

SolarWinds NPM and Kentik compete in the network monitoring and management category. Kentik appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced traffic analysis capabilities and responsive customer service.
Features: SolarWinds NPM provides robust network fault management, SNMP-based monitoring, and customizable alerts. It supports a wide range of network devices and effectively integrates with other SolarWinds tools. Kentik offers traffic analysis, network flow insights, and effective DDoS detection. It provides deep traffic visibility, essential for optimizing performance and data exploration.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM needs to address heavy resource usage, scalability in large environments, and challenges in custom metric creation. Kentik lacks actionable DDoS mitigation features and has an API complexity issue that could be simplified for ease of use.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM, mostly on-premises, allows for hybrid cloud deployment but has a learning curve for large-scale setups. Its customer service receives mixed feedback, with some users relying on community help. Kentik, being SaaS-based, is easier to deploy but less varied compared to SolarWinds. Its technical support is highly rated for responsiveness and proficiency.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM uses an element-based pricing model that can be costly but offers good ROI through improved visibility. Kentik's device-based pricing accounts for flow volume, potentially expensive but provides substantial value with its comprehensive data analysis capabilities, especially in large network environments.
If we had, for example, a contracted capacity from Vivo of 50 GB and we were using 40, with Kentik we reduced this usage from 40 to 20.
In production environments, especially for service providers on IP networks and data centers, Kentik helps in reducing the time to identify and resolve issues.
I believe the return on investment has been mainly time savings in performing troubleshooting.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
I have mostly used forums for any support needed because the setup is straightforward and the documentation is quite good.
They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us to determine what is needed.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
Regarding technical support from SolarWinds, I find it excellent.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
Kentik's integration with Kubernetes makes scaling easier.
Kentik's scalability is effective; the platform can handle these large volumes.
Kentik's scalability depends on how it is contracted.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
In production, however, dimensioning of the underlying platforms is something to be mindful of.
Based on stability, I would give Kentik a nine.
I can say it is so great for us because if we configure it with Flowspec, the orchestration that we use, which is Kentik, makes the decision and automatically forwards the traffic to another position that we have in our network, or outgoing that we use.
For stability, I rate SolarWinds NPM as a ten, which is the best.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
More work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting, simplifying root cause analysis, and providing suggested solutions for network issues.
It needed to be a bit easier for new users and have slightly more customized reports.
Currently, the way I'm configuring it uses reactive alerts, which means alerts are triggered when an issue occurs. I would prefer more proactive alerts in the future.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
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.
The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.
Kentik’s pricing is competitive in the marketplace.
Later, the prices are very high to maintain all the functionality blocks.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
It is not too pricey and is adequate.
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.
This allows for better understanding of whether there is a critical ongoing case related to incoming traffic, such as a DDoS event, which is crucial for a service provider dealing with numerous customers.
Kentik has positively impacted our organization because when something happens, we use Kentik to analyze the problem and it brings us a faster solution to the problem, and the troubleshooting is clearer.
Whenever any node is down in our network, whether it is a server or any network device, we receive information through email that the device is down.
The ability to customize the dashboard in SolarWinds NPM provides key benefits like saving time and money, and streamlining some processes.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| SolarWinds NPM | 3.7% |
| Kentik | 1.7% |
| Other | 94.6% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 7 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 4 |
| Large Enterprise | 10 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 59 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 33 |
| Large Enterprise | 87 |
Kentik provides real-time visibility into network infrastructure, focusing on monitoring, data visualization, and flow analysis to manage traffic patterns efficiently.
With robust analytics capabilities, Kentik offers insights into BGP peering status, aids in DDoS detection, and allows for detailed telemetry through its intuitive interface. The platform's SaaS nature simplifies operations by eliminating server maintenance concerns. Multi-vendor support and synthetic testing enhance network security and performance by simulating customer scenarios, while its API offers automation for querying and reporting tasks.
What are the key features of Kentik?Industries implement Kentik for network monitoring, traffic management, and flow data analysis across both on-prem and cloud setups. It proves valuable for detecting DDoS events, managing peering relationships, and optimizing costs, besides managing CDN configurations and performing synthetic tests in diverse environments.
SolarWinds NPM is a network performance monitoring tool offering a user-friendly interface with customizable dashboards. It provides real-time tracking of device health, latency, and bandwidth utilization, supporting diverse integration and scalability needs.
SolarWinds NPM's robust features include real-time monitoring of network performance and efficient tracking of device health, latency, and bandwidth utilization. The tool is appreciated for its ease of deployment, scalability, and support for integration with other tools. Features like SNMP monitoring, NetPath, and comprehensive reporting enhance its diagnostic capabilities and network visibility. However, users identify areas for improvement such as real-time analytics, advanced customization options, and enhanced scalability for larger enterprises. Better customer support, improved integrations, and security measures are also desired.
What are the key features of SolarWinds NPM?In enterprise environments, SolarWinds NPM is deployed to monitor network health and device status, sending alerts for any issues. It provides visibility into network performance, tracking bandwidth utilization and server metrics efficiently. Its applications span from monitoring routers, switches, and firewalls to supporting infrastructure monitoring across industries.
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