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SolarWinds NPM pros and cons

Vendor: SolarWinds

4.1 out of 5

158 reviews
92% willing to recommend

4,570 followers

Pros & Cons summary

SolarWinds NPM combines flexibility, allowing customization to fit business needs, with ease of setup and reliable server and network performance monitoring. Users appreciate proactive alerts and efficient technical support, though real-time analytics and scalability can be problematic. License management requires frequent customer support interaction. Integration with security technologies is limited, which impacts user experience. Slow technical support response times and regional unavailability cause additional frustration for users needing quick application-level assistance.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

SolarWinds NPM offers high flexibility with customizable monitors and alarms to suit business needs.

Ease of setup and use is a significant advantage, from installation to device discovery.

SolarWinds NPM’s framework empowers a wide range of admins and users for quick value realization.

Technical support is highly responsive and efficient, providing valuable assistance and problem resolution.

SolarWinds NPM is highly scalable, capable of handling numerous users and covering various aspects like virtual machines and servers.

CONS

Users have experienced challenges with offline license management and require better support for removing expired licenses.

Notification and alerting configurations need simplification and better integration within the NPM web application.

NPM lacks real-time analytics, requiring users to rely on admins for generating graphs and views.

Expansion on API capabilities and integration with additional security solutions is necessary.

Database optimization and an increased data retention period are essential to enhance NPM performance.

SolarWinds NPM Pros review quotes

reviewer2079555

Network Architect at a logistics company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jul 2, 2024

The alerting system in SolarWinds NPM aids in proactive network management.

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Enterprise Operations Manager at University of Alabama at Birmingham

Aug 19, 2020

The product covers our needs for the basic care and feeding of servers, whether they are physical or virtual.

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Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Adfontessoftware

Feb 18, 2020

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

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Engineer, Infrastructure Applications at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 1, 2017

The SolarWinds NPM framework, upon which most of their flagship products are built, empowers a wide variety of admins and users to quickly find value in their installed products.

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Network Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 24, 2017

With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server.

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CP

IT Infrastructure Analyst at Textron Systems Corporation

Jun 24, 2022

The stability is fantastic.

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Lead Network Engineer/Business Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jun 8, 2017

I love the GUI. Almost everything is accessible through the web interface. It is very user-friendly. It is easy to drag and drop resources wherever you want them.

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AN

Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical

Jun 15, 2020

The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes.

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reviewer1271415

Senior Technical Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Jul 5, 2022

There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports.

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Systems Engineer at Verizon

May 9, 2017

From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 91)

SolarWinds NPM Cons review quotes

reviewer2079555

Network Architect at a logistics company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jul 2, 2024

The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage.

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Enterprise Operations Manager at University of Alabama at Birmingham

Aug 19, 2020

Technical support and releases are not particularly reliable.

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Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Adfontessoftware

Feb 18, 2020

The only thing that can be improved is to continually add to the existing capabilities of the product.

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Free Report: SolarWinds NPM Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about SolarWinds NPM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Engineer, Infrastructure Applications at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 1, 2017

Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today. They've done a fantastic job enabling the collection of data. Users are now demanding the ability to generate their own graphs, views, and so on; all of this must be done by an admin today.

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Network Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 24, 2017

If they’re going for a “cover everything” approach, then they need to do so and enable a bit more of the "cover everything approach" within every one of the tools.

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CP

IT Infrastructure Analyst at Textron Systems Corporation

Jun 24, 2022

There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better.

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Lead Network Engineer/Business Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jun 8, 2017

The reporting is good, but I want it to be a little easier when creating custom reports. The reports are all on the website now, but it takes some know how to get some to display the way you would like.

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AN

Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical

Jun 15, 2020

In terms of scalability, there is room for improvement. When you start monitoring, if you have so many interfaces and you're trying to monitor them at a faster interval, or a shorter interval, you get to a point where you need to request another node.

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reviewer1271415

Senior Technical Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Jul 5, 2022

If they could combine everything into one product, that would be very helpful.

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Systems Engineer at Verizon

May 9, 2017

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.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 92)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Network Monitoring Software

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Cloud Monitoring Software

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Datadog vs SolarWinds NPM

Zabbix vs SolarWinds NPM

New Relic vs SolarWinds NPM

PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM

Cisco DNA Center vs SolarWinds NPM

ThousandEyes vs SolarWinds NPM

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs SolarWinds NPM

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds NPM

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LogicMonitor vs SolarWinds NPM

Centreon vs SolarWinds NPM

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