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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
Versa Director
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
51st
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 May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.6%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Director is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.
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

"The solution is user-friendly and has many options for customized monitoring that other tools don't have."
"I like that SolarWinds NPM is a strong tool for monitoring network devices, switches, and routers. It's also a user-friendly tool. My team also likes how scalable it is."
"We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"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."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"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."
"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."
"Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management."
"The most valuable feature of Versa Director is analytics."
 

Cons

"It would be good to have high security."
"We'd like to see a bit more automation in the future."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"The reporting module that got integrated into the system itself, used to be a standalone solution and I preferred that."
"The SolarWinds notification and alerting configuration could be simplified as it would be easier to find if it was within the NPM web application instead of in a separate client application."
"If they could combine everything into one product, that would be very helpful."
"I would like to see integration with antivirus or other security endpoint solutions."
"Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier."
"Versa Director's deployment process is not the best."
"It requires some simplification."
"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 could be more AI-oriented."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"Quite highly priced"
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"Price could be improved on"
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"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
Educational Organization
55%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.