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SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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

SolarWinds Network Device M...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
27th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th), Container Management (5th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud1.3%
SolarWinds Network Device Monitor1.0%
Other97.7%
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.
Taiwo Ige - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.
Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact
Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it can alert you when a device is not working."
"Overall, it is a good user experience and the dashboards are very usable."
"The product is useful for switches and IP phones."
"This product proactively tells us about issues before the users notice."
"The alerting functionality in SolarWinds Network Device Monitor helps us stay informed during off-hours by sending alerts if our main links or devices are impacted, allowing us to quickly address any issues."
"SolarWinds is flexible and works with multiple vendor devices."
"The Network Device Monitor itself is very useful."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it shows you the utilization of devices to allow you to take proactive action before something goes down or reaches the saturation point. You can take proactive action to fix the problem before it occurs."
"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."
"I manage six tools, but Splunk Observability Cloud is one of my favorites, and I aspire to build my career specializing in it because it has great features, more attention in the market, and is a relatively new tool with promising growth."
"The most valuable thing that we have seen within our group is the ability to ingest all this raw data and have it organized in a certain way so that different groups can get effective alerting from this massive amount of raw data that is out there."
"I like the fact that Splunk APM makes it easy to connect to the application database and run queries against the data."
"Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) has one great advantage in that if they have SAP users, they can monitor their SAP applications."
"Customer service and technical support respond very quickly."
"Splunk APM provides a holistic view of the application. Unlike other APMs, Splunk's service map is quite effective."
"The solution overall is very valuable for me."
 

Cons

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve the features. We don't have the complete model for the database, and the monitoring for the database is up and down. We expect that we could monitor the blocking items on the database but we don't have that feature."
"The solution lacks in performance monitoring."
"There is no mobile version of this product, and our team should be able to access it using a mobile device."
"When an organization's network grows, the complexity of the dashboard becomes an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve the features. We don't have the complete model for the database, and the monitoring for the database is up and down."
"The security needs improvement, which is why we are moving away from SolarWinds."
"The main disadvantage of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is the licensing cost, which is expensive."
"Unfortunately, with our current setup, we just have to implement Log Observer in a couple of instances so that we can have that integration with Splunk Observability Cloud."
"Splunk isn't an ideal tool for application performance management due to the extensive setup required."
"In Splunk Observability Cloud, I notice room for improvement in synthetic monitoring. It does not provide output based on server names."
"The pricing would be one area for improvement."
"There is a lot of room for improvement with the automation."
"There is not a lot of support for the tool's on-premises version, especially since everything is on the cloud."
"They do not have all the features that I expect right now."
"In the next release, I would like to see more integration with other solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"When compared with other solutions SolarWinds is more expensive."
"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."
"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."
"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."
"The product is expensive."
"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."
"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."
"Splunk APM is expensive."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
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 Business21
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise53
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process.
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 do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
 

Also Known As

Network Device Monitor
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Air Rarotonga
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.