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Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs SolarWinds NPM 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

Instana Infrastructure Moni...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
33rd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
22nd
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.2%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.2%
Instana Infrastructure Monitoring0.7%
Other96.1%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Hakimuddin Ronaque - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at Lauren Information Technologies Pvt Ltd
Has the capability to automatically integrate with a large number of products
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. I have not worked much on other technologies, like SAP or VMware's virtualization part, on-prem infrastructure, or cloud infrastructure. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is so fast and easy to adapt that it works fine. I have not explored other operating systems or infrastructure solutions because my company doesn't have that customer scale. Most of our customers are on-prem or on AWS or Azure, but Instana Infrastructure Monitoring adapts to their infrastructure very well. My company came to know how well Instana Infrastructure Monitoring adapts to our customers' infrastructures when we take care of the PoC phase. Around 12 to 15 people in my company use the product.
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

"The product is easy to deploy."
"The product's initial setup is easy."
"I would rate the overall solution nine out of ten due to its capabilities, however, its complexity is a major drawback."
"In my experience with SolarWinds NPM Quality of Experience dashboard, it fulfilled all of our requirements."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"It did a good job of the collection and then an investigation of the net flow of information for understanding the applications that were being used at certain locations."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly interface and the ease of deployment."
"We had some interfaces where the SFP Ports were having some problems after a while. We found which of the SFP Ports was having the error and changed it, so the bandwidth become okay."
"The set up was very easy. We didn't have any problems with the setup. The deployment took less than an hour."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
 

Cons

"The product’s scalability is an area with certain limitations, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Instana Infrastructure Monitoring needs to support monitoring of the .NET framework since it is one of the areas where the solution currently has shortcomings."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"The reporting is good, but I want it to be a little easier when creating custom reports. The reports are all on the website now, but it takes some know how to get some to display the way you would like."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"GUI needs improvement with a more graphical dashboard."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"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 documentation is too weak."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of the tool is around 130 USD per month."
"There is a permanent license and also a subscription level which has annual fees. The price of the solution is fair."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"It is too expensive."
"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."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
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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
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?
The product’s scalability is an area with certain limitations, making it an area where improvements are required.
What is your primary use case for Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?
I use the solution in my company, especially if an application is down and it is considered to be a P1 issue or a critical issue. The network team will blame the application team, while the applica...
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

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

booxware, drivenow, scopevisio, enevo, TimoCom, mobitech
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,821 professionals have used our research since 2012.