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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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
SolarWinds NPM enhances network management and cost efficiency, providing superior monitoring, fast issue resolution, and significant ROI.
Sentiment score
6.9
ThousandEyes offers value through time and cost savings, improving network performance and user experiences, yielding high investment returns.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
There has been a great ROI from using ThousandEyes, with significant time saved in troubleshooting as I can quickly pinpoint issues rather than spending time isolating them, alongside enhancing customer feedback and experience.
Senior cloud engineering lead and IT project owner at KDD
I have seen a return on investment by reducing troubleshooting time and having lesser user mapping error issues, in addition to engineering time saved through better observability and reduced organizational MTTR.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM support is knowledgeable and helpful but faces criticism for slow responses and aggressive sales tactics.
Sentiment score
7.1
ThousandEyes is praised for exceptional customer service, with efficient issue resolution and high overall user satisfaction.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
Network Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
They have good technical support.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
We contacted the support team, and they resolved it within a couple of hours.
System Operation Associate at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The customer support for ThousandEyes is very proactive and supportive.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM offers scalable solutions for various environments, with possible increased costs and challenges on virtual platforms.
Sentiment score
7.3
ThousandEyes excels in scalability, supporting diverse functions and users but faces licensing cost challenges during expansion.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
Scalability with ThousandEyes is straightforward as you don't really need to scale; it's designed to monitor multiple applications, accommodating 50 or 100 applications simultaneously.
Network and Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
ThousandEyes's scalability is excellent; it is very scalable and grows with my organization's needs.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
SolarWinds NPM is stable, with issues arising during upgrades; regular updates and support enhance its performance.
Sentiment score
8.1
ThousandEyes is highly stable and reliable, with few bugs and no crashes, receiving positive feedback from users.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
Network Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
From my experience, ThousandEyes has been stable up to 95%; I have not seen any stability issues.
Senior cloud engineering lead and IT project owner at KDD
ThousandEyes is not very stable; sometimes you have to reboot the servers to get actual results.
Network and Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

SolarWinds NPM users seek improvements in network discovery, interface, integration, resource usage, cloud support, security, and pricing adjustments.
ThousandEyes should enhance customization, integration, user-friendliness, and analytics while reducing costs and improving documentation and incident management.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
Network Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
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.
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Having a dedicated incident alert system for URL alerts would help manage noise and streamline operations, especially during patch upgrades.
System Operation Associate at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
An area where ThousandEyes can be improved is in providing more in-depth packet analysis; we've found instances where ThousandEyes indicates everything is okay, but it's actually not.
Network and Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
Introduction of a free version for end-users and enhancements to the user interface for easier navigation.
Senior cloud engineering lead and IT project owner at KDD
 

Setup Cost

SolarWinds NPM pricing is competitive yet complex, appealing to some while being costly for smaller enterprises or multi-module needs.
ThousandEyes offers varied pricing based on usage, seen as mid-range, suiting large enterprises but challenging smaller businesses.
The solution is considered expensive.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
It is not too pricey and is adequate.
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that everything was cost-effective.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it comes in cheaper than alternatives.
Lead Technical Consultant at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

SolarWinds NPM offers easy deployment, strong monitoring, and seamless integration, enhancing network management with intuitive dashboards and real-time insights.
ThousandEyes provides detailed monitoring and diagnostics to enhance user experience and improve troubleshooting with cloud providers and ISPs.
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.
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
I measure the 70% improvement in customer experience through customer tickets and feedback after resolving issues, where previously, users faced problems and limited time on the platform, and after using ThousandEyes, the user time reached up to five to six hours a day, even for teams possibly totaling 30 hours a day.
Senior cloud engineering lead and IT project owner at KDD
ThousandEyes offers the best features including global internet and cloud visibility from distributed vantage points, application and network performance monitoring, real-time outage detection and incident alerts, end-to-end path visualization for rapid troubleshooting, proactive issue demarcation, and historical data.
Project Manager at Procter & Gamble
ThousandEyes has become critical for swift network troubleshooting as well, so anytime that there's potential issues with applications or we want to be proactive in resolving potential issues before they arise, ThousandEyes is really the platform that we're leveraging for WAN monitoring, Wi-Fi, latency, packet loss, etc.
Vice President, Operations at Fruitist
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th)
ThousandEyes
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
9th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.4%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThousandEyes is 2.1%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.4%
ThousandEyes2.1%
Other94.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, 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. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.
SP
Vice President, Operations at Fruitist
Proactive monitoring has transformed digital experience and now optimizes application delivery
With ThousandEyes, there are some configuration and metric screens that are not entirely intuitive with ThousandEyes, so they can certainly improve in terms of the usability of certain metric screens. ThousandEyes can also offer deeper traffic insights relative to specific applications, so detailed analytics on application-level traffic would help in better understanding and managing our network resources effectively. I would say that ThousandEyes can also, in terms of providing more extensibility with other observability tools, offer more out-of-the-box integrations with other observability tools so that ThousandEyes can serve as that single source of truth, so that we don't necessarily need to go to other tools to be able to be that one-source dashboard. I think there's a lot that ThousandEyes can continue to improve on there. The issues that I've talked about, including extensibility with other platforms and the improvement of accessing specific metric screens in order to be able to provide for fuller access and more detailed access to network-level metrics would make the platform feel less complicated to navigate. It wouldn't require as many manual integration inputs.
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise15
 

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?
ThousandEyes could focus more on end-users than enterprises, as the solution is powerful, and collaboration with multiple cloud providers should be developed for better test traceability, with the ...
What is your primary use case for ThousandEyes?
My main use case for ThousandEyes is troubleshooting, with a specific example being testing connectivity through IXP to ensure the fastest route in collaboration with service providers over the reg...
 

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: January 2026.
882,594 professionals have used our research since 2012.