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SolarWinds NPM vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.5
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer improves efficiency and cost management but may not offer significant ROI compared to cheaper options.
Sentiment score
7.2
SolarWinds NPM enhances infrastructure visibility, delivering cost reductions, faster issue resolution, and significant ROI through optimized resource management.
There is a return on investment when purchasing SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, as in the long run, there is a return on investments.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer customer service varies, with praise for higher support and mixed experiences regarding response times.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM support gets mixed reviews, praised for expertise yet noted for delays and aggressive sales tactics.
I rate the support in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer as 10 out of 10 because whenever I open a tech ticket, they respond instantly, and their engineer is well-equipped to resolve the issues.
I am very satisfied with their technical support, rating it nine out of ten.
I would rate support eight out of ten.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer scales well for enterprises, but costs rise with licenses, and stability issues may occur.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM is scalable, adapts well to infrastructures, but may face performance and cost issues on virtual platforms.
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a scalable solution, and by adding licenses, I can use the same deployment and instance to onboard more elements and nodes.
The license is based on the count of the ports.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is stable, rated 7-10, with occasional issues from large databases and SQL environment demands.
Sentiment score
7.5
SolarWinds NPM is stable with issues from server limits and bugs, resolved through updates and proper configuration.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
 

Room For Improvement

SolarWinds NetFlow Analyzer faces installation woes, limited support, integration issues, and demands for better interfaces, pricing, and AI features.
SolarWinds NPM users report issues with network discovery, UI features, costs, automation, support, and security improvements are needed.
It should be like a Meraki cloud, where if you are familiar with Meraki devices, you can locate any device directly on the world map.
Deployment needs improvement; the process is complicated, requiring attention to infrastructure settings and installation of components like the origin application server, platform, close storage, and policy agents.
The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model is quite costly compared to other brands.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Features such as taking backup of the devices or configurations of the devices can be included in further versions of SolarWinds NPM.
 

Setup Cost

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's pricing is fair yet potentially costly, especially when scaling or compared to flexible competitors.
SolarWinds NPM pricing varies by setup size, with initial costs, tiered licensing, and maintenance fees influencing total expenses.
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model is quite costly compared to other brands.
provide a rating of nine out of ten
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
The solution is considered expensive.
 

Valuable Features

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer provides traffic analysis, real-time metrics, customizable reports, and integration for enhanced network performance management.
SolarWinds NPM offers ease of deployment, real-time monitoring, customizable alerts, and user-friendly design for efficient network management.
The best feature is customizable reporting, which includes network diagrams and monitoring of various types of bandwidth usage and peak times.
This tool provides insights into top utilization applications or it identifies which circuit or application is consuming the most on the complete one-gig circuit traffic path.
The application recognition feature of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer has helped me identify and manage bandwidth-intensive applications by providing insight into the applications and their behavior regarding bandwidth consumption.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
It provides a detailed overview of the network, which is valuable.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (3rd)
SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is designed for Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) and holds a mindshare of 5.6%, down 6.6% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 4.4% mindshare, down 5.5% since last year.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Raja Xabi - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved bandwidth management and network visibility have resulted in financial benefits and streamlined operations
There is always room for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, such as implementing instant reporting based on business intelligence reports and more granular filters in their dashboard to improve the GUI view and reporting. The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model is quite costly compared to other brands. If users are comfortable with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, they have to make the hard decision to invest, and it's suggested from a user's perspective that SolarWinds should improve their financial model and licensing to become competitive, especially for small to medium businesses.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) solutions are best for your needs.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Educational Organization
27%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?
The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model i...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?
There is always room for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, such as implementing instant reporting based on business intelligence reports and more granular filters in their dashboa...
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

Netflow Traffic Analyzer
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oceaneering International, Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, 335th Signal Command, Immofori
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.