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SolarWinds NPM vs Spiceworks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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
7.2
SolarWinds NPM enhances infrastructure visibility, delivering cost reductions, faster issue resolution, and significant ROI through optimized resource management.
Sentiment score
7.8
Spiceworks provides high ROI as a free tool, benefiting efficiency, issue resolution, and stability despite setup time investment.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM support gets mixed reviews, praised for expertise yet noted for delays and aggressive sales tactics.
Sentiment score
7.4
Spiceworks offers excellent, free email-based support, with strong community assistance and some criticisms for lacking direct phone support.
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
6.9
SolarWinds NPM is scalable, adapts well to infrastructures, but may face performance and cost issues on virtual platforms.
Sentiment score
7.4
Spiceworks is scalable for small to large setups, though larger organizations may face challenges; newer versions improve scalability.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
SolarWinds NPM is stable with issues from server limits and bugs, resolved through updates and proper configuration.
Sentiment score
6.6
Spiceworks is stable but may slow down or crash with large setups; proper configuration enhances performance and stability.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
 

Room For Improvement

SolarWinds NPM users report issues with network discovery, UI features, costs, automation, support, and security improvements are needed.
Spiceworks users desire enhanced monitoring, scalability, reporting, integration, and user-friendly features with faster performance and lower resource consumption.
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 NPM pricing varies by setup size, with initial costs, tiered licensing, and maintenance fees influencing total expenses.
Spiceworks provides a customizable, free help desk solution with optional costs for premium features, suitable for small to medium businesses.
PRTG's package offers all features in one bundle, which is cost-effective.
The solution is considered expensive.
 

Valuable Features

SolarWinds NPM offers ease of deployment, real-time monitoring, customizable alerts, and user-friendly design for efficient network management.
Spiceworks offers SMBs a free help desk, inventory management, user-friendly interface, and strong community support for IT needs.
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.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
Additionally, it is free software.
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
Spiceworks
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
47th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (15th), IT Asset Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.8%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spiceworks is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Rohit Samel - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud storage with no hardware needed and great comprehensive reports
The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally. It is a fully software-based solution, eliminating the need for investment in hardware. We have the capability to create reports as needed. It is good software to use, as there were no incidents where I needed to contact technical support. Additionally, it is free software.
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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
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
University
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Spiceworks?
The solution is easy to use and easy to manage.
What needs improvement with Spiceworks?
I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment, however, I can provide feedback later. Currently, there do not seem to be any issues.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. Spiceworks and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.