

SolarWinds NPM and Splunk Observability Cloud compete in the network and IT monitoring space. While both are strong contenders, Splunk seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced cloud integration capabilities and comprehensive observability.
Features: SolarWinds NPM offers SNMP monitoring, real-time alerts, and extensive customization. It efficiently supports multiple vendors and has an easy scalability feature. Splunk Observability Cloud provides end-to-end visibility, customizable dashboards, and robust cloud integration, managing high volumes of data and offering insights into performance issues.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM needs improved network discovery, a modern GUI, and reduced resource utilization. It should also enhance its alert configuration flexibility and cloud monitoring capabilities. Splunk Observability Cloud is costly, with users seeking improved synthetic monitoring, third-party integrations, and enhancements in AI functionalities.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM is primarily on-premises with a straightforward installation, but can be resource-intensive. It has generally positive customer support, although response times for non-critical issues need improvement. Splunk Observability Cloud offers flexible deployment across various environments and is recognized for its technical proficiency, albeit with slower response times for non-critical issues.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM is priced reasonably for large enterprises with a clear licensing model. It provides excellent ROI through proactive monitoring. Splunk Observability Cloud, however, is more expensive due to data volume-based pricing, although it offers substantial value for large-scale deployments with users seeking more cost-effective alternatives amid competitive pressures.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
Using Splunk has saved my organization about 30% of our budget compared to using multiple different monitoring products.
Anyone working in front-end management should recognize the market price to see the true value of end-user monitoring.
I have definitely seen a return on investment with Splunk Observability Cloud, particularly through how fast it has grown and how comfortable other teams are in relying on its outputs for monitoring and observability.
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.
On a scale of 1 to 10, the customer service and technical support deserve a 10.
They have consistently helped us resolve any issues we've encountered.
They often require multiple questions, with five or six emails to get a response.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
As we are a growing company transitioning all our applications to the cloud, and with the increasing number of cloud-native applications, Splunk Observability Cloud will help us achieve digital resiliency and reduce our mean time to resolution.
I would rate its scalability a nine out of ten.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
Unlike NetScout or regular agents for APM, RUM has many problems during the POC phase because customer environments vary widely.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment.
The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders.
The next release of Splunk Observability Cloud should include a feature that makes it so that when looking at charts and dashboards, and also looking at one environment regardless of the product feature that you're in, APM, infrastructure, RUM, the environment that is chosen in the first location when you sign into Splunk Observability Cloud needs to stay persistent all the way through.
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
It is not too pricey and is adequate.
Splunk is a bit expensive since it charges based on the indexing rate of data.
It is expensive, especially when there are other vendors that offer something similar for much cheaper.
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
Whenever any node is down in our network, whether it is a server or any network device, we receive information through email that the device is down.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
Splunk provides advanced notifications of roadblocks in the application, which helps us to improve and avoid impacts during high-volume days.
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
It offers unified visibility for logs, metrics, and traces.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| SolarWinds NPM | 3.4% |
| Splunk Observability Cloud | 1.3% |
| Other | 95.3% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 59 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 33 |
| Large Enterprise | 85 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 20 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 10 |
| Large Enterprise | 46 |
SolarWinds NPM is a network monitoring solution that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages quickly and efficiently. The solution is a powerful tool that can help you increase service levels, reduce downtime with multi vendor network monitoring, simplify the management of complex network devices, improve operational efficiency, and much more.
SolarWinds NPM Features
SolarWinds NPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SolarWinds NPM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SolarWinds NPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SolarWinds NPM solution.
PeerSpot user Andrew N., Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical, says, “The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.” He also adds, “From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. And, The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
Daniel S., Systems and Data Warehouse Supervisor at MMSD, mentions, “The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.”
A Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm explains, “As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service.”
Dinesh N., Digital Innovation at Bobcat Company, states, “The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.”
Fazal A., Implementation & Support Specialist at 360Factors, comments, “We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down. In the event an interface goes down, we have multiple reports that include availability monitoring, network uptime monitoring, and network downtime monitoring. These reports are on multiple schedules such as the end of the day, end of the last business day of the week, monthly, and quarterly. This gives us the ability to provide reports to our management and let them know the performance of our network.”
Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.
Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.
What are the key features?In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.
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