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SolarWinds NPM vs ThousandEyes 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 NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th)
ThousandEyes
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
6th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.7%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThousandEyes is 3.7%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Satyavrat Nirala - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers user monitoring and Internet insights and include customer journeys
It’s evolving; I feel it needs more holistic integration. It needs more improvement. It’s very good, but the integration can be slightly complicated on different platforms. I used it for a healthcare organization, and the integration was slightly challenging. In future releases, I would like to explore AI capabilities. AI would be more valuable because it works across different cloud and server systems. It looks into issue detection and insight modeling, so that is something I feel will be very helpful in the near future. More AI because of compliance and other challenges, not because of the product challenge. It’s about regulations, and we have HIPAA laws in the US and many different kinds of laws. Because of that, these specific elements and certain units don’t allow the tooling system to be fully utilized. We also support a certain segment of healthcare, which is the army healthcare segment, which is more government-controlled. There are certain restrictions in moving into the cloud. That’s where I thought those elements might need some more improvement. Also, looking into how we’ll be able to use more data visualization. It has it, but it doesn’t give you everything. If you look into the elements of use and so many other elements are there, but the UI/UX also has to be improved a bit, I feel. From a developer’s standpoint, it’s very easy, but from a consultant’s standpoint, there can be more enhancement, like one-click view and one-click report generation. Those things should be more seamless.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SolarWinds NPM has a colorful UI and many easy-to-use features. It does not need to be configured as much and is also easy to install."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
"SolarWinds has greatly helped us, especially in tracing when the SoundCloud Software goes down without any apparent reason."
"I would rate the overall solution nine out of ten due to its capabilities, however, its complexity is a major drawback."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"I like SolarWinds support because it's 24/7. You describe your issues, your situation and maybe two or three hours later you can discuss a solution with a technical engineer."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of SolarWinds NPM."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"The authentication overall - including to the VPN and LAN - is excellent."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"The most valuable features of ThousandEyes are the full monitoring capabilities and the ability to identify the exact location of problems in the path between the application and the end-user."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its scalability. It is a good tool for network admins."
"The installation process is not hard at all."
"The most valuable features are integration and ease of use."
"ThousandEyes gives companies better visibility."
"It's fairly easy to set up."
 

Cons

"The price could be better."
"The integration with the APIs and the web servers deployed can definitely be improved."
"It is difficult for stakeholders to translate technical requirements, which results in difficulties selecting a platform or implementing a solution."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market."
"Consolidation of platforms would provide a smoother experience."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"The only thing that can be improved is to continually add to the existing capabilities of the product."
"Presently, it lacks the ability to integrate with other Cisco products."
"Once I fully use the tool 100%, I'm sure I would have something to critique, however, for now, I'm happy with it."
"I would like the product to offer more agility."
"I feel it needs more holistic integration. It needs more improvement."
"More detailed documentation explaining the metrics and the testing mechanisms would be helpful."
"It might be practical to extend monitoring capabilities to include network devices"
"The solution's network and reporting could be improved."
"It would be nice if the solution covered other areas like server monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"The solution costs several thousand dollars per year."
"The solution is cheap."
"The solution's pricing is cheap; I rate it a five out of ten."
"In our company, we incur a yearly expense in our company for the licensing part. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten since it is expensive."
"It is a quite expensive solution."
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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
Educational Organization
55%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or requirements. Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better from a cloud monitoring or APM monitoring perspective. You can check...
What needs improvement with ThousandEyes?
When I first started using ThousandEyes, I found it challenging to extract useful information due to the numerous options available. I needed some training to effectively troubleshoot. More detaile...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Wayfair, GitHub, Craigslist, Comcast, SurveyMonkey, Lyft, Box, HP, Zendesk, IO Data Centers, Good Technology, NNTCommunications, Proofpoint, Schneider, Crowdstrike, Avera, Pitney Bowes, InstartLogic, Shutterfly, Shutterstock, Condé Nast, Roche, Jive, Actelion, Brocade, Infor, Okta, JLL, DigitalOcean, Zuora, NetSuite, CloudFlare, One, DemonWare, Quantcast, Carbonite, CareerBuilder, Prosper, Oscar, Slack
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. ThousandEyes and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.