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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
6.4
ThousandEyes offers significant ROI by enhancing network performance, reducing downtime, and speeding up troubleshooting, benefiting organizations significantly.
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
6.6
ThousandEyes customer support is highly rated, responsive, and helpful, especially for critical issues, with effective integration support.
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
7.0
ThousandEyes is praised for scalability and adaptability, though some note licensing costs, making it ideal for diverse businesses.
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 reliable with minimal bugs, fast performance, and user satisfaction ratings typically between seven and ten.
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.
Users desire an improved interface, better integration, enhanced monitoring capabilities, detailed documentation, and proactive incident detection for ThousandEyes.
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
Incidents should be alerted on and traced early, before they escalate to full outages.
Software Developer at The Code
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
 

Setup Cost

SolarWinds NPM pricing is competitive yet complex, appealing to some while being costly for smaller enterprises or multi-module needs.
ThousandEyes is mid-range to expensive, offering significant value to larger organizations, with regional pricing and flow-dependent licensing costs.
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 offers comprehensive network insights, enhancing operational efficiency, troubleshooting, and user experience with end-to-end monitoring and deep visibility.
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, Finance and 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
7th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThousandEyes is 2.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
ThousandEyes2.0%
Other94.4%
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.
Shreyans Parekh - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President, Finance and 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
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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 Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise16
 

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?
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 scree...
What is your primary use case for ThousandEyes?
My main use cases for ThousandEyes at my current company are leveraging ThousandEyes for digital experience, internet, and internet performance. I'm using ThousandEyes for full network path visuali...
 

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: March 2026.
883,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.