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GroundWork Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

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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
100th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
74th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
52nd
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
7th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 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 4.4% 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 is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"I like that SolarWinds NPM is a strong tool for monitoring network devices, switches, and routers. It's also a user-friendly tool. My team also likes how scalable it is."
"SolarWinds is a great product that can do a lot."
"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."
"It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there."
"We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future."
"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"We were able to unify our entire company under one monitoring solution that works for everybody, saving a ton of time and significantly speeding up problem-resolution time."
 

Cons

"Deploying an agent leaves much to be desired."
"Currently lacks integration with SMS services."
"It is too expensive."
"Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today. They've done a fantastic job enabling the collection of data. Users are now demanding the ability to generate their own graphs, views, and so on; all of this must be done by an admin today."
"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."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"Overall speed of the software could be improved as it is incredibly slow at times."
"The admin web site could be a lot faster."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"It is too expensive."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"It is expensive."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
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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
20%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise87
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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, Datadog, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: September 2026.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.