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SolarWinds NPM vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
31st
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
30th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
24th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (30th), Server Monitoring (16th), Configuration Management (17th), Log Management (28th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.5%
WhatsUp Gold1.2%
Other94.3%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.
Tom Condo - PeerSpot reviewer
If CPU, memory, or disk space is over-utilized, it alerts us immediately via text or email if there is an issue
When it comes to the intuitiveness of the topology mapping feature, our network architect created a vision diagram of our entire network and then created the links tied into the WhatsUp active monitoring to different spots on our topology map. It's one of the more critical functions we do here. We have the map displayed in different places in our room and help desk. We get alerted via emails but we can also see it visually. It does what it says it's going to do. We find this feature very helpful. The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one link. You can go into a particular part of the topology map, scroll in, and see exactly which module it is. All the information is provided. This feature really helps. You can see the correlation between that link and what failed. This feature is very helpful. The interface is fairly intuitive. Some of our users used SolarWinds and Nagios, and WhatsUp is easy in comparison. Once you get set up, the look, feel, and configuration are good. Our network architect had never used it before but he was able to create the Visio and map. It was very simple. He has no problems with it.

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."
"The alerting and reporting capabilities of the tool are impressive"
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the alerts."
"SolarWinds is reasonably priced."
"It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"It gives us a map of the network setup and one console to see the entire network."
"It is easy to access and discover devices, as well as monitor them automatically. The topology discover is also a useful feature."
"This is a good, stable network monitoring solution for devices."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the visibility it offers of everything in the network and infrastructure."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The installation and configuration process are easy."
"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."
"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
 

Cons

"The reporting module that got integrated into the system itself, used to be a standalone solution and I preferred that."
"The integration with video apps could be better."
"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."
"One of the challenges with SolarWinds is that in order to pull the data, we have to have a lot of false positives."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve by adding the deepest inspection, performance networking, and IP address discovery."
"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."
"There isn't support available to us as they don't offer support in our country."
"SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."
"The new release cadence needs to be improved. It takes a while for them to add new features and functionality. There should be a quicker turnaround with new versions."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."
"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."
"Adding on services increases the cost and on the version we have there is no option for ATM monitoring."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"I might like to see a better interface in the future."
 

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."
"It is expensive."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"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 price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"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."
"This is a well priced solution."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
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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
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

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 WhatsUp Gold?
The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one l...
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 ...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.