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SolarWinds NPM vs Zenoss Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zenoss Cloud
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
75th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
51st
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
42nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (26th), Event Monitoring (13th), Server Monitoring (24th), Container Monitoring (7th), AIOps (25th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zenoss Cloud is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Zenoss Cloud0.7%
Other95.7%
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.
ClaudiaChen - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect - Senior Technology Architect at Telstra
Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features
As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users."
"Through SolarWinds NPM, we discovered some interfaces were having issues, which we subsequently corrected; this has been very helpful for our operations."
"As a large school district, I can tell you that NPM is very valuable to us."
"It combines and presents information from many different sources, giving a corporate-wide vision on a single pane of glass."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"Being a global company with many highly-sensitive manufacturing lines and process control environments, SolarWinds consistently delivers real-time and accurate views into the deepest parts of our environment."
"The nice thing about SolarWinds is that it's kind of all-in-one. I can manage the status of my networking devices, whether they are up or down, I can see how much traffic is going across an interface, and I can run a report that tells me exactly what that traffic is."
"It's easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the flexible discovery mechanism."
"Zenoss is more complex than LogicMonitor, but scalable and hugely customizable."
"The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training."
"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."
"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."
"What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts. For example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue."
"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."
 

Cons

"Robustness of network element mapping tool could be better"
"The constant flow of new features and re-designing of the product sometimes presents bugs that were not identified."
"I think Solar Winds NPM needs to create a profile with documentation responsibility."
"Customer service: I rate technical support everywhere from poor to great."
"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 (which have no connection to the public internet)."
"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."
"Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today."
"SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license."
"As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor."
"The inclusion of a feature to show a graphical view of the network would be a helpful improvement."
"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."
"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."
"Technical support is 3/10, poor: Incomplete and poor documentation Undocumented processes Inconsistent solutions to problems depending on source"
"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. They introduced Control Center to manage things in Zenoss 5. The services that Zenoss provides remained the same, but the administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex"
"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"It is expensive."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"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."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"Price could be improved on"
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"It depends on the customer, what he wants."
"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."
"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."
"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."
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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
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

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 is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a large-scale company is Zenoss, due to its ability to monitor completely hybrid and a...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. Zenoss Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.