For the value that you get from SevOne, it's worth the price. There are a lot of cheaper alternatives on the market, and even free options. But they require more staff, more resources, and engineers with more advanced knowledge of monitoring. That's what makes SevOne worth the price. In addition to the standard costs, we pay for support. And because we have installations in a number of countries, especially in Europe, there are additional costs for the installations in those regions, costs that are based on the different forms of taxes. If you just have an installation in one location, the cost structure is straightforward.
Consulting Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Mar 14, 2022
The license was quite expensive in the old days, but I think the price is okay for an enterprise customer. However, SevOne is still more costly than competitors in the small or medium-sized enterprise market.
Solution Architect at a media company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jun 16, 2021
Some of the services and functionality are adapted for SevOne via open-source, and the cost is very high. For the price that they are asking, it cannot be justified. If the vendor can look into reducing the cost, and then have a different licensing model based on the usage, that would really help. A blocking point is the high upfront cost because it is challenging to get it accepted and the purchase approved. If the cost were lowered or alternatively, if they can split it over several years, for example, that would help to get the product in the door and get going.
Network Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jun 10, 2021
Be careful of how the licensing works. From the administration side of things, I am a propeller head. I do not know anything that has a dollar sign in it. Those are numbers I do not know.
Learn what your peers think about IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
As with any vendor tool, having a good commercial contract is part of what makes the tool successful, and we got a lot of value out of it very quickly because we were able to secure a good commercial arrangement. It lived up to everything else that SevOne claimed on the box. So we were able to get the value straight away. Every vendor's licensing model is different. SevOne took quite a bit of exploration to understand the license. But if a customer is looking at it, just to understand what they're getting into in terms of managed objects and what counts towards a managed object, then they'll be fine. They'll know what they're up for and you don't get any surprises when it comes to buying additional licenses. The last thing you want to do is invest in a tool and then find out that there are ongoing incremental costs as you add more. My advice would be to secure a good deal upfront at a good price and then it becomes more attractive within the business to sell it. We have ongoing support and maintenance, so that's an annual OPEX for us, but that's very reasonably priced. If we look at the total cost of ownership of SevOne to our previous toolsets, then SevOne still comes out way ahead by comparison.
Network Tool Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Apr 13, 2021
There are different options available for licensing, with the per-device option being more expensive but more flexible. If the company has a sufficient budget then I would recommend using a per-device license. Although it is more expensive, it is better because it saves time. However, if you already have other servers or solutions in place that perform the same function, and you don't have the requirement on a per-device level, then the per-object license is a better choice, as long as you know the exact number that you need. There is separate licensing and pricing for the support, which also has different options available. We opted to purchase the standard, business hours support.
Sr. Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Mar 30, 2021
The pricing has been fair. In addition to the standard licensing fees, we have the annual maintenance fee because we purchased the hardware from SevOne.
Many tools price things based on the number of KPIs that you're collecting around a device. In many cases, there could be hundreds of metrics that you need to collect. SevOne provides device-level pricing. That gives us the flexibility to turn on, and expand on, the metrics that we're collecting around those devices, without taking a financial hit.
The IBM® SevOne Network Performance Management (IBM SevOne NPM) solution helps you spot, address, and prevent network performance issues early with machine learning-powered analytics from a single source. Boost network performance and improve your user application experience by proactively monitoring your multivendor end-to-end network across enterprise, communication, and managed service provider networks.
Transform raw network performance data into intelligent and actionable insights. The...
The tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing.
We have a procurement team who goes through the licensing. I don't get involved with the pricing.
For the value that you get from SevOne, it's worth the price. There are a lot of cheaper alternatives on the market, and even free options. But they require more staff, more resources, and engineers with more advanced knowledge of monitoring. That's what makes SevOne worth the price. In addition to the standard costs, we pay for support. And because we have installations in a number of countries, especially in Europe, there are additional costs for the installations in those regions, costs that are based on the different forms of taxes. If you just have an installation in one location, the cost structure is straightforward.
The license was quite expensive in the old days, but I think the price is okay for an enterprise customer. However, SevOne is still more costly than competitors in the small or medium-sized enterprise market.
Some of the services and functionality are adapted for SevOne via open-source, and the cost is very high. For the price that they are asking, it cannot be justified. If the vendor can look into reducing the cost, and then have a different licensing model based on the usage, that would really help. A blocking point is the high upfront cost because it is challenging to get it accepted and the purchase approved. If the cost were lowered or alternatively, if they can split it over several years, for example, that would help to get the product in the door and get going.
Be careful of how the licensing works. From the administration side of things, I am a propeller head. I do not know anything that has a dollar sign in it. Those are numbers I do not know.
As with any vendor tool, having a good commercial contract is part of what makes the tool successful, and we got a lot of value out of it very quickly because we were able to secure a good commercial arrangement. It lived up to everything else that SevOne claimed on the box. So we were able to get the value straight away. Every vendor's licensing model is different. SevOne took quite a bit of exploration to understand the license. But if a customer is looking at it, just to understand what they're getting into in terms of managed objects and what counts towards a managed object, then they'll be fine. They'll know what they're up for and you don't get any surprises when it comes to buying additional licenses. The last thing you want to do is invest in a tool and then find out that there are ongoing incremental costs as you add more. My advice would be to secure a good deal upfront at a good price and then it becomes more attractive within the business to sell it. We have ongoing support and maintenance, so that's an annual OPEX for us, but that's very reasonably priced. If we look at the total cost of ownership of SevOne to our previous toolsets, then SevOne still comes out way ahead by comparison.
There are different options available for licensing, with the per-device option being more expensive but more flexible. If the company has a sufficient budget then I would recommend using a per-device license. Although it is more expensive, it is better because it saves time. However, if you already have other servers or solutions in place that perform the same function, and you don't have the requirement on a per-device level, then the per-object license is a better choice, as long as you know the exact number that you need. There is separate licensing and pricing for the support, which also has different options available. We opted to purchase the standard, business hours support.
The pricing has been fair. In addition to the standard licensing fees, we have the annual maintenance fee because we purchased the hardware from SevOne.
Many tools price things based on the number of KPIs that you're collecting around a device. In many cases, there could be hundreds of metrics that you need to collect. SevOne provides device-level pricing. That gives us the flexibility to turn on, and expand on, the metrics that we're collecting around those devices, without taking a financial hit.