SolarWinds NPM vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

SolarWinds and Progress Software are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. SolarWinds is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5, while Progress Software is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.0. SolarWinds holds a 3.6% mindshare in NMS, compared to Progress Software’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds NPM

Read 160 SolarWinds NPM reviews

20,239 Views
15,584 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

WhatsUp Gold

Read 25 WhatsUp Gold reviews

11,469 Views
6,537 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

SolarWinds NPM

WhatsUp Gold

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

SolarWinds NPM and WhatsUp Gold compete in the network monitoring category. SolarWinds NPM gains an edge due to its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, which are often seen as a worthwhile investment despite its higher cost.

Features: SolarWinds NPM provides robust network monitoring with a variety of customizable alerts and reports, supports numerous vendors, and offers real-time visibility. It also features third-party integrations suitable for complex environments. WhatsUp Gold is recognized for its intuitive implementation and proficiency in network monitoring, but its offered features are not extensive regarding historical reporting and integration levels.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM should enhance resource utilization and refine alert configurations to be less cumbersome. The modular licensing approach can lead to increased costs. WhatsUp Gold could improve in device discovery accuracy and lacks automatic updates for network topology, while its customized alerting by device category is limited.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM offers flexibility with hybrid and cloud environments, though some users report slow support response times despite an extensive online community for help. WhatsUp Gold, primarily an on-premises solution, is praised for its ease of setup, although feedback on support is mixed, with slower responses for less critical queries.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM is considered more costly, especially with the need for additional licenses for expanded features. However, its comprehensive monitoring capabilities often justify the expense with significant ROI in the long term. WhatsUp Gold is more affordable, but additional features may increase licensing costs, presenting limitations compared to SolarWinds NPM.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds NPM vs. WhatsUp Gold Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds NPM vs. WhatsUp Gold

June 2026

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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

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

4th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

160

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

WhatsUp Gold

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

22nd

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

18th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

23rd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (29th), Server Monitoring (14th), Configuration Management (20th), Log Management (39th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)

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 WhatsUp Gold is 2.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM	3.6%
WhatsUp Gold	2.2%
Other	94.2%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Vivek Jaiswal

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.

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Erik Cheng

Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet

Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains

The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A product that is well-tested and trusted in demanding situations."

"SolarWinds NPM is used to monitor network components and solutions, and we used it to monitor downtime and latency between applications as well as the latency between services."

"It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there."

"We use NPM to monitor our enterprise for up/down status on network devices."

"The reports are excellent; they give good graphical information and a lot of great details about everything that's going on in my network, and it's easy to read and understand due to its visual nature."

"SolarWinds is one of those tools that work across the spectrum with different products, such as Cisco HP, and it is very customizable."

"It is stable, scalable, reliable and not too expensive."

"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."

More SolarWinds NPM pros

"We primarily use the solution to check the state of the network, monitoring thousands of devices and all of the internal network, and it is the first tool we use to see the state of the network for real-time monitoring."

"Overall, we have been satisfied with the functionality of the product."

"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."

"We've been using it for many years and we use it typically for early warning, as it notifies customers of problems prior to failure."

"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."

"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."

"This product has aided us in procurement and is overall a well-priced solution."

"The documentation is very good."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

"The scalability can be better."

"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers (which have no connection to the public internet)."

"IPAM. We wish it would work with Cisco CNR and help us manage all of our DHCP servers from a centralized platform."

"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."

"SolarWinds is not an all-in-compassing product. We are looking to change away from this solution because of the documentation and the solution doesn't have enough integration in our country."

"GUI needs improvement with a more graphical dashboard."

"We have not had a lot of opportunities to use technical support. When we did I was not particularly impressed with their response time or expertise."

"The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear."

More SolarWinds NPM cons

"Honestly, I do not particularly like WhatsUp Gold. I think we should get rid of it."

"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."

"There is a very big gap in the support."

"The interface needs some work."

"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management. If they succeed in doing this, the solution will cover all the network troubleshooting aspects and will be a benefit."

"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."

"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."

"The tool should focus on increasing its market share, as it is the only area of concern where improvements are needed."

More WhatsUp Gold cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay a yearly licensing fee."

"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."

"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."

"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."

"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."

"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."

"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."

"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."

More SolarWinds NPM pricing and cost advice

"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."

"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."

"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."

"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."

"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."

"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."

"This is a well priced solution."

More WhatsUp Gold pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	59
Midsize Enterprise	33
Large Enterprise	86

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

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...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

From my point of view, SolarWind is the best tool.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?

Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?

It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?

My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.

See all answers

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Zabbix vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 3% of the time

Kentik vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

NinjaOne vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

LogicMonitor vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds NPM

May 2026

Download SolarWinds NPM product report

Buyer's Guide

WhatsUp Gold

May 2026

Download WhatsUp Gold product report

Also Known As

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer

No data available

Overview

SolarWinds NPM is a network performance monitoring tool offering a user-friendly interface with customizable dashboards. It provides real-time tracking of device health, latency, and bandwidth utilization, supporting diverse integration and scalability needs.

SolarWinds NPM's robust features include real-time monitoring of network performance and efficient tracking of device health, latency, and bandwidth utilization. The tool is appreciated for its ease of deployment, scalability, and support for integration with other tools. Features like SNMP monitoring, NetPath, and comprehensive reporting enhance its diagnostic capabilities and network visibility. However, users identify areas for improvement such as real-time analytics, advanced customization options, and enhanced scalability for larger enterprises. Better customer support, improved integrations, and security measures are also desired.

What are the key features of SolarWinds NPM?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies navigation and operation.
Customizable Dashboards: Allows personalized data views.
Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant updates on network performance.
Strong Alerting Capabilities: Offers immediate notifications for issues.
Scalability: Supports growth with ease.
Integration: Works smoothly with other tools for comprehensive monitoring.
SNMP Monitoring: Tracks device stats effectively.
NetPath: Helps visualize network paths and performance.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Improved Network Visibility: Enables proactive issue resolution.
Enhanced Diagnostics: Facilitates quicker troubleshooting.
Real-Time Performance Data: Supports informed decision-making.
Ease of Deployment: Reduces setup time and complexity.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Ensures network stability and reliability.
Custom Integration: Adapts to existing IT environments.

In enterprise environments, SolarWinds NPM is deployed to monitor network health and device status, sending alerts for any issues. It provides visibility into network performance, tracking bandwidth utilization and server metrics efficiently. Its applications span from monitoring routers, switches, and firewalls to supporting infrastructure monitoring across industries.

SolarWinds

WhatsUp Gold stands out with its comprehensive network monitoring, dynamic mapping, and real-time alerts, offering essential tools for managing extensive IT infrastructures.

WhatsUp Gold provides robust capabilities in network visibility through dynamic mapping and NetFlow analysis. The platform's interactive topology aids in pinpointing issues effectively. Auto-discovery ensures complete network device tracking. While offering an intuitive interface and integration with Cisco ServiceNow, users find server performance monitoring useful for incident handling. However, improvements are anticipated in application monitoring and Active Directory integration. The pricing model and customization options leave room for enhancement. Despite these, users benefit from its integrated dashboards for immediate device health checks and network updates, making it beneficial for large-scale infrastructure management.

What features does WhatsUp Gold offer?

Network Monitoring: Provides continuous oversight of network components
Dynamic Mapping: Offers visual representation of network topology
NetFlow Analysis: Delivers insights into bandwidth utilization
Threshold Alerts: Notifies users upon reaching set performance thresholds
Auto-Discovery: Detects devices automatically for complete network coverage

What benefits should users expect from reviews?

Comprehensive Visibility: Enhanced understanding of network elements
Real-Time Monitoring: Immediate insights into network and device status
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive solution suitable for expansive networks
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies the management of complex networks

Organizations in sectors like telecommunications, education, and healthcare utilize WhatsUp Gold for their network monitoring needs. Telecom companies track switches and routers, educational institutions manage bandwidth usage, and healthcare facilities monitor device availability to ensure seamless operations.

Progress Software

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard

Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds NPM vs. WhatsUp Gold

June 2026

Free Report: SolarWinds NPM vs. WhatsUp Gold

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