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SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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
27th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (8th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th), Container Management (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud1.3%
SolarWinds Network Device Monitor0.8%
Other97.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

SG
IT Infrastructure Senior Network Technician at Autoliv
Offers some features but needs better customization and analysis tools
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 improvement. The features are not as customizable as we would prefer, but they are workable. If configured properly, you can perform a drill-down analysis. However, I have not used this feature much for our infrastructure on the network side.
Dhananjay Dileep - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Unified monitoring has improved end-to-end visibility and reduced detection time across apps
When we have too many detectors in place for one particular app, such as when I have created 50+ detectors through my account, the entire page becomes a bit loaded when creating the 51st detector, feeling heavy and taking time to load. Additionally, it throws random errors; for example, when we try to save one detector, it might throw some random error which is not even related, with something else being wrong, not that particular error, but the underlying root cause might be different. Sometimes the error is just "some problem occurred," and we are not able to point out what the real cause is. This mainly happens when we have too many detectors or too many alerts in place rather than a standard number. One more thing is in the alert rules; if we have a main general alert, and instead of creating a new detector, we are adding a new rule under one detector, when the number of rules also increases, such as when we have 10 or 15 rules under one generic detector, that again creates the same kind of problem, taking some time to save that particular newly added rule, and it might not save at times, just keeps on spinning. Those are the two drawbacks which I spotted recently; other than that, everything looks perfect.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The alerting functionality in SolarWinds Network Device Monitor helps us stay informed during off-hours by sending alerts if our main links or devices are impacted, allowing us to quickly address any issues."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it shows you the utilization of devices to allow you to take proactive action before something goes down or reaches the saturation point. You can take proactive action to fix the problem before it occurs."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it can alert you when a device is not working."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is monitoring."
"Link monitoring is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"Since our devices are spread out across the world, we can see the status of these devices without having to send someone physically to a remote location, which saves money."
"This product proactively tells us about issues before the users notice."
"Overall, I rate SolarWinds Network Device Monitor ten out of ten."
"Splunk's GUI and dashboard capacity are the most valuable features of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring."
"Splunk Observability Cloud scales with the growing needs of my organization effectively."
"The most beneficial aspect of Splunk APM is the ATM, which is the map displaying the inbound and outbound relationships of the microservices, as well as the traffic between these dependencies. This feature provides us with valuable insights and helps us understand the interactions between different microservices."
"The volume it handles is very good, including the number of metrics, the volume number of traces, and more."
"The dashboards are the features of Splunk Observability Cloud that I appreciate the most, providing visual representation of all data and text, which has benefited my organization by speeding up people's jobs and allowing a place to monitor all logs, as there are usually thousands of entries coming in which can become very disorderly."
"The vibrant dashboards are valuable."
"The data collection from our VMs, containers, databases, and backend components is valuable."
"The most valuable thing that we have seen within our group is the ability to ingest all this raw data and have it organized in a certain way so that different groups can get effective alerting from this massive amount of raw data that is out there."
 

Cons

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve the features. We don't have the complete model for the database, and the monitoring for the database is up and down. We expect that we could monitor the blocking items on the database but we don't have that feature."
"When an organization's network grows, the complexity of the dashboard becomes an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The way they are presenting the map of our devices needs to be improved."
"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 solution is not user-friendly."
"Integration with different tools, such as ServiceNow and Excel, can be improved."
"The main disadvantage of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is the licensing cost, which is expensive."
"The initial setup of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could be easier. It took us approximately one month to complete the implementation."
"There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts."
"It would be beneficial to have more enhanced features with capabilities to adapt more integrated applications. Improvements in dashboard configuration, customization, and artificial intelligence functionalities are desired."
"Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved with better integration with AppDynamics, as we know that's coming, however, it is an issue we've had between the OpenTelemetry and the AppDynamics collector."
"They need more EDR functionalities."
"The only strain point we've encountered with Splunk Observability Cloud is that the search times can be lengthy for some things. We have a large environment, so that's expected."
"Integrating some third-party add-ons can be challenging, involving many implementation and configuration steps."
"When we have too many detectors in place for one particular app, such as when I have created 50+ detectors through my account, the entire page becomes a bit loaded when creating the 51st detector, feeling heavy and taking time to load."
"They can get more integration with a few more products. They can also update some of the dashboards that are in there now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."
"The product is expensive."
"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."
"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."
"The enterprise license is good for the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. However, it is expensive, they should reduce their price."
"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."
"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."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."
"It is expensive."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"I am not in that circle, but we are currently licensing based on our queries. That is working out for us. Previously, it was by volume of data, and now, we can store as much data as we want."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise48
 

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 do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
 

Also Known As

Network Device Monitor
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Air Rarotonga
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,176 professionals have used our research since 2012.