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SolarWinds NPM vs Versa Director 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 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 (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
Versa Director
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
88th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Director is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Versa Director0.4%
Other96.0%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer2146131 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oracle Apps Functional Consultant at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
A cost-effective solution to monitor customer networks
We are not getting any issues with the integrations. Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management. People must rely on and utilize it to enhance anything they want to increase, as it helps minimize the product. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For a medium-sized customer, it has everything that you're looking for."
"In my experience with SolarWinds NPM Quality of Experience dashboard, it fulfilled all of our requirements."
"With SolarWinds, everything just works."
"Being able to provide a history of interface behavior helps the organization in a multifaceted way."
"We can sometimes fix a problem before it is even recognized by our user community based on the thresholds we set up for various resources on a production server."
"The simplicity of this product is a valuable feature; everything you need is easily accessible and the maintenance is low."
"The ease of deployment is great."
"We had some interfaces where the SFP Ports were having some problems after a while. We found which of the SFP Ports was having the error and changed it, so the bandwidth become okay."
"The most valuable feature of Versa Director is analytics."
"Versa Director has easier customer reports, utilization monitoring, graphic shaping monitoring, configuration, template shaping, and deduplication compared to Fortinet and Cisco."
"I think the most valuable functionality is some of the policy pieces that are quite useful."
"Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management."
"Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management."
"Versa Director is a beneficial product for the environment my company has."
 

Cons

"The evaluation time for the product is too short especially for large corporations."
"We'd like to see a bit more automation in the future."
"Stability is an issue. We have installed SolarWinds (Server 2016) on a dedicated physical server and as a virtual machine in a brand new Hyper-V environment with brand new servers."
"Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today. They've done a fantastic job enabling the collection of data. Users are now demanding the ability to generate their own graphs, views, and so on; all of this must be done by an admin today."
"The response time of the support team needs to improve"
"NPM comes with a tool called Network Atlas. Currently, it can only link switches to switches and only if all the corresponding ports are monitored."
"There are issues with newer features so it can take a long time to adjust. The solution is in bad shape because of software hacks."
"It needs group views with performance metrics."
"Versa Director's on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software are not integrated, so you have to buy a separate subscription for the SSL VPN."
"It requires some simplification."
"Versa could be more AI-oriented."
"I think the one area that could be improved is that there are a lot of features; that is also an advantage but it makes things a little difficult, so I'd like to see some simplification so that there is less bloat."
"Versa Director's deployment process is not the best."
"What needs improvement in Versa Director is maturity because, from an operating point of view, it's not mature enough. You'll still need to do a lot of research on Versa Director, so if it could mature faster, that would be very good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"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."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"It is too expensive."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"Having to buy separate licenses for the on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software makes Versa Director very costly compared to other solutions like Fortinet and Cisco."
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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
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

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

Questions from the Community

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...
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Also Known As

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
Versa Networks Director
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. Versa Director and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.