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OP5 Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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

OP5 Monitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
38th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
36th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of OP5 Monitor is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.4%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.4%
OP5 Monitor0.7%
Other95.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Sumanth Arshanapally - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Monitoring ease and cost-saving benefits enhance operational efficiency
The monitoring in OP5 Monitor is very easy because we can directly use custom plugins. We can write custom scripts and use those scripts directly. It's very low cost, open, and the dashboards are easy to see. We can extract the reports easily, and this is very easy to compare. Real-time monitoring in OP5 Monitor provides data every one minute or every five minutes, enabling us to get live data from the last one minute or last five minutes. OP5 Monitor gave us proper server availability, so we can always check whether a server goes down or the server CPU and memory decreases. Before reaching a particular bottleneck situation, we identified and fixed the issue, which helped us from a cost-saving business perspective. It helped us avoid application downtime.
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

"It monitors and continuously tests everything that is of importance to you and your users. It could be everything from monitoring disk space to CPU usage to memory. It could include determining if the response time in your e-commerce platform is quick enough, or whether you have too many bounces from some of the pages on your website. You want to monitor anything that could cost you money or time or resources. You can do that with this system. It's very flexible."
"The API makes it pretty easy to integrate with any system."
"We can also observe whatever we want, and there are no limitations."
"The best feature is that it is very relatable, stable, and scalable. The logger is a part of the software, but it's not the most important point of it."
"With limited hardware or a virtual machine, you can address a huge network, hundreds of thousands of elements that need to be monitored. Other commercial software is not on that level."
"The monitoring in OP5 Monitor is very easy because we can directly use custom plugins; we can write custom scripts and use those scripts directly, it's very low cost, open, and the dashboards are easy to see."
"OP5 Monitor is a great choice due to its being built on an open-source monitoring tool and provides ample opportunity for customization based on specific support requirements. It is also user-friendly and easy to manage with a wide range of plugins available for use. In comparison to other enterprise tools, such as Micro Focus, OP5 Monitor stands out for its features and cost-effectiveness, making it the best tool in the market. Customization is one of the key strengths of the tool and provides a lot of capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to find support and plugins for the tool through online resources."
"I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"The set up was very easy. We didn't have any problems with the setup. The deployment took less than an hour."
"SolarWinds dashboard is very fast. Also, their interface is very good, it looks very user-friendly. The product allows me to see a summary of the network being monitored at a glance."
"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."
"SolarWinds has greatly helped us, especially in tracing when the SoundCloud Software goes down without any apparent reason."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface."
"The initial setup is easy."
 

Cons

"The solution is useful for tweaking. However, there have been some negative experiences, such as limited report capabilities. The only report available is in PDF format, making it difficult for teams managing multiple servers to extract data in Excel format. The speaker recommends that the team improve the report capabilities to better serve users."
"They need to improve the dashboard interface."
"We do not get performance reports properly."
"The user interface is not what we are used to these days, and should be improved."
"OP5 Monitor could include application monitoring in addition to infrastructure monitoring. If application business transactions were monitored, it would be helpful."
"OP5 lacks some visualization, a feature that makes some other products nice. Op5 is built for purpose, which is fine, but if you compare it with some new products, the visualization is not so appealing, especially for management... If you don't need fancy visualizations, OP5 is fine."
"IT environments today are in constant flux. This is driven by the newer cloud technologies such as Kubernetes and Docker, etc. The whole Nagios-based monitoring system that OP5 is created on top of, is based on a host-service model. There is a need for a strategy on what to do with more dynamic environments. There is some cool stuff going on in that direction."
"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."
"The scalability can be better."
"This product could improve by adding cloud monitoring. I want SolarWinds NPM to do much more integration, and have more involvement in cloud monitoring, like AWS or Google, or Azure. I feel like it requires lots of improvement for cloud monitoring in NPM."
"There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better."
"We also had to be attentive to vulnerabilities, because SolarWinds NPM have some issues in that area. We had to work with our security team, so that they could help us check and backup the data, and check what they needed to secure."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds added some technical protocols like Modbus. The market needs a simple solution for monitoring a technical device."
"SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."
"Consolidation of platforms would provide a smoother experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OP5 has a very low price as a solution, compared to many other solutions out there."
"The cost of the license and support are separate. If you want platinum call support, it will cost more than a regular call. I did not opt for it, as it is an additional cost."
"It was not expensive. And because it's less demanding in terms of hardware, you don't have to pay for another SQL or other database license, and you can have a huge installation on one machine..."
"It is expensive."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
"Price could be improved on"
"There is a permanent license and also a subscription level which has annual fees. The price of the solution is fair."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
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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
Government
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OP5 Monitor?
The price for OP5 Monitor is fine, but we don't know the exact price because it was managed by us; the customer themselves bought it and gave it to us to monitor.
What needs improvement with OP5 Monitor?
OP5 Monitor could include application monitoring in addition to infrastructure monitoring. If application business transactions were monitored, it would be helpful. For application-related issues, ...
What is your primary use case for OP5 Monitor?
Our previous use case for OP5 Monitor was server monitoring.
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

Svenska Spel, Carus, VGL, Tele2, Viking Line, Clas Ohlson, Vanderlande, Försäkringskassan
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about OP5 Monitor vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.