observability, and providing additional documentation and support files in languages other than English."
"Each model has different features, so clients need to purchase a separate model for SQL monitoring, database monitoring, network traffic analyzer, HTTP traffic, etc. So each feature they need is in a different model, but customers would prefer an all-in-one solution."
"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."
"Technical support can be slow to respond."
"The reporting module that got integrated into the system itself, used to be a standalone solution and I preferred that."
"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."
"It would be nice to have a test to check if you can access a particular device via API without installing it and waiting for a poll cycle. You should have the capacity to initiate a test to see if it was reachable and get the results almost immediately."
"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."
"The dashboards for this solution could be improved. We would like to divide the dashboards to give a clear view to our management team to show what we have and what deficiencies exist in our network."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is quite reasonable. It has moved to node-based licensing, simplifying the process. They don't distinguish between different types of nodes, such as server nodes, physical routers, or switches. One node equals one license, making it easy to manage. If you have 500 devices, you need five hundred licenses to get all the features of this unified monitoring platform."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"It is not an expensive product."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
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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
No data available
Educational Organization
55%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability?
Event management features can be added as it has limited capability to ingest events from external sources.
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability?
I work day-to-day on SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability ( /products/solarwinds-hybrid-cloud-observability-reviews ). It covers network, server, storage, and networking.
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...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.