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Kentik vs Riverbed 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

Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
13th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (10th)
Riverbed NPM+
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
44th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Riverbed NPM+ is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kentik1.5%
Riverbed NPM+0.5%
Other98.0%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Gcecilio - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a media company with 51-200 employees
Traffic insights have reduced transit costs and support secure, direct connections with providers
The best features that Kentik offers are the ability to identify traffic end-to-end and to know which transit is used, if it goes through any other transit, to see the entire flow, from the subscriber to the content provider and vice versa, from the content provider to the subscriber.I can also determine whether it is symmetric or asymmetric traffic, and if it goes through any provider that has some kind of bottleneck. That is very important. Regarding the security part, which is also possible to handle through Kentik, you can configure it in a way that makes the network more secure and reduces the amount of dirty traffic or attacks received. Kentik has had a high positive impact on my organization. Besides the cost reduction, it has been possible to perform troubleshooting more effectively, and also regarding DDoS-related attacks. In addition to cost reduction, we had a more reliable connection. Since the moment we identified that it was possible to have a direct connection with content providers like CDN77, Cloudflare, and Akamai, we established a direct connection there through a PNI with these content providers, making the network less dependent on an IP transit provider.
SK
Senior Technical Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Provides deep packet visibility for tracing failed transactions and helps improve enterprise-level monitoring
Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution. Additionally, within Riverbed Portal, there is an Application Map module that could be improved. It can show the application's architecture and connectivity to the network. The applications map feature needs enhancements for better customization since currently, it is quite limited. The enhancements I recommend are not for the entire Riverbed product suite, but specifically for the application map feature within the Portal of Riverbed NPM+. This Portal is one of the dashboard modules and while there is potential for improvement, it must be enhanced significantly to provide better functionality. Currently, you cannot trace by transaction number alone; knowing the source and destination IP is necessary. For instance, if I transfer money and a transaction fails, tracing that transaction ID is not captured in AppResponse. I have raised this concern, and if this feature is implemented, it would greatly benefit banking customers, especially because it is not available with their competitors either.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Overall, I would give Kentik nine out of ten stars."
"Before using the solution, we had to do all these manual tasks, such as running all these queries manually, and building our tech cost-report used to be a two or two-and-a-half-week effort, and using Kentik, and the automation that it provides us, we've brought that down to a day or two, which is a massive time savings."
"Collecting that data and having those metrics first-hand, in real-time, allows us to make an educated decision, versus an uneducated guess."
"Compared to PRTG, Kentik's real-time network monitoring features are definitely superior."
"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."
"The drill-down into detailed views of network activity helps to quickly pinpoint locations and causes. All the information is there."
"Kentik has positively impacted my organization significantly, as it serves as our main monitoring system."
"We haven't seen anything else that comes even close to Kentik's real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, and we've demo'ed everything under the sun."
"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."
"Alluvio Network Performance Management is good for troubleshooting."
 

Cons

"Perhaps a better explanation would be to see how tagging is captured and a method of comparing my tagged interfaces on Kentik’s side."
"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."
"Kentik can be improved by enhancing the alerting system, especially the way templates work and the hierarchy of these alerts."
"My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing shows that the prices are quite high."
"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."
"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable. Kentik is valuable, don't get me wrong, but if it had an actionable piece to it..."
"We had faced some issues during an outage and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools. It took time to resolve these issues, which is why I give them eight points."
"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."
"Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution."
"Currently, you cannot trace by transaction number alone; knowing the source and destination IP is necessary."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."
"The tool is cheaply priced."
"The tool's pricing is high and I would rate it one out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Media Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been limited because I was not responsible for that in my company, but I have spoken with my boss, and he reported that the licensing mode...
What needs improvement with Kentik?
Kentik can be improved by enhancing the alerting system, especially the way templates work and the hierarchy of these alerts.
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
My main use case for Kentik is as a network monitoring system and flow analysis tool. A specific example of how I use Kentik for network monitoring is monitoring devices or services that go down an...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alluvio Network Performance Management?
The pricing of Riverbed NPM+ is indeed high, particularly as I work with enterprises in the banking sector primarily in India and the Middle East, and I have also interacted with clients in Europe....
What needs improvement with Alluvio Network Performance Management?
Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution. Additionally, within Riverbed Portal, there is an Ap...
What is your primary use case for Alluvio Network Performance Management?
Riverbed NPM+ has many primary use cases, making this NPM solution totally different from other tools like SolarWinds. They have a solution called AppResponse, which is not an agent-based solution ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Alluvio Network Performance Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Kentik vs. Riverbed NPM+ and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.