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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
31st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 4.4%, down from 5.4% 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…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution and its interface are elaborate and fully integrate all monitored items for easy analysis and troubleshooting."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is monitoring."
"Overall, I rate SolarWinds Network Device Monitor ten out of ten."
"You can create an attractive dashboard and create a hierarchy."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it can alert you when a device is not working."
"This product proactively tells us about issues before the users notice."
"The product is useful for switches and IP phones."
"The deployment process is quick."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
"I believe the ease of setup and use, including everything, from the initial installation to the discovery of devices is the most valuable."
"I like the tracking feature to track devices and see where they are connected. This is very practical."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities."
"SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
 

Cons

"When an organization's network grows, the complexity of the dashboard becomes an area of concern where improvements are required."
"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 way they are presenting the map of our devices needs to be improved."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve by being more user-friendly. The network has so many features which make it difficult to find how to configure how to use it. It is not simple to customize."
"There is no mobile version of this product, and our team should be able to access it using a mobile device."
"The security needs improvement, which is why we are moving away from Solar Winds. We have security concerns."
"In terms of price, it could be less expensive."
"The solution should have AI-powered issue-resolving capabilities"
"The evaluation time for the product is too short especially for large corporations."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers."
"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 scalability can be better."
"SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."
"The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market."
"It has covered everything, so no improvement is required at their end. The only thing is the price."
"The integration with video apps could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."
"When compared with other solutions SolarWinds is more expensive."
"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."
"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."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."
"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."
"The enterprise license is good for the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. However, it is expensive, they should reduce their price."
"The product is expensive."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
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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
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

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?
I am not a positive person regarding SolarWinds Network Device Monitor.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for impro...
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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.