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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
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
Versa Director
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
50th
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 February 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.4%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Director is 0.4%, up from 0.3% 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%
Versa Director0.4%
Other96.2%
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.
PriyankDubey - PeerSpot reviewer
Product manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
User-friendly and simpler than its competitors
Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management. Its UI is also excellent compared to Fortinet and Cisco 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. In…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments."
"The connectivity of the solution is very good."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its graphical interface and reports."
"SolarWinds has greatly helped us, especially in tracing when the SoundCloud Software goes down without any apparent reason."
"Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices."
"Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management."
"The most valuable functionality is some of the policy pieces that are quite useful."
"Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management."
"The most valuable feature of Versa Director is analytics."
 

Cons

"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."
"SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market."
"It would be beneficial if NPM offered support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), as currently, it does not support this and we are migrating our services there."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers."
"The solution's network discovery and node addition processes need more work."
"The dashboards for this solution could be improved. We would like to divide the dashboards to give a clear view to our management team to show what we have and what deficiencies exist in our network."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"The only real caveat that we have or that I have an issue with is when I go on vacation, it's a little hard for me to go and modify alerts so that I don't get alerted about things when I'm on vacation."
"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."
"It requires some simplification."
"Versa Director's deployment process is not the best."
"Versa could be more AI-oriented."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"It is too expensive."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"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."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"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
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
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...
What do you like most about Versa Director?
Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management.
What is your primary use case for Versa Director?
We use the solution to monitor customer networks.
 

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: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.