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Kentik vs SolarWinds Network Automation Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th)
SolarWinds Network Automati...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
92nd
Average Rating
5.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Network Automation (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 1.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Network Automation Manager is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kentik1.7%
SolarWinds Network Automation Manager0.4%
Other97.9%
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.
Giulio Valeri - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS SRL
Threat detection failures, poor technical support, and expensive
We use the solution to manage all of our customer's systems. We monitor and decide if everything is okay and if not, we do changes when needed. For example, if there is a need to change the antivirus software we can automate the process and install the new one. There are scripts within the software…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Collecting that data and having those metrics first-hand, in real-time, allows us to make an educated decision, versus an uneducated guess."
"Good NetFlow visualization and analysis tools are valuable to anybody who needs to understand the traffic that flows in and out the network."
"Kentik excels in telemetry within data centers and works well in multi-vendor environments."
"One of the valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."
"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."
"I am able to do a lot of work on the visualization end to create different visualizations and different ways to get information out of it."
"The drill-down into detailed views of network activity helps to quickly pinpoint locations and causes. All the information is there."
"This product is easily the best network monitor that I’ve ever seen or heard about."
"We are satisfied with the stability of the solution."
"The installation is easy."
"The solution offers so many great resources, it makes them a powerhouse in the market."
 

Cons

"Kentik can be improved in terms of languages, and visually it could be improved a bit more as well."
"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."
"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."
"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."
"Perhaps a better explanation would be to see how tagging is captured and a method of comparing my tagged interfaces on Kentik’s side."
"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."
"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."
"It also detects anomalies proactively, but the same is not so true when it comes to real network problems, since they tend to just happen."
"The price could be a bit lower."
"We now use ConnectWise because while using SolarWinds we were attacked by ransomware. The solution did not protect us."
"We did not like SolarWinds because it was not able to communicate between UPSA and our accounting system. They should have better integration."
 

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 price of SolarWinds Network Automation Manager is fair. However, it is more expensive than ConnectWise."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Media Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Computer Software 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?
I do not currently use Kentik's anomaly detection. I had communication with Kentik's technical support through a WhatsApp group. When I faced any issues or there were problems with my Kentik collec...
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
I'm using Kentik for my own internal use. My primary use case is to monitor our equipment and to get a more detailed view of where our inbound and outbound traffic is going.
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Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds NAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Maalem Financing Company, School City of Hammond
Find out what your peers are saying about Kentik vs. SolarWinds Network Automation Manager and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.