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AppNeta by Broadcom vs SolarWinds NPM 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

AppNeta by Broadcom
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
17th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (4th), DX NetOps (3rd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of AppNeta by Broadcom is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Cliff Chapman - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent support, easy configuration, and a reliable tool to know what the problem is and where the problem is
They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes. Currently, when we have short-duration problems, we use a different tool, but we only use that different tool for short-duration problems. With AppNeta, as long as the problem exists for more than a few minutes, such as within 10 to 15 minutes, we can normally tell where the problem is. However, most of the problems that we deal with are intermittent. They're very rarely a permanent condition that needs to be addressed. That makes it more difficult to troubleshoot. We would look to see at least two or three events and hope they show the same results to raise our confidence that we've actually found the problem, rather than just a problem.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A lot of times one of the AppNeta transactions showed that there is an issue, whereas everything seemed to be working properly. Once we dug into it, we realized that it really was highlighting a problem that otherwise we would not have seen."
"We get complete, hop-by-hop visibility into the internet and we can know how much latency is taking place from one hop to another. That way, we know whether a particular hop belongs to the ISP, or that it is something owned by our own client's office, or is something to do with the SaaS network."
"The solution's technical support is very good."
"The main feature that we use is what they call Delivery, which is the testing of network paths end-to-end."
"This solution helps prove that, if we move to cloud, we'll still be as effective as we are on-premises."
"Delivery and experience are valuable. The usage in terms of the traffic application captures and other similar things is also valuable."
"The product helps us understand networks and user experience. It helps us to understand the issues."
"I love the GUI. Almost everything is accessible through the web interface. It is very user-friendly. It is easy to drag and drop resources wherever you want them."
"It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools."
"I like the tracking feature to track devices and see where they are connected. This is very practical."
"One of the best features is the reports feature."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
"All the features are very good. The monitoring of the equipment, the configuration manager, and the IP address monitoring are great."
"As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
"The initial setup is easy."
 

Cons

"I think some of the product's documentation has shortcomings and needs improvement."
"Having to deal with configuring the end devices using a USB stick is a bit cumbersome. It would be nice if there was a better way of handling that."
"They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes."
"Instead of integrating with other people, they should expand their interior capabilities."
"Cloud monitoring could be better. That's one of the biggest pain points for me. I have shared this feedback with them multiple times, but they're limited to some extent. That's one area where I've seen a problem."
"AppNeta by Broadcom needs to add more features to its dashboards. It also needs to work on providing out-of-the-box reports."
"I would like to see some advanced dashboard features. It could also be integrated with third-party tools. For example, an integration with a reporting solution would be helpful. Out-of-the-box, there are few dashboards or reports. What it does have is useful, but there should be additional dashboards."
"The SolarWinds notification and alerting configuration could be simplified as it would be easier to find if it was within the NPM web application instead of in a separate client application."
"The aesthetic widgets should be dynamic widgets, so the customization can be even more customizable."
"There isn't support available to us as they don't offer support in our country."
"Currently lacks integration with SMS services."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market."
"If they did some type of synthetic monitoring, it would have been better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's worth the money."
"AppNeta by Broadcom is not expensive."
"I find the solution's price to be fairly good."
"I inherited this from a different version, and I haven't yet gone through a renewal because we had purchased three years upfront. So, to me, that still remains to be seen. Once it comes up for renewal, we'll see what happens. Especially because now it is Broadcom, it is going to change anyway."
"Broadcom software is always a little expensive because they provide quality."
"We typically don't get involved in the commercial side, but the list price is probably something like $3,000 for a small probe. However, that gives all of the features that the probe can do, whether or not you use them. In the old days, up until two or three years ago, each of the separate features was a separately licensable module so that you could add things that you wanted, and you didn't have to add things that you didn't want. They've changed all that now, and everything the probe can do is a part of the base license."
"The small probe is probably around $3,000 and the very large probe that they make for massive data centers might be $50,000 or $60,000. It's a subscription model, so the payment is per year."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
42%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
Educational Organization
58%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What open source tool can one use to measure bandwidth from one's upstream service provider?
One I am looking closely at is AppNeta. They have an appliance that can digest the flow and do a better job than Netflow. The other one we are using is ExtraHop. This has both a Datacenter Hig...
What do you like most about AppNeta?
The product helps us understand networks and user experience. It helps us to understand the issues.
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ebay, Citrix, National Instruments, Marriott, AT&T, Bon-Ton, McDonald's, Netflix, PayPal, Uber, QAD
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about AppNeta by Broadcom vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.