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Alluvio AppResponse vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Alluvio AppResponse
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
58th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (49th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Alluvio AppResponse is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.6%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmet Kilic - PeerSpot reviewer
It's a total solution that gives you end-to-end visibility at all levels
I rate Alluvio AppResponse 10 out of 10. If you work for a financial company especially, you probably face problems on the application side. The problem is easy to identify, but you need to determine the root cause. You can solve issues easily via AppResponse because it shows you all the details of your transactions so you can see the real problem in the database, network, software, etc. For example, you can find the solution easily if you create the right dashboard on your site. If you can't find the problem, you can observe or investigate PCAP.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"When it comes to the ability to scale up the product, this is suitable for small medium and large environments,"
"Ability to see end to end user, application, server, and network response time and throughput data."
"AppResponse is a total solution that gives you end-to-end visibility into applications at all levels, from Layer 1 to Layer 7. We can trace all those sections: physical, IP, transport, presentation, application, etc. It gives us the full picture."
"It provides us with complete visibility of every packet."
"The most valuable feature is performance monitoring."
"I have found the AppResponse, which is a packet capture solution, very good. It gives you the ability to drill down back in time. You've got all the packets there. You can troubleshoot it later, not immediately. It's very interesting."
"With some APM solutions, it can take a long time to check a periodic report, but you can get all the necessary details quickly with AppResponse."
"Riverbed's product is a superb product."
"The most important feature is reporting. The reports that are generated are useful and they save a lot of time with respect to monitoring."
"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."
"You can monitor performance counters effortlessly."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"The stability is fantastic."
"The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
"The initial setup was straightforward. We deployed the solution from new and completed the upgrades."
 

Cons

"Integration between NPM and APM solutions would improve efficiency. There is no agent on the server site related to AppResponse."
"Alluvio AppResponse should improve its ability to expand across multiple operating systems."
"The recent changes in corporate structure may have caused some decrease in support quality."
"The pricing is on the higher side of things. If they could lower it, that would be ideal."
"If Alluvio AppResponse reduces its cost, it will be more beneficial for customers to monitor their application and network performance."
"The reporting models need improvement as most of the time, we have to customize the reports manually."
"They need to better integrate with products and solutions from different vendors."
"The AI features should be addressed in respect of the analysis and intelligence that must be supported and delivered in the tool to predigest the large amounts of data."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds. Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team, especially during application-level issues."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"The solution is considered expensive."
"We are looking to change away from this solution because of the documentation and the solution doesn't have enough integration in our country. The documentation is too weak."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing model is expensive compared to its competitors, but the service it gives to your business, and the data quality, means that it's worth it."
"It is costly for small and medium businesses."
"The price is a little bit high, especially because we have to pay an import tax."
"The solution is no more expensive than other products."
"It is too expensive."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above 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
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Educational Organization
52%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
The most valuable feature of Alluvio AppResponse is the actual response time for measuring performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
The pricing of Riverbed Alluvio AppResponse is really high. Very few customers buy Riverbed because many do not have the sufficient budget. Its pricing is comparatively higher than SolarWinds. Rive...
What needs improvement with Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
The reporting models need improvement as most of the time, we have to customize the reports manually. Additionally, a feature similar to SolarWinds AppStack, which provides a holistic view of the i...
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...
 

Also Known As

Riverbed AppResponse, OPNET SteelCentral AppResponse, ACE Live, OPNET, AppResponse Xpert
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

N11.com, OneMain Financial, China Bank, Halkbank, Kaust
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Alluvio AppResponse vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,823 professionals have used our research since 2012.