No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Observer Apex 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

Observer Apex
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
104th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Observer Apex is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.7%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
Observer Apex0.3%
Other96.0%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Jeroen-Dubbelman - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Bitrate
Has good network visibility
The primary use case is for monitoring and troubleshooting. We also use it for security.   The correlation of data in Apex helps to get full visibility of the entire enterprise. Apex is where we get the end-user experience score from one to ten. Network visibility is the most valuable feature.…
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, 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. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Network visibility is the most valuable feature."
"The biggest thing for me is that it provided enough information for me to monitor. It alerts and provides you with the information you need."
"Being a global company with many highly-sensitive manufacturing lines and process control environments, SolarWinds consistently delivers real-time and accurate views into the deepest parts of our environment."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
"Solarwinds NPM was always the one that could check most of the monitoring requirements."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
"The solution is user-friendly and has many options for customized monitoring that other tools don't have."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"With SolarWinds, everything just works."
 

Cons

"The pricing and AI can 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."
"Scalability is a bit tricky because it requires more gateways in order to get the performance you may need. It also requires a lot of licensing."
"The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market."
"The aesthetic widgets should be dynamic widgets, so the customization can be even more customizable."
"SolarWinds offers some options for scalability, but there is a bottleneck on some features."
"Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"SolarWinds should have integrations back into products like ExtraHop, VIAVI, Riverbed, and NETSCOUT."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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
No data available
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise86
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Capita
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, SolarWinds, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.