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DX Spectrum vs WhatsUp Gold 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

DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
30th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
29th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (11th), Network Troubleshooting (8th), DX NetOps (1st)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
24th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (26th), Server Monitoring (15th), Configuration Management (20th), Log Management (35th), Cloud Monitoring Software (21st), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 1.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
WhatsUp Gold2.3%
DX Spectrum1.3%
Other96.4%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Offers a lot of functionality."
"The stability and reliability of the Spectrum product have been top-notch."
"CA Spectrum allowed our client, a Tier 1 TELCO, to manage their E2E network infrastructure, proactively monitor Enterprise: GMPLS, IPVPN, ISDN, LTE and Leased Line services against set SLAs, and maintain a top quality of service, while the easy integration of topology views to a web portal provided a wow factor by exposing real-time performance and health status of enterprise infrastructure setups to customers."
"The way our network is structured, CA Spectrum seems to be able to deal with problems that we have coming up in real time."
"The tool is very mature, and its valuable features are monitoring and configuration management."
"It's a good tool. It's simple to do the configuration."
"For network management, this application is by far the best."
"With the timely alerts that our MTTR reduced, we could determine the impact of the outage as well as the root cause of the issue."
"The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless."
"The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one link. You can go into a particular part of the topology map, scroll in, and see exactly which module it is."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
"It is easy to access and discover devices, as well as monitor them automatically. The topology discover is also a useful feature."
"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."
"I use it on premises to monitor my network database. We monitor the link up/down and use the SNMP traps as well."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of resources."
 

Cons

"HTML5. Right now, it is a very Java driven application. We have lots of issues."
"It's not a great performance management tool. Its reporting capabilities are not very good at all."
"The interface is not nice and needs to be improved."
"A lot of the filtering and orchestration of the background takes a lot of manual work."
"For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts."
"It doesn’t give you performance metrics: You need CA eHealth for this."
"The solution could improve by allowing the ability to monitor the network shortly after installing the software and adding an auto-discovery function."
"It took a while to understand the product, but once we went hands on, it's great to work with."
"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."
"Adding on services increases the cost and on the version we have there is no option for ATM monitoring."
"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."
"You have to invest a few days to become an expert in this solution."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"The technical support does not bother to respond."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"The price is very high."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"This is a well priced solution."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
What do you like most about WhatsUp Gold?
The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.