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CA Unified Communications Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM 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

CA Unified Communications M...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
89th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
60th
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Unified Communications Monitoring (3rd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
2nd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of CA Unified Communications Monitor is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
CA Unified Communications Monitor0.5%
Other95.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

itarchit489981 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Good end-to-end voice quality monitoring and offers valuable features
The solution should have automatic baseline detection. On the per hour, per base, per week. That's usually the best. And on a per individual CI level. I know that they're working on it and when that's available then we will definitely implement it because it will reduce the effort we need to maintain all the products. Right now we have to set thresholds for every location, and it needs to be actually dynamic so if we have better thresholding, we'll have faster alarms across all our locations. We won't have to expend effort on it by resetting or checking them on a regular basis.
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Good end-to-end monitoring"
"For us, it's very key to know the voice quality of the total solution, which is based on many components across many domains."
"We use the solution to meet the needs of the customer."
"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."
"Being able to easily, and quickly obtain disc space statistics from servers and determine how much was free or used on various volumes."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers."
"Everything has been complete and stable for our needs over the past four years."
"The people in technical support are very good."
"SolarWinds dashboard is very fast. Also, their interface is very good, it looks very user-friendly. The product allows me to see a summary of the network being monitored at a glance."
"If your infrastructure is big, and requires a good kind of reporting tool, then SolarWinds fulfills all these requirements."
"CRC monitoring for each port is a valuable feature for us."
 

Cons

"The solution should have automatic baseline detection."
"All the features and functions of the solution can be improved, specifically the user experience."
"The solution is considered expensive."
"Technical support and releases are not particularly reliable."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds added some technical protocols like Modbus. The market needs a simple solution for monitoring a technical device."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"It is too expensive."
"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."
"It needs group views with performance metrics."
"If they could combine everything into one product, that would be very helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"Price could be improved on"
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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
No data available
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise86
 

Questions from the Community

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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

CA UC Monitor
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BBVA Compass
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about CA Unified Communications Monitor vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.