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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs SolarWinds Network Automation Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 6, 2025

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

Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Network Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (1st)
SolarWinds Network Automati...
Ranking in Network Automation
15th
Average Rating
5.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (108th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 17.7%, down from 23.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Network Automation Manager is 3.9%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Muralitharan KS - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient server management and detailed reporting with flexible deployment capabilities
We are primarily using Ansible for automation purposes as it is a configuration management tool. It is utilized for various activities such as DNS activity, changes to web servers, virtual host settings, and other day-to-day tasks, all of which are templated in Ansible Ansible allows us to manage…
Giulio Valeri - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat detection failures, poor technical support, and expensive
We use the solution to manage all of our customer's systems. We monitor and decide if everything is okay and if not, we do changes when needed. For example, if there is a need to change the antivirus software we can automate the process and install the new one. There are scripts within the software…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like Ansible's ease of use. If you have Linux skills, you can create a reusable template for the dependencies and other configurations. I can store the templates in a repository and share them with my customers or other developers. It's a popular solution, so there is a large user base that can share templates."
"The solution is very simple to use."
"Ansible provides great reliability when coupled with a versioning system (git). It helps providing predictability to the network by knowing exactly what's being pushed after validating it in production."
"Being a game-changer in configuration management software is what has made Ansible so popular and widespread. Much of IT is based on SSH direct connectivity with a need for running infrastructure in an agentless way, and that has been a big plus. SSH has become a great security standard for managing servers. The whole thing has really become an out-of-the-box solution for managing a Unix estate."
"I like the inventory management. It's a very nice, simple, concise way to keep all that data together. And the API allows us to use it even for things that are not Ansible."
"Managing our inventory is a big pain point. Right now, we have Satellite, but we can tie it in with Satellite, so we can actually manage things and automate the entire deployment stack, instead of trying to grab things from tickets, then generating Kickstart, and using that to get things in Satellite. That doesn't work well. We can do the whole deployment stack using the inventory share between Tower and Satellite."
"This solution allows us to stitch a lot of different parts of the workflow together."
"It is very extensible. There are many plugins and modules out there that everybody helps create to interact with different cloud providers as well."
"The installation is easy."
"The solution offers so many great resources, it makes them a powerhouse in the market."
 

Cons

"We would like support for the post-integration of this product before cloud frameworks because right now their approach is to avoid using on-premises activities and move everything to the cloud."
"It can use some more credential types. I've found that when I go looking for a certain credential type, such as private keys, they're not really there."
"What we need is model-driven, declarative software infrastructure management. However, things tend to break with new versions, requiring a lot of work to fix…The focus should be on improving the support for Ansible in the area of AI coding."
"The web GUI can be a little bit better. There should be a couple of more features."
"When you set up Playbooks, I may have one version of the Playbook, but another member of the team may have a different vision, and we will not know which version is correct. We want to have one central repository for managing the different versions of Playbooks, so we can have better collaboration among team members. This is our use case for using Git version control."
"The SSM connection access needs improvement"
"Ansible can face scalability issues, such as limitations when trying to scale up infrastructure. It might struggle with connection dropping or spawning additional VMs under certain conditions."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is not the best at server provisioning. Terraform is better."
"The price could be a bit lower."
"We did not like SolarWinds because it was not able to communicate between UPSA and our accounting system. They should have better integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an affordable solution."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"Everything is generally fair. No one ever likes to pay a lot of money, but we are getting the value. We also get support with it. It has been fair and worthwhile."
"The pricing is okay."
"The price of SolarWinds Network Automation Manager is fair. However, it is more expensive than ConnectWise."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Government
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Ansible
SolarWinds NAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Maalem Financing Company, School City of Hammond
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. SolarWinds Network Automation Manager and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.