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Grafana vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 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

Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
30th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (23rd), Server Monitoring (15th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (22nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 2.7%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Grafana2.7%
WhatsUp Gold1.3%
Other96.0%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Unified dashboards have empowered teams and have democratized real-time operational insights
Grafana's snapshot and dashboard sharing features are critical for our remote incident response. During production issues, I generate a public snapshot of a dashboard at a specific point and share the URL in our Slack war room so every engineer can see exactly what the metrics looked like when the error occurred. This helps significantly during the process of finding the root cause in those scenarios. The best features Grafana offers go beyond just pretty charts; it is an integration engine. The fact that I can join data from my SQL database with metrics from Prometheus in the same table is a feature I have not found performed as well elsewhere. My team uses this feature by comparing two different tables from the databases to show one single view, which Grafana is really helping with. In a visualized way, the charts can be displayed on one dashboard, allowing end users who are not familiar with these technical aspects to extract valuable data from it. Grafana has positively impacted our organization by democratizing data within our company. Before using Grafana, only developers could see the system health, but now our product managers and executives have their own high-level dashboards, which has improved cross-departmental transparency and alignment.
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

"Almost any kind of visualization is possible with Grafana and all dashboards are configurable."
"We like the alert features."
"We chose this solution because it met the requirements of visualizing and monitoring to make decisions."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the UI dashboard because we need to create a dashboard on Grafana to monitor our data."
"This solution provides valuable insights into the health of our infrastructure in real time."
"It integrates well with other solutions."
"It has good stability."
"The installation process is easy. We have deployed it on the cloud. I have around 20 to 30 people using the solution in my company."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of resources."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of resources."
"Overall, we have been satisfied with the functionality of the product."
"It handles the basics of monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."
 

Cons

"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"Multiple dashboards combined into one dashboard has slowed things down for us."
"The documentation or training provided by Grafana is limited compared to its competitors, like Splunk."
"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"Its UI features to create charts can also be improved. Some features could have a link to the documentation."
"There are not a lot of plugins for financial market monitoring."
"Setting up alerts via Grafana is a bit complicated, and alerting needs to improve."
"The product could be improved with a feature that provides detailed error messages when we encounter issues."
"There is a very big gap in the support."
"The licensing model could be improved. Right now, the levels are too far apart. This causes the solution to be more expensive than it needs to be."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity."
"The new release cadence needs to be improved. It takes a while for them to add new features and functionality. There should be a quicker turnaround with new versions."
"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management. If they succeed in doing this, the solution will cover all the network troubleshooting aspects and will be a benefit."
"The product is old and not updated."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"I use the open source model so it is free."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"We are using the open-source license."
"For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution."
"I am using an open-source version"
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"This is a well priced solution."
"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."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is very reasonable and has excellent community support.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
Currently, I do not think that any improvement is required, but there are multiple use cases.
What is your primary use case for Grafana?
My main use case for Grafana is to create and design dashboards based on the metrics provided by different exporters via Prometheus. We have different exporters, and we are creating different dashb...
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.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
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 Grafana vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.