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Mist AI and Cloud vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

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

Mist AI and Cloud
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Wireless LAN (9th)
SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Mist AI and Cloud and SolarWinds NPM aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Mist AI and Cloud is designed for Wireless LAN and holds a mindshare of 2.3%, down 3.4% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 4.7% mindshare, down 5.9% since last year.
Wireless LAN
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

ALEXANDRE VIANNA - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable and AI-driven automation helps in quick implementation
I have a global customer who wants to start the design phase in a big warehouse, but we do not have the equipment to do a site survey. I need support for the access point to implement in a freezer area. I do not have it. The customer tried to send one piece of equipment to Brazil. However, we had a problem because the customer needed to implement it in three months, and it took two months to send one equipment to Brazil.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The cost is the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"The AI deployment process involves adding access points and placing them in the designated area. The AI system automatically adjusts channel selection and transmission power without any issues with stability or throughput. It has improved network performance."
"This solution helps customers save time and fix problems proactively."
"It's really easy to provision and support. Those are its main features."
"Natural language patching is an important feature."
"Multi PSK (Pre-shared Key) is a very good feature in the solution...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"AI is the most valuable feature."
"Mist AI and Cloud have definitely improved the functioning of our organization. The access to the Internet, including its speed and reliability, has significantly improved."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"I love the GUI. Almost everything is accessible through the web interface. It is very user-friendly. It is easy to drag and drop resources wherever you want them."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly interface and the ease of deployment."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"Everything has been complete and stable for our needs over the past four years."
"SolarWinds is reasonably priced."
"The other valuable system is the DSS (decision support system). If there's a fault in the network, SolarWinds is basically capable of rectifying and resolving that problem on its own without any intervention from an IP assistant or administrator."
"The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
 

Cons

"Regarding opportunities for improvement in Mist, it is notable for its robust cloud portal and integration of artificial intelligence into various services, creating a highly efficient environment for work. However, a drawback lies in the cost associated with its WiFi offerings. With a pricing range of twelve hundred to fifteen hundred dollars for a single Access Point, exclusive of the subscription, it is acknowledged as a relatively expensive solution in the realm of WiFi services. Despite this drawback, the positive attributes of Mist make it a noteworthy option."
"Mist AI and Cloud should improve its integrations."
"In future releases, they need to add some router models. Because currently, it supports only SSR and WAN routers. But adding other routers would be good."
"The user experience should be improved. It's not user-friendly."
"The solution has various licensing policies. It will be easy to use if it is an open single license."
"Mist AI and Cloud need to improve the configuration speed."
"There seems to be different versions of standards used in the wireless access points. In the future, it would be helpful if the solution could come up with some kind of universal standard for all devices and all access points."
"The solution doesn't provide mail notifications currently."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds."
"Each model has different features, so clients need to purchase a separate model for SQL monitoring, database monitoring, network traffic analyzer, HTTP traffic, etc. So each feature they need is in a different model, but customers would prefer an all-in-one solution."
"My team has had a lot of issues with support."
"The integration with the APIs and the web servers deployed can definitely be improved."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"The solution's customer service is not very good because the support takes too long."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
"It would be beneficial if NPM offered support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), as currently, it does not support this and we are migrating our services there."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is about the same compared to other vendors. There is an add-on license, but it's up to you if you want to buy it or not."
"The price of this product is approximately the same as competing products in the market."
"The annual cost is a significant issue for us, and it notably contributes to the overall price. We have a customer with nearly fifty-eight access points in a multifunctional building, and while the setup was relatively simple, the yearly licensing cost is substantial. For the specific features we utilize, the licensing amounts to about forty thousand euros annually. This is not a trivial expense and significantly impacts the overall cost, making it quite high."
"Mist AI and Cloud is expensive."
"Depending on the features, I think it's quite reasonably priced, especially considering the facilities of the product."
"The solution is expensive in Brazil."
"I rate the pricing a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low and ten is high."
"The custom licensing is a little bit expensive and I would rate it 7.5 out of 10."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"Quite highly priced"
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"It is too expensive."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Retailer
6%
Educational Organization
57%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Mist AI and Cloud?
AI-driven automation helps implement the solution quickly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mist AI and Cloud?
The price is very high in Brazil because of the high tax. The solution is expensive in Brazil.
What needs improvement with Mist AI and Cloud?
There are many aspects of AI, and how acquisitions are proceeding, particularly between Juniper and Aruba, remains unclear. From a Juniper perspective, there is a need for further improvements in t...
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

Mist Access Points
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dartmouth, Hitachi, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Nebraska Furniture Mart, NTT, Okta
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ruckus, Cisco and others in Wireless LAN. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.