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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
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
Versa Director
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
49th
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 November 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.2%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Director is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.2%
Versa Director0.3%
Other95.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Tochukwu Uzomba - PeerSpot reviewer
Rich modular monitoring capabilities offer tailored monitoring needs with good support
SolarWinds NPM is used for monitoring different solutions like database, infrastructure, and network performance. Each of these requires separate solutions, and SolarWinds provides modular options for monitoring Based on my experiences, SolarWinds NPM can handle large network infrastructures…
PriyankDubey - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly and simpler than its competitors
Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management. Its UI is also excellent compared to Fortinet and Cisco 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. In…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"The most valuable feature is the vital states of the devices as it provides overall CPU and device health information."
"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there."
"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."
"It did a good job of the collection and then an investigation of the net flow of information for understanding the applications that were being used at certain locations."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
"The benefit of this solution is the reporting. We're able to report on and see our network in a graphical form. We are able to detect when a device is added to a network."
"Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management."
"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 the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management."
 

Cons

"The solution's customer service is not very good because the support takes too long."
"Complex and overly detailed setup."
"The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market."
"The aesthetic widgets should be dynamic widgets, so the customization can be even more customizable."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license."
"It is difficult for stakeholders to translate technical requirements, which results in difficulties selecting a platform or implementing a solution."
"We are looking to change away from this solution because of the documentation and the solution doesn't have enough integration in our country. The documentation is too weak."
"It requires some simplification."
"Versa could be more AI-oriented."
"Versa Director's deployment process is not the best."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"It is too expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"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
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%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
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...
What do you like most about Versa Director?
Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management.
What is your primary use case for Versa Director?
We use the solution to monitor customer networks.
 

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: November 2025.
873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.