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SolarWinds NPM vs Versa Director 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
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
Versa Director
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
88th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Director is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Versa Director0.4%
Other96.0%
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.
reviewer2146131 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oracle Apps Functional Consultant at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
A cost-effective solution to monitor customer networks
We are not getting any issues with the integrations. Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management. People must rely on and utilize it to enhance anything they want to increase, as it helps minimize the product. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution has improved our organization because it saves time, in that I do not need to visit every workstation in order to update it, as I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates, and I can also help customers remotely."
"Outages have reduced by probably around 90% because we're able to take and proactively add space to a disk or add processors to a server before users know there's a problem."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"SolarWinds dashboard is very fast. Also, their interface is very good, it looks very user-friendly. The product allows me to see a summary of the network being monitored at a glance."
"Its GUI is very user-friendly."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The nice thing about SolarWinds is that it's kind of all-in-one. I can manage the status of my networking devices, whether they are up or down, I can see how much traffic is going across an interface, and I can run a report that tells me exactly what that traffic is."
"The alerting system in SolarWinds NPM aids in proactive network management."
"I think the most valuable functionality is some of the policy pieces that are quite useful."
"The most valuable feature of Versa Director is analytics."
"Versa Director is a beneficial product for the environment my company has."
"Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management."
"Versa Director has easier customer reports, utilization monitoring, graphic shaping monitoring, configuration, template shaping, and deduplication compared to Fortinet and Cisco."
"Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management."
 

Cons

"There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better."
"The dashboard of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"Having more technical and support resources available in Saudi Arabia would be helpful."
"I think the graphical environment, the GUI still has to be improved."
"Technical support hasn't been the most reliable. Sometimes it takes them a long time to respond or resolve the issues."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds. Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team, especially during application-level issues."
"SolarWinds NPM offers limited customization options. Users and developers may find restrictions in modifying or customizing the dashboard and adjusting monitoring features such as polling intervals or SLAs for different nodes."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve the graphics of the interface and more customized reporting."
"Versa Director's on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software are not integrated, so you have to buy a separate subscription for the SSL VPN."
"Versa Director's deployment process is not the best."
"I think the one area that could be improved is that there are a lot of features; that is also an advantage but it makes things a little difficult, so I'd like to see some simplification so that there is less bloat."
"Versa could be more AI-oriented."
"What needs improvement in Versa Director is maturity because, from an operating point of view, it's not mature enough. You'll still need to do a lot of research on Versa Director, so if it could mature faster, that would be very good."
"It requires some simplification."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"It is expensive."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"Having to buy separate licenses for the on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software makes Versa Director very costly compared to other solutions like Fortinet and Cisco."
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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
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise86
No data available
 

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...
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Also Known As

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
Versa Networks Director
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. Versa Director and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,456 professionals have used our research since 2012.