

SolarWinds NPM and Meraki Dashboard are both strong competitors in the network management space, with SolarWinds offering extensive monitoring features and Meraki focusing on simplicity and cloud management. Based on the comparisons, Meraki seems to have the upper hand in ease of use and cloud-based capabilities, while SolarWinds excels in feature richness and customization.
Features: SolarWinds NPM provides robust network monitoring activities, multi-vendor support, and advanced alert configurations. It offers deep customization options and integrates well with SNMP-enabled devices. On the other hand, Meraki Dashboard offers simplified cloud-based management with features such as Layer 7 filtering and presence analytics, which are highly appreciated for their ease of use and analytical capabilities.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM could improve by reducing its resource intensity and offering more integrated modules for comprehensive functionality. There are also concerns about inaccuracy in network mapping and slow support response. Meraki Dashboard is critiqued for its costliness and complex licensing, with a need for better integration with non-Cisco platforms and more advanced security features.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM offers on-premises, hybrid, and public cloud deployments despite occasional slow customer service and pushy sales tactics. In contrast, Meraki Dashboard boasts a predominantly cloud-based deployment model complemented by strong customer service, which is responsive and knowledgeable, facilitating management across distributed environments.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM's pricing is generally favorable for large operations due to its element-based licensing model, offering solid ROI through decreased downtime and efficient monitoring. Meanwhile, Meraki Dashboard is perceived as costly due to a per-device licensing system but compensates with reduced management overhead due to its streamlined, user-friendly interface, translating into significant operational savings.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
The support response time can be slow, sometimes taking up to fifteen hours.
When our site went down, Cisco's technical support was very responsive and effective, so I would rate them nine out of ten for their support.
They are instantly available for technical support from Meraki Dashboard.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
We have not encountered any downtime related to the Meraki cloud feature in the last five years.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
There is a need for price reductions in developing countries, as the cost of Meraki is quite high.
The cameras are not connected through Meraki, but all other devices are on Meraki networks.
It provides many insights out of the box without any need to search for them.
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 cost of the Meraki solution is high, which may not be affordable for smaller companies, especially in developing countries.
If we involve a third-party vendor, the price will definitely go up.
I would rate the pricing for Meraki Dashboard as one.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
It is not too pricey and is adequate.
Meraki Dashboard positively impacts my organization by enabling live monitoring. If someone unplugs the power cable, if the switches are down, if there is an outage, or if there is any misconfiguration, we get an alert from Cisco in our mailbox.
Meraki Dashboard offers an exceptional centralized management solution that allows easy updates and monitoring of various network features, including bandwidth usage and content filtering.
The most valuable feature for me is the cloud dashboard.
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 most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| SolarWinds NPM | 3.4% |
| Meraki Dashboard | 0.8% |
| Other | 95.8% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 23 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 13 |
| Large Enterprise | 26 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 59 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 33 |
| Large Enterprise | 85 |
Meraki Dashboard is a comprehensive cloud-based platform that offers centralized management and control for all Meraki networking and security products. It provides a user-friendly interface, allowing administrators to easily monitor and configure their network infrastructure from anywhere. With real-time visibility, troubleshooting becomes effortless, ensuring optimal performance and minimizing downtime.
The intuitive dashboard offers a holistic view of the network, enabling quick identification of potential issues and proactive measures. It simplifies network deployment and scaling, with zero-touch provisioning and automatic firmware updates. The robust security features include advanced threat protection, content filtering, and VPN connectivity.
Meraki Dashboard also offers powerful analytics and reporting capabilities, providing valuable insights into network usage, application performance, and user behavior. With its seamless integration and scalability,
Meraki Dashboard is the ideal solution for organizations of all sizes, ensuring efficient network management and enhanced productivity.
SolarWinds NPM is a network monitoring solution that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages quickly and efficiently. The solution is a powerful tool that can help you increase service levels, reduce downtime with multi vendor network monitoring, simplify the management of complex network devices, improve operational efficiency, and much more.
SolarWinds NPM Features
SolarWinds NPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SolarWinds NPM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SolarWinds NPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SolarWinds NPM solution.
PeerSpot user Andrew N., Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical, says, “The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.” He also adds, “From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. And, The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
Daniel S., Systems and Data Warehouse Supervisor at MMSD, mentions, “The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.”
A Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm explains, “As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service.”
Dinesh N., Digital Innovation at Bobcat Company, states, “The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.”
Fazal A., Implementation & Support Specialist at 360Factors, comments, “We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down. In the event an interface goes down, we have multiple reports that include availability monitoring, network uptime monitoring, and network downtime monitoring. These reports are on multiple schedules such as the end of the day, end of the last business day of the week, monthly, and quarterly. This gives us the ability to provide reports to our management and let them know the performance of our network.”
We monitor all Network Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.