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GroundWork Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

GroundWork Monitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
101st
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
75th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
49th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
IT Operations Analytics (22nd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of GroundWork Monitor is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.7%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
GroundWork Monitor0.4%
Other95.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

it_user186582 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr PC/Client Server Analyst II at a individual & family service with 10,001+ employees
It's easy to setup and the plugins are easy to write. When we need to, the threshold is easy to change.
It's easy to setup and the plugins are easy to write. When we need to, the threshold is easy to change It would be nice to have a centralized client-settings management. At the moment, the client settings have to be changed individually. I've used it since 2011. The deployment of the new server…
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

"It's easy to setup and the plugins are easy to write."
"It provided visibility into network performance, which at the time we really did not have."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers."
"The reports are excellent; they give good graphical information and a lot of great details about everything that's going on in my network, and it's easy to read and understand due to its visual nature."
"It gives us a map of the network setup and one console to see the entire network."
"Quick to launch. No agents required. Many configuration options."
"If you’re looking to get a lot more insight and visibility into your network devices, servers, applications, and other devices, along with real-time alert notifications, SolarWinds NPM should be towards the top of your list."
"Can easily be interconnected with other management systems."
"Network performance is the main issue clients are facing. SolarWinds checks if a node is down, and we can set thresholds for performance metrics. For example, we set it up to get an alert automatically if a value is over 80 percent. It has a full dashboard that covers CP, hard disk, and node monitoring."
 

Cons

"Deploying an agent leaves much to be desired."
"There are still huge concerns about security."
"Technical Support has plenty of room for improvement, knowledge of their product was not very strong."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers (which have no connection to the public internet)."
"Technical support is average. Sometimes it took days to get responses and the responses were via email."
"There were some version releases that had stability issues but the support team was very good at letting us know what we needed to do to fix the issues."
"The solution's network discovery and node addition processes need more work."
"SolarWinds is not an all-in-compassing product. We are looking to change away from this solution because of the documentation and the solution doesn't have enough integration in our country."
"The solution is expensive and may not be very affordable for startups or smaller companies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"There is a permanent license and also a subscription level which has annual fees. The price of the solution is fair."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
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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
Construction Company
29%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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

GWOS
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Swiss Life, JBFCS, Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.