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Auvik Network Management (ANM) vs NetBrain comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 11, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Auvik Network Management (ANM)
Ranking in Network Troubleshooting
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
186
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (2nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (2nd)
NetBrain
Ranking in Network Troubleshooting
14th
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Automation (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Network Troubleshooting category, the mindshare of Auvik Network Management (ANM) is 2.9%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetBrain is 2.2%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

Jeremy Campbell - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to get on top of issues before they become an outage
When I change IP addresses on a device or on a server, I have to wait for Auvik to figure out that change. It will tell me the device is offline until Auvik scans the whole subnet again and finds it. If I change 25 devices, I'll get 50 emails in a short time because they've gone offline. I'd love the ability to change that where I can update that device with the IP address without it going offline. That goes against the idea of a system that dynamically scans. It's information overload sometimes when you need to change a bunch of factors. You get inundated with emails. I would almost love a button whenever you first log in that says maintenance window, and then it would maybe take some of those alerts away. It's fairly intuitive but sometimes you have to search for things because it's hidden in the user interface, so I think that could be improved a little bit. The search could be better because they have these strange search terms. Instead of being able to look for what you want, you have to lay out the query in a specific way to get results. We've also been dealing with some weird bugs lately. We get alerts on miscellaneous items that go offline and online all the time. I've reached out to support, and they said that they've got a fix that they rolled out. However, we're still experiencing the issue, so I've got to work with them to fix that. They seem to be on top of the support.
Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The network mapping is an excellent feature, as each device is represented by a different shape or object, which is great for helping us, our staff in training, and our customers understand how the network is structured. Seeing the bigger picture helps immensely, as we provide remote support; we're not boots on the ground."
"The alerting is fantastic; if something goes offline, we're notified right away. It gives us a lot of peace of mind knowing the solution will alert us to issues automatically 24/7."
"There are many things I like about the product. It's cloud-based and automatically refreshes the network container. We like the automatic backups and the comparison between backups. It's straightforward to set up, and it integrates with many protocols."
"I like the quick mapping. I can put a customer in, and I can put the Auvik monitor in, and then probably within about half an hour to an hour, I can see most of the map."
"Auvik is phenomenal at network monitoring as well as for other functionalities such as remote access or backups. A really cool feature that it has is that it takes a backup of all of the configurations automatically. Auvik periodically, most probably on a daily basis, logs into all the switches and firewalls that you have on-site to see if there is a change, and when there is a change, it does a new backup of the device. It logs changes for you. If you start experiencing some issues, you can go back to those logs to say, "Oh, there is a change made last week, Thursday," and with Auvik, you can just roll back to that snapshot nicely and quickly."
"One of the best things about Auvik, and it's why it's one of my go-to products, are the remote access capabilities. Without a VPN and without any other way in, I'm able to get in and work on and troubleshoot my devices through the remote access console. It has multiple options for that and has been very useful and a huge time-saver. That's one of the killer features. It's one of my must-haves and that's why I like it so much."
"The discovery portion of it is extremely valuable. It allows us to get a good inventory of what is actually on a client's network. You can turn on TrafficInsights, which is basically a NetFlow feature, for troubleshooting. It allows you to get more detailed information on what's going on with a particular device. So, you could determine why a client is complaining that the internet is slow at 1:00 p.m. every day."
"It's simplified tasks and made things easier."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
 

Cons

"The actual adding of networks, systems, and everything like that is fairly easy, but the problem that I have is getting the metrics out. Specifically, if you go to the Auvik webpage, sign in, and go through the alerts and everything else, they don't offer any plasma display with a red light, green light, or stop light indicating this device is in an error state, down, etc. To get around this, we have to use their API. I had to code an entire interface to work around that lack of information."
"Scheduling maintenance would be much easier if there was a dedicated section readily visible on each client's main page."
"The dashboard needs to be more intuitive."
"When we deal with larger networks, the current interface is difficult to navigate around the network map because of the volume of devices."
"Integrating some LLM/AI capabilities into the product that would enable us to use natural language to query the tool and get sensible answers back would be great."
"Price sensitivity is an issue in the country where we use Auvik because of our exchange rate. It would be helpful if they could offer a slightly more affordable price in this region. I'd also like to see Auvik introduce more AI-driven features."
"Recently, the map performance has become incredibly slow, even for small maps. For example, simply changing a device type can take up to five or ten minutes to reflect the change."
"Configuring alerts is pretty tedious. It would be nice if they had a wizard who walked you through instead of having everything turned on or off from the start."
"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licensing is very fair. The devices that stand to gain the most benefit from this product are the ones that are billed. In the case of routers, switches, and firewalls, I won't necessarily have the ability to put a management agent on them to gather errors and activity logs. This type of solution is a requirement for me to properly monitor and manage these devices. The devices that aren't being billed are workstation servers, etc. For those devices, I can put agents on them to monitor their health. It has a fair billing structure."
"I believe that Auvik is one of the most expensive tools, but it is also the best."
"The pricing is by device. We have 75 devices, which is a little more than we really need. With school and volume discounts, it is still a little over $16,000 annually. Our WiFi access points are not being billed, but all our switches and routers are."
"Its pricing is definitely competitive with everything else that's out there. If somebody has not shopped for a product like Auvik for a while, there's probably going to be some sticker shock because it is not cheap, but that's true for all the products that we looked at."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. It's billed by certain, core network devices that it monitors, but I'm not billed for all the devices it monitors. For example, wireless access points and small things like that, throughout the network, are not billed."
"The pricing is fair; it's just the right price for what the solution provides."
"Auvik Network Management's pricing was surprisingly reasonable."
"Its pricing is very reasonable. We had looked at other solutions where you pay based on the amount of traffic that was filtered through and analyzed. With Auvik, we pay by a billable device. We're not paying based on every single device we have. For one of the locations I have, one network element would likely be a billable device. So, every billable device has a network element, but not every network element is a billable device. If I have a location that has 50 network elements, then maybe 30 of them are billable devices. PCs, VoIP phones, and access points are monitored at no charge."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Educational Organization
8%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Auvik?
The most valuable feature for us in Auvik is the network topology.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Auvik?
Auvik is pricey, and we were paying a lot for it, especially when compared to SolarWinds.
What needs improvement with Auvik?
We were unable to integrate Auvik with a geographical map, which limited our ability to track issues to specific buildings on campus. Compared to other products like SolarWinds, Auvik needs a simil...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Auvik Network Management (ANM) vs. NetBrain and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.