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SolarWinds NPM vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

SolarWinds Network Device M...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
28th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.7%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
SolarWinds Network Device Monitor0.9%
Other95.4%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

SG
IT Infrastructure Senior Network Technician at Autoliv
Offers some features but needs better customization and analysis tools
There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for improvement. The features are not as customizable as we would prefer, but they are workable. If configured properly, you can perform a drill-down analysis. However, I have not used this feature much for our infrastructure on the network side.
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

"This product proactively tells us about issues before the users notice."
"We are doing more with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor than we were doing in the past with WhatsApp Gold; when we moved to SolarWinds Network Device Monitor, the whole observability part started to grow."
"The alerts we are getting when we start losing connection access have been helpful."
"I like the mapping that you could do and the dashboards were very pretty."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it can alert you when a device is not working."
"In real-time, we know when there's an issue on our network and it helps us to be proactive to solve the situation."
"Overall, it is a good user experience and the dashboards are very usable."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is monitoring."
"For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"SolarWinds makes a great product and their support is second to none!"
"SolarWinds provides a good enterprise level of tools and covers the essential components."
"One of the best features is the reports feature."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
"As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
 

Cons

"The solution is not user-friendly."
"In terms of price, it could be less expensive."
"If everything were in the package so that everything was ready to go out of the box, that would be ideal."
"In terms of price, it could be less expensive."
"The security could always be improved."
"Although I haven't explored all of the features available, I wouldn't mind if the software were made to be a bit more customizable."
"The security needs improvement, which is why we are moving away from SolarWinds."
"The initial setup of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could be easier. It took us approximately one month to complete the implementation."
"I faced a problem with GRE over IPSec tunnel traffic, it was not showing Netflow enabled traffic and without IPSec tunnel traffic Netflow was working fine."
"I think Solar Winds NPM needs to create a profile with documentation responsibility."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"We encountered an inability to display graphical views of some customized reports."
"Failover functionality does not exist without the purchase of the "Fail Over Engine (FoE)" license."
"Technical support hasn't been the most reliable. Sometimes it takes them a long time to respond or resolve the issues."
"Technical support can be slow to respond."
"Customer Service: 0/10 as there were no knowledge base articles when I used it, and every new patch required customer login to apply."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."
"The product is expensive."
"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."
"The enterprise license is good for the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. However, it is expensive, they should reduce their price."
"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."
"I rate the product's price as three to three and a half or on a scale of one to ten, where one means low price, and ten means high price."
"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."
"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
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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
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
I am not a positive person regarding SolarWinds Network Device Monitor.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for impro...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
I have experience regarding the AD part, but my focus for the last 15 years has been oriented to the network side. My experience with identity tools comes more from a network perspective. We used N...
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

Network Device Monitor
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Air Rarotonga
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.