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SolarWinds NPM vs Zabbix vs Zenoss Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

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 Zabbix is 13.0%, up from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zenoss Cloud is 0.4%, down from 0.4% 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.
ASM Naushad Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes
We have not yet purchased the commercial version so have a lack of technical ability. We do not yet fully know the key points or key features of the solution. We just use what we use along with WhatsUp Gold. Based on our use only, stability is rated a seven out of ten.
ClaudiaChen - PeerSpot reviewer
Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features
As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 alerting and reporting capabilities of the tool are impressive"
"The product covers our needs for the basic care and feeding of servers, whether they are physical or virtual."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"I believe the ease of setup and use, including everything, from the initial installation to the discovery of devices is the most valuable."
"I like the tracking feature to track devices and see where they are connected. This is very practical."
"The implementation process is very straightforward."
"The solution's design has recently changed and it is visually pleasing with more color, for example, there is blue, black, and white."
"The solution is quite mature and very stable."
"The most valuable feature is monitoring."
"It's one of the best products available."
"We detect problems before the customer does and before it actually happens using the predictive functions in Zabbix."
"There are lots of great features and functionality within the solution."
"It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."
"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."
"The most valuable feature is the flexible discovery mechanism."
"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."
"The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training."
"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."
"It's easy to use."
"What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts. For example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue."
 

Cons

"The integration needs to be improved."
"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."
"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."
"Each model has different features, so clients need to purchase a separate model for SQL monitoring, database monitoring, network traffic analyzer, HTTP traffic, etc. So each feature they need is in a different model, but customers would prefer an all-in-one solution."
"They have had a rather large security breach in the past. It's cost some companies customers."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"An area for improvement would be the ease of doing aggregation from the value or different devices."
"Zabbix is powerful, but it is difficult to understand initially. There are many things that can be improved, but we might not be using Zabbix to its fullest extent. The software has more features than we need."
"In the next release, I'm hoping for features targeted towards larger users with more customizable options. Despite this, I think pre-canned reports that can be used straight out of the box would be beneficial rather than having to configure each report individually. Additionally, a deeper dive into software configurations on the machines would be useful, although I understand there may be challenges in implementing this due to scripting requirements. More documentation would also be appreciated."
"Improvement is needed as per customer requirements."
"There's a small module of APM, however, it is not an enhanced version. People usually ask for a full-fledged APM solution."
"Sometimes, the documentation is a little bit written in Estonia – a country in Europe. The language barrier and translation to English can sometimes make it difficult to understand what they're trying to get at. It's just a language thing."
"Implementation is always tailored to the customer and the kind of information we need from the client to carry it out can make them very uncomfortable. Sometimes the clients are not ready to share it."
"I have experienced stability issues approximately five or ten times."
"The inclusion of a feature to show a graphical view of the network would be a helpful improvement."
"As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor."
"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."
"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. They introduced Control Center to manage things in Zenoss 5. The services that Zenoss provides remained the same, but the administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex"
"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."
"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"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."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"My manager is very happy because it doesn't cost anything."
"Zabbix and Grafana are both open source products, we only needed to go to their website and download the application and we began to use them. The solutions are free."
"There is a license required for this solution and we pay annually for our license."
"This solution is completely open-source, so it is quite affordable."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"It's free software released under the GNU/GPL license."
"If you have 20,000 hosts, the support costs around €95,000 for a year."
"We were searching for an open source solution and Zabbix fit the bill because it is free and open source under the GPL license."
"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."
"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."
"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."
"It depends on the customer, what he wants."
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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
54%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ar...
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 scalabil...
What do you like most about Zabbix?
The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
For me, Zabbix is very straightforward. I cannot think of any improvements needed. It's a very mature product. The on...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a larg...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
No data available
Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: April 2025.
850,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.