Nmap vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Nmap and VMware are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Nmap is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.6, while VMware is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.8. Nmap holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to VMware’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Nmap users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Nmap

Read 22 Nmap reviews

1,121 Views
602 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 46 vRealize Network Insight reviews

1,401 Views
845 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Nmap

vRealize Network Insight

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Nmap and vRealize Network Insight operate within the network management space, with Nmap offering cost-effectiveness and vRealize Network Insight recognized for advanced features. Nmap is favored for scanning efficiency, while vRealize Network Insight provides comprehensive network analytics.

Features: Nmap offers robust scanning capabilities, flexibility through scripting, and the ability to quickly identify network devices. vRealize Network Insight delivers in-depth network health insights, performance monitoring, and strong security features, essential for complex environments.

Room for Improvement:Nmap could improve in providing comprehensive network analytics, stronger security features, and better performance monitoring. vRealize Network Insight might enhance its cost-effectiveness, simplify its setup process, and streamline its advanced feature complexity for broader accessibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nmap is simple to deploy without extensive configurations and is lightweight. vRealize Network Insight requires a more detailed setup process but provides substantial support and documentation, beneficial particularly for enterprise environments.

Pricing and ROI: Nmap is free, delivering immediate ROI without upfront costs, appealing to budget-conscious users. vRealize Network Insight demands a higher initial investment, offering significant long-term value due to its advanced analytics and tailored insights suitable for large organizations.

To learn more, read our detailed Nmap vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nmap vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

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Helped 851,604 peers since 2012

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

Nmap

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

12th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nmap is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.6%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Harish (Kumar)

Cyber Security and IT Head at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees

Shows useful info on every network endpoint, but has slow scanning speed and no GUI

One of the drawbacks of the standard Nmap utility is that it does not come with a graphical user interface, unlike a number of other open-source alternatives such as Zenmap. A second drawback is that the network scanning process can be very slow. I believe that the developers should improve the scanning speed, or perhaps offer an extra option for quicker scanning. Lastly, even though I can scan the network, the utility doesn't provide any way to fix the network issues that may be discovered. That said, I understand that the tool is not intended for fixing anything, but rather for monitoring and discovery only.

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NiteshKumar1

Principle consultant at Infosys

The tool's configuration is easy and artifacts are easily accessible through professional services and the web

The product is highly regarded, and many customers have been using it along with other VMware products like vSphere and VMware vCloud Usage Insight. However, recently, there's been a trend among customers, especially those using VMware for a considerable period, to explore the potential of migrating to the public cloud. The common concern among these customers is how the VMware products will perform in the public cloud environment. Migrating instances from VMware to different platforms is not easy, especially when dealing with many instances across multiple customers. Customers are keen to maintain the functionality of their existing VMware products but prefer to run them on the public cloud instead of on-premise servers. Our clients for vRealize Network Insight are enterprise businesses. I rate it a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a very user-friendly product."

"Nmap's performance is great, and I've never noticed any issues in this respect. It really doesn't put a heavy load on the machine when using it."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its scripts. These scripts prove beneficial when security features may obscure or block connections. Nmap helps identify vulnerabilities across different systems, including web servers and various server types."

"The best feature of Nmap is that it lets me see useful information about each endpoint in my entire network environment. For example, I can see every single connection of the network as well as each and every port."

"The most important function, according to me, is the capability to use some arguments in the scanning. The solution's capability to go figure and do a deep dive, discovering information on specific aspects."

"The solution detects the operating systems, which makes testing the software much easier before making the payload."

"It helps us secure the network infrastructure."

"The real-time reporting feature of Nmap is particularly valuable. It generates detailed reports on the source and destination IP addresses, the protocols used, and the types of traffic."

More Nmap pros

"The most valuable feature is the visualization. It's really handy to be able to classify network objects as with applications and see the interaction between them."

"It provides deep visibility into what is happening with traffic and helps us manage our network."

"With this product, we can precisely identify communication patterns between virtual machines within our data center, whether it's east-east or east-west communication."

"The ability to use the natural language query and see the visualization is quickly intuitive, and it works very well."

"It has definitely helped us to meet compliance rules by assuring that all traffic is going to where it's supposed to go. It can be used to report that you are in compliance, as well as helping you get into compliance."

"It allows you to see traffic that you couldn't otherwise see, which is traffic within your Layer 3-bounded network, meaning east-west traffic. It's hard to get that any other way."

"The solution is extremely intuitive and user-friendly. When you log in to the application you are presented with a dashboard that is very reasonable for an initial user, and you can then customize it to your specific needs. But for all the data that we've found, we've only had to go through two or three drill-downs to get into that information."

"I like being able to see the flows coming in and out of the product. In terms of monitoring network flows, we use it to verify whether or not different servers/applications should be communicating with each other."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"The solution should increase the number of features under a free license."

"It takes a bit of time to get familiar with the solution and its options."

"There is room for improvement in the design, the GUI. It looks a bit odd. Maybe Nmap should improve it or add more widgets to make it more attractive, but the basic functionality is good and provides what we need."

"Nmap major operates through the CLI; there's no GUI component, and that's where the challenge is."

"Customization is not very user-friendly in Nmap."

"They should deliver Playtech's username and password."

"The tool's license limits the number of scans it can perform. Improving the license model could benefit customers by allowing more scans for compliance and other purposes."

"One of the drawbacks of the standard Nmap utility is that it does not come with a graphical user interface, unlike a number of other open-source alternatives such as Zenmap."

More Nmap cons

"The UI, even though once you get to know it, it's easier, still it's hard to figure out by yourself. You have to go read, watch videos. It has a lot of data on it. So that is an issue."

"It just needs to be more reliable and more accurate. At some point, there are some things where it does not match properly."

"Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined."

"It needs to be a little easier to use and to understand the information it's putting out. That would make it more helpful. If you're not a network person you need to understand things like network policies and concepts. If you gave it to a regular admin, it would be nice if it were easier for them to pick up what is going on, understand the flows and whether or not stuff should be talking to each other, as opposed to just port groups and IP addresses."

"The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure."

"I would like to see application identification. That would be cool."

"There could be some deeper analytics into packet inspection and trace flows. It could use some kind of machine learning to look at Layer 7 traffic for potential malware or corrupt packets."

"There's enough information there, especially in the visualizations, but I would love to see this in a kiosk mode, where I could have a dashboard for interested stakeholders to see and appreciate what's going on. Then, moving on to a more practical level for our Help Desk, our operations team could benefit by seeing, in real-time, a visual view of the network."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nmap is open source software, which suits us well because we are a manufacturing company and not an IT company, for example. If we were an IT company, we would probably need to pay for extra support or instead go for another software solution. But as it is, we don't have any need for high-end troubleshooting tools."

"It's an open-source solution. Commerically, only the support service is available."

"Nmap is an open-source and free product."

"The solution is open source so it is free."

"The product's pricing is fine. The licensing options for Nmap include perpetual licenses and volume-based licenses. For perpetual licenses, once you purchase it, there's no need to invest in renewals. And for volume-based licenses, enterprise companies can use it multiple times based on the number of users or devices they need to scan. It's a pay-as-you-go model, similar to how you pay for what you use."

"I am using the standard free version of Nmap."

"The solution is free of cost, but there are specific services that we have to buy."

"I am using the free version of Nmap."

More Nmap pricing and cost advice

"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."

"The solution has reduced the time that we spend on other products. For example, with NSX, we were able to quickly find things that we would normally spend days trying to figure out."

"It has brought more money into our company."

"The solution has helped us to reduce time, increase performance, reduce costs, and even easily manage networks. We are probably seeing 10 to 20 percent labor savings because we are able to be very specific and focused on what we want to do. It ends up saving the customer money and makes us be more efficient on our cost deliveries."

"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."

"Cost always has room for improvement, you could always make it cheaper. But I think it's a good value for what you pay for it."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Retailer

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nmap?

Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to sca...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nmap?

I am using the free version of Nmap.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Nmap?

Nmap is used for network scanning to map the network, identify devices, and assess their status. It helps determine open ports and services running on a particular endpoint or server within an ente...

See all answers

What do you like most about vRealize Network Insight?

The tool's ease of configuration and use and the availability of information and artifacts through professional services and the web are key factors that customers find valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?

Broadcom is known for increasing product prices, making them expensive compared to what people used to pay. I liken the subscription model to not truly owning what you pay for.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?

Right now, I do not see a specific area for improvement. My main concern is understanding the intentions of Broadcom, which has acquired VMware. Broadcom should improve by going back to what was wo...

See all answers

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Compared 14% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nmap

May 2025

Download Nmap product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

Overview

Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network discovery and security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and official binary packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. In addition to the classic command-line Nmap executable, the Nmap suite includes an advanced GUI and results viewer (Zenmap), a flexible data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool (Ncat), a utility for comparing scan results (Ndiff), and a packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping).

Nmap

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security. It helps customers build an optimized, highly-available and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. It accelerates micro-segmentation planning and deployment, enables visibility across virtual and physical networks and provides operational views to manage and scale VMware NSX deployments.

VMware

Sample Customers

Lockheed Martin, Eastern Bank Boston, Perspecta, Harris Corporation, Discovery Communication

NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet

Buyer's Guide

Nmap vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

Free Report: Nmap vs. vRealize Network Insight

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