No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
88th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
61st
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
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of CA Unified Communications Monitor is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.7%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
CA Unified Communications Monitor0.5%
Other95.8%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1605927 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr.Solutions Engineer | Project Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Meets the needs of the customer but all of the features need improvement
I do not choose the solution. The client does. I am an implementer. We are systems integrators. It is worth mentioning that the solution should be easy to install and offer the user exhibition capabilities. Also, a data sheet should be used to gather information about the product, to facilitate easy and simple implementation. I rate CA Unified Communications Monitor as a five out of ten.
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 solution provides comprehensive monitoring that includes proactive items such as advance notifications and engineer tickets for code breaks, allowing engineers to quickly resolve issues before major outages occur."
"All the features are very good. The monitoring of the equipment, the configuration manager, and the IP address monitoring are great."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"It's the best platform for IT management."
"In general, I think SolarWinds is one of the most stable solutions and it has a lot of useful features for network performance monitoring."
"Being able to easily, and quickly obtain disc space statistics from servers and determine how much was free or used on various volumes."
"SolarWinds has greatly helped us, especially in tracing when the SoundCloud Software goes down without any apparent reason."
"The benefit of this solution is the reporting; we're able to report on and see our network in a graphical form, and we are able to detect when a device is added to a network."
 

Cons

"The solution should have automatic baseline detection."
"All the features and functions of the solution can be improved, specifically the user experience."
"Having more technical and support resources available in Saudi Arabia would be helpful."
"Overall speed of the software could be improved as it is incredibly slow at times."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution."
"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the short retention period. Currently, it's just for seven days of data, which is very low, making it hard for my organization to keep that data. SolarWinds recommended a seven-day retention period, but my organization needs a fourteen-day data retention period. Hence, I'd like an increase in the retention period or the database limit in SolarWinds NPM because you can't go back to the data for any investigation if seven days have passed. Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the database, which needs to be a bit more mature. I want a modified database in the next release of SolarWinds NPM. I'd also like more options added to groups because, currently, it's very limited."
"I would say the NPM toolset has room for improvement."
"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."
"With regards to suggested areas of improvement for the product, I would like to see the price come down, and in addition I think the network element mapping tool is not as robust as it should be."
"NPM comes with a tool called Network Atlas. Currently, it can only link switches to switches and only if all the corresponding ports are monitored."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"It is not an expensive product."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Construction Company
25%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise87
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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: August 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.