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Spiceworks vs WhatsUp Gold 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

Spiceworks
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
44th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (14th), IT Asset Management (10th)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (30th), Network Monitoring Software (23rd), Server Monitoring (15th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (22nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Spiceworks is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
WhatsUp Gold2.6%
Spiceworks0.7%
Other96.7%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Rohit Samel - PeerSpot reviewer
Account Manager Enterprise Sales at Navdeep Technologies Pvt.Ltd
Cloud storage with no hardware needed and great comprehensive reports
The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally. It is a fully software-based solution, eliminating the need for investment in hardware. We have the capability to create reports as needed. It is good software to use, as there were no incidents where I needed to contact technical support. Additionally, it is free software.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Spiceworks gives you a very good but basic help desk platform that is easy to implement and use."
"ROI is great as the software is free."
"Considering this is AdWare this is a very good product with all the right tools for a medium sized IT department."
"It's easy to understand."
"Well at the end if you are new to the field of IT, and have a small to medium sized company, do not hesitate to give Spiceworks a shot, its real easy (with no steep learning curve as Nagios), with excellent features and support."
"Its perfect for a start-up/small/medium company where you are trying to get the most out of a software package with as little cost as possible; and how can you go wrong with a free, stable and very useful software?"
"It’s fantastic because its free to use and easy to set-up in house, but it’s quite sluggish on the administrator end, but considering its free you cannot complain."
"The nice thing about Spiceworks is always it's free. Monitoring of printers for low toner. Finding machines that have low memory or low hard disk space."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."
"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides."
"It's a good product, and if one has the expertise to use it, it will be a good investment and it will help IT to save and plan for the future."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."
"Auto scanning is most valuable. It looks for rogue devices on your network."
"One thing good about WhatsUp Gold is that it is fairly stable."
 

Cons

"The social and collaborative tools, such as integration to LYNC, Yammer, or equivalents."
"I think its monitoring tools could use some improvement."
"One of the biggest ways in which Spiceworks could improve is by developing better and more automated workflows."
"It does, however, require help-desk and minor server/firewall config XP experience to set up."
"The navigation is a little heavy and not as smooth as some ticket management software; this must be because it’s web based and has a lot."
"I would not recommend running Spiceworks on a desktop machine for long, I have had to reboot the services more often than I would like."
"One of the biggest ways in which Spiceworks could improve is by developing better and more automated workflows. For example, in another solution called ServiceDesk by ManageEngine, you can have levels of approval in the event that there is a request for new software, or when someone requests a VPN or WiFi connection. This kind of multi-stage approval feature provided by ServiceDesk does not appear to exist in Spiceworks, and it is one of their main shortcomings for me."
"Having an integrated asset management tool, where I can plug in things that are offline, would be good."
"Sometimes it's a little bit slow."
"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."
"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."
"My understanding is that there are better products out there that do a better job."
"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."
"Setting up WhatsUp Gold is complicated and not easy because it requires managing SNMP and many complex settings in the devices it's monitoring, and fine-tuning it to fit our needs is also not very easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is free! Get it now."
"It's free."
"Seeing that it is a low-cost solution, I would advise you to go ahead with Spiceworks and experiment with it to see if you can get things working properly, especially if you currently don't have any existing service desk software in place."
"It might be about $300 annually for a bigger company. If you pay annually, it's better and cheaper."
"The tool is cheap."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"This is a well priced solution."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
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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
Construction Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Spiceworks?
I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment, however, I can provide feedback later. Currently, there do not seem to be any issues.
What is your primary use case for Spiceworks?
If our customers need backup support, we can work with them and provide it. Whatever solution the customer requires, we will ensure it is provided.
What advice do you have for others considering Spiceworks?
It performs its intended functions. We may use it, but perhaps not for ourselves, but for our customers, potentially with Channel Partners. Whenever we are posting any query or reply on a ticket, i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about Spiceworks vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.