Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

SolarWinds NPM vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor 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

SolarWinds Network Device M...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
28th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.6%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Vijay Samant - PeerSpot reviewer
Monitor network utilization and manage bandwidth efficiently with live monitoring and reliable fault management capabilities
I use SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for monitoring network utilization, bandwidth utilization, uptime, and downtime. It also assists in incident management SolarWinds Network Device Monitor provides live monitoring capabilities, which are very useful. Its fault management capabilities are…
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

"I like the mapping that you could do and the dashboards were very pretty."
"The deployment process is quick."
"In terms of general network monitoring features, I find SolarWinds Network Device Monitor very flexible and comfortable to use. The software itself is extremely useful when it comes to monitoring how our data moves between different networks and environments."
"There are vital features of auto-plugin core ports"
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it can alert you when a device is not working."
"I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is a straightforward product with valuable functionality."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"SolarWinds has greatly helped us, especially in tracing when the SoundCloud Software goes down without any apparent reason."
"I like the tracking feature to track devices and see where they are connected. This is very practical."
"The solution is user-friendly and has many options for customized monitoring that other tools don't have."
"The ability to customize the views and dashboards is nice. SolarWinds also allows us to access the data via the API. That's probably the feature I liked the most."
"From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the alerts."
 

Cons

"The solution should have AI-powered issue-resolving capabilities"
"In terms of price, it could be less expensive."
"It would be beneficial if SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could provide a feature to monitor CRC errors specifically on individual interfaces rather than the entire device. This would help in detecting intermittent issues and packet drops on main links more accurately, especially when there are CRC errors. It's important for us to be aware of these issues to avoid any voice quality problems or interruptions on our MTS links."
"The main disadvantage of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is the licensing cost, which is expensive."
"Although I haven't explored all of the features available, I wouldn't mind if the software were made to be a bit more customizable."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"The reporting feature needs improvement because we are unable to configure reports that were included during initial implementation."
"When an organization's network grows, the complexity of the dashboard becomes an area of concern where improvements are required."
"It would be good to have high security."
"Robustness of network element mapping tool could be better"
"The integration with the APIs and the web servers deployed can definitely be improved."
"The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market."
"Complex and overly detailed setup."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"The solution is not always good with new features, so it's take a long time."
"I would like to see integration with antivirus or other security endpoint solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."
"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."
"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."
"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."
"The enterprise license is good for the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. However, it is expensive, they should reduce their price."
"I rate the product's price as three to three and a half or on a scale of one to ten, where one means low price, and ten means high price."
"The product is expensive."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"It is too expensive."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
850,028 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
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Educational Organization
54%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
SolarWinds pricing is on the higher side, and in India, every customer is cautious about commercial aspects.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
SolarWinds Network Device Monitor should include automatic diagrams in its network solutions. Additionally, there is a challenge with having to add an additional polling engine after 10,000 element...
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

Network Device Monitor
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Air Rarotonga
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.