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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
160
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
Versa Director
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
48th
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 January 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 Versa Director is 0.4%, 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 NPM3.4%
Versa Director0.4%
Other96.2%
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.
PriyankDubey - PeerSpot reviewer
Product manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
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

"The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface."
"We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down."
"The connectivity of the solution is very good."
"In my experience with SolarWinds NPM Quality of Experience dashboard, it fulfilled all of our requirements."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"The product is scalable."
"The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
"SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users."
"Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management."
"The most valuable functionality is some of the policy pieces that are quite useful."
"Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management."
"The most valuable feature of Versa Director is analytics."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to have a test to check if you can access a particular device via API without installing it and waiting for a poll cycle. You should have the capacity to initiate a test to see if it was reachable and get the results almost immediately."
"There needs to be more integration of widgets, especially for reporting purposes."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve by adding the deepest inspection, performance networking, and IP address discovery."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds added some technical protocols like Modbus. The market needs a simple solution for monitoring a technical device."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"The integration needs to be improved."
"The solution's database performance could be improved."
"It requires some simplification."
"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."
"Versa Director's deployment process is not the best."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"It is expensive."
"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."
"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
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
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: December 2025.
879,425 professionals have used our research since 2012.