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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
7th
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
29th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (22nd), Server Monitoring (14th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th), Configuration Management (20th), Log Management (39th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 2.6%, down from 6.7% 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 (%)
Grafana2.6%
WhatsUp Gold1.3%
Other96.1%
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

"Kubernetes could help us to better visualize the trend of our data by recording and displaying our history over a chosen duration, such as the last 30 days."
"We can write queries in different languages, which is beneficial for visualization."
"Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts."
"The best thing about Grafana is the visualization. The colors and the ease of use make it very user-friendly."
"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."
"Collaboration: Shares data and dashboards across teams."
"The initial setup is straightforward with just a few clicks on the solution's cloud."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The documentation is very good."
"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."
"It is easy to access and discover devices, as well as monitor them automatically. The topology discover is also a useful feature."
"The interface in the last few years it has been a lot greater, they are much more user-friendly. I like the interface."
"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."
"We've been using it for many years and we use it typically for early warning, as it notifies customers of problems prior to failure."
"It handles the basics of monitoring."
 

Cons

"I don't believe that Grafana fulfilled the requirements completely. That's why we moved to Datadog."
"I find that the alerting UI in Grafana can be complex for new users."
"Perhaps the display of the trigger limits should be more efficient because it's difficult to see that in a graph."
"Its interface could be more accessible."
"The service dashboard is very hard and needs improvement."
"​The security needs to be improved, such as the capacity to add permissions on dashboards.​"
"I have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation."
"The main drawback is the necessity for endpoint monitoring."
"The product is old and not updated."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"Improvements are needed in integration, especially for WhatsApp call and messages. Our region heavily uses WhatsApp Messenger for communication, and integration with this platform would be beneficial."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"Importing the maps and being able to customize them could be easier."
"The technical support does not bother to respond."
"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the open source model so it is free."
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"I am using an open-source version"
"We are using the open-source license."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"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."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"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."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
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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
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
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: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.