Centreon vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer comparison

The compared Centreon and SolarWinds solutions aren't in the same category. Centreon is ranked #22 in IM , with an average rating of 7.3, and holds a 2.9% mindshare in the category. SolarWinds is ranked #5 in NTA , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 5.6% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Centreon users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Centreon

Read 28 Centreon reviews

4,581 Views
2,889 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...

Read 40 SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer reviews

1,060 Views
623 Comparison Views

82% willing to recommend

Centreon

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Centreon and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Centreon vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Report (Updated: September 2020).

Buyer's Guide

Centreon vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

September 2020

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Helped 844,944 peers since 2012

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

Centreon

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (25th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (22nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (18th)

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Centreon is designed for IT Infrastructure Monitoring and holds a mindshare of 2.9%, up 2.9% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, on the other hand, focuses on Network Traffic Analysis (NTA), holds 5.6% mindshare, down 7.1% since last year.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

Featured Reviews

Caulson Chua

Technical Services Manager at ATS

With fewer staff resources, we can identify and address issues before the system goes down

Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid downtime. The dashboard is user-friendly, and the solution provides good reporting and visibility. The layout is straightforward. You can click on the drop-down list to select the server you want. The anomaly detection feature helped us reduce our average resolution time by 30 minutes to an hour.

Read full review

DeepakVyas

Global-Manager Network & communications at Secure Meters Limited

Utilization alerts enhance monitoring with good alerts

The tool itself is very complicated, so training is required to handle it effectively. Configuration and the streamlining process are very complex. In my view, it is a good product if properly configured and streamlined according to your IT infrastructure. For enterprise-level organizations, SolarWinds is more appropriate than for small and medium enterprises. I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the product's scalability to be one of the most valuable features since it allows us to add unlimited devices for monitoring and to set up additional polling servers without additional license cost or downtime in our monitoring."

"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of servers and networks, because we have a lot of them and need to maintain control."

"I can't point to one valuable feature. All of Centreon is good."

"Centreon helps me detect where the problem is quickly. When we resolve a problem quickly, this lowers our overall costs."

"We have the business activity monitoring, the map, and the MBI modules and they are all very good."

"Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid downtime."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that most of its plug-ins are free."

"It is decentralized, which is better, because you can reduce the load from a single system. Also, you get a better view because it's more independent. Then, for the management, it's nice because they have one central system. With that, they can manage all the other systems, as well. This means they don't have to configure each system by system. They can configure it from one single interface."

More Centreon pros

"The bandwidth monitoring functionality is one of the most important features for our customers. When the customer notices that their bandwidth usage is too high for some reason, they will use the traffic analysis within SolarWinds NTA to identify which protocols (e.g. HTTPS) or applications are using up the bandwidth."

"The most helpful feature of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is bandwidth analysis, which lets you see who's hogging your network."

"The bandwidth indicates the utilization of the devices; if any issue occurs, it triggers an alert for me."

"What people found most valuable in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is its report customization feature."

"NTA's most valuable feature is traffic analysis and visibility."

"I can point out the exact root cause 'why.' If there is a slowness, I can point out what was before the issue or before the slowness, what it is, and what is now."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to look for any increases in bandwidth over time so that we can plan before it becomes critical."

"So far, it is a very stable product."

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer pros

Cons

"It is necessary to improve service monitoring of database services in the free version."

"Centreon technical support is only available during Central European business hours. When it comes to critical business solutions, there should be a 24/7 hotline that customers can rely on."

"The Home view could be improved by adding customization functions that allow users to change the size of the widgets for a more uniform layout."

"Centreon introduced network discovery in the most recent update. However, it doesn't work well. Our previous monitoring tool could discover networking equipment on the network and identify the relationships between the devices."

"During the initial setup we faced some issues. Part of it was because we had to become more knowledgeable in the solution. There are some gray areas and if you don't know the product well you may have issues. Another part of it was some bugs that we came across, although that's part of every software solution in IT nowadays. But the initial setup could be easier."

"Sometimes, when the GUI and some of the search fields are being reset, and I return to the page, then I have to set them again. Therefore, some improvement on the UI and the filtering is needed."

"Centreon supports officially 10,000 services per poller. That is not much for larger customers, because this limit is reached very quickly. We use it with three times the limit without any problems, but Centreon says, "Okay, we are only supporting it with 10,000 services." We are aware that increasing the limit has different impacts because they need to support it. However, for most customers, it would be be very good if they could increase the limit of services."

"Centreon is actually missing an easy way to create a trendline for the metrics. Actually it is possible to create it, but you need a good knowledge of math, Centreon, and RRD."

More Centreon cons

"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is the dashboarding. The user interface also has room for improvement because it's currently clunky."

"There is room for improvement when it comes to the traffic generated by the analyzer and the analysis of that traffic."

"This solution would benefit from having more security-based communications between the actual devices and the software itself."

"It is very slow to pick the dynamics of the network."

"If your network is on SolarWinds, and you notice that the traffic is bad because it says "user downloading a heavy file," it doesn't indicate which endpoint is downloading those heavy files. SolarWinds doesn't have the tools to be able to handle this kind of situation. You can just notice through your network device that the traffic is becoming overwhelming or heavy, but you cannot go inside and get more details related to the endpoint where it is happening. We would like SolarWinds to be able to handle this kind of situation and even manage the traffic inside a network from the endpoint to the network device. These would be good enhancements. It is mostly stable. The problem comes only when we want to add another SolarWinds model. SolarWinds has so many models, and sometimes when we want to add other models on the platforms that are reserved for our firm, it freezes. When this happens, we have to create a new VM for that model."

"SolarWinds' technical support is ok, but it could be faster and more knowledgeable."

"Currently, it shows only the top ten applications or ports in use, while the remaining data appears as 'remaining traffic,' causing confusion."

"It can be complex to set up and configure."

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you need basic monitoring without dashboards, just monitoring, the plugins are very useful and really cheap. If you want a more complete solution with dashboards and reporting, the EMS solution is great and it is not that much more expensive. It's a good value. Really good."

"The solution is very effective, despite the low price."

"Their licensing model is really easy. You have one license and you have access to all the features, compared to other tools where you have to purchase add-ons."

"Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."

"Open-source solutions like this can be very cost effective for an organization looking for a product that they can quickly implement, as there is no initial cost and there are no license renewal fees. However, it is important to take into consideration some of the related costs that may come along as needed, such as training, support, and product enhancements."

"The pricing is acceptable."

"I think Centreon's pricing is fair, especially given the criticality of our system. They were cheaper than the other solutions. The licensing terms were pretty straightforward. I believe it was based on the number of hosts."

"The solution has a free part and after that threshold, you will need to pay. For example, if you believe you can create an interesting map, most of the time, you will have to pay 10,000 Euros per year for having access to these components."

More Centreon pricing and cost advice

"SolarWinds' pricing structure is the primary reason why some customers opt for another solution such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. In NTA, you are charged per port, meaning that if you have a 24-port switch you will be charged for 24 individual nodes. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, on the other hand, charges per switch, such that if you add a switch, the entire switch will count as one single node."

"For our environment, we pay approximately $25,000 USD yearly."

"The licensing for this solution is based on the number of nodes."

"Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is very high. I have a customer that needs the solution but doesn't have the budget for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because the problem is that you can't use the solution only. You have to buy requirements such as the SolarWinds NPM first, and some companies don't have the budget for all the required components and modules. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can cost up to $10,000, and some customers don't have that budget. Another product has all the modules that SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer has, with a very low price, that can be a replacement, which is ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. PRTG is another solution that can replace SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer."

"I don't have information on the licensing cost for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because it's bundled with another SolarWinds solution. My organization has seven different models and pays for the license yearly. My organization also had to deploy additional pollers, but the cost wasn't very expensive, though I can't give the exact numbers."

"Licensing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is paid yearly, and there are no additional costs that you need to pay apart from the standard licensing fees because you don't need to purchase another solution to make SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer work. Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is more expensive than other solutions."

"The solution's licensing is high-priced."

"We have licenses for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. In terms of pricing, its license is not that expensive versus other tools such as HP."

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

71%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Centreon?

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Centreon?

The tool is cheaply priced.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Centreon?

The issue my company has with the tool stems from the fact that it didn't give an on-time response to us. The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegr...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?

Prices care comparable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?

The plotting of the device on the map is not appropriate. It should be like a Meraki cloud, where if you are familiar with Meraki devices, you can locate any device directly on the world map.

See all answers

Comparisons

Zabbix vs Centreon

Compared 32% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Centreon

Compared 13% of the time

Nagios Core vs Centreon

Compared 11% of the time

Checkmk vs Centreon

Compared 6% of the time

Icinga vs Centreon

Compared 4% of the time

More Centreon Competitors

Zabbix vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 15% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 9% of the time

Darktrace vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 8% of the time

Plixer Scrutinizer vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Compared 7% of the time

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Centreon

March 2025

Download Centreon product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

March 2025

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer report

Download SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer product report

Also Known As

No data available

Netflow Traffic Analyzer

Overview

Centreon is an all-in-one IT monitoring solution that is a network, system, applicative supervision, and monitoring tool. It is free and open source, and one of the most flexible and powerful monitoring softwares on the market.

Centreon Features

Centreon has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Supervision of hybrid infrastructures, from one end to the other
Open and flexible architecture
Open-source solution, downloadable for free
Filtering capability in GUI interface
Proactive end to end monitoring
Easily configurable and simple to handle
Dedicated dashboard widgets
Scalability
Independent application for monitoring
End to end reporting with actual logs

Centreon Benefits

There are several benefits to implementing Centreon. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Single platform, multi-user rights & access: Centreon is designed with built-in ACL, allowing enterprise users access to the monitored data on a need-to-know basis.

Smart data-mapping for customized macro & micro views: Centreon provides real-time custom views in multiple screens with graphic-rich data mapping, which also enables monitoring operators to act and troubleshoot from a distance.

Ready monitoring intelligence & reporting: With Centreon, you can easily generate reports of essential operational KPIs by using pre-configured templates, and add reports as needed by exploiting the dedicated monitoring data warehouse.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Centreon users.

PeerSpot user Thor M., CEO at a tech services company, says, "The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks. It provides a nice benefit when it comes to helping align IT operations with business objectives. The top-down views, dashboards, and business context reporting are things that are nice to have because you want to be able to show the customer that everything is working, that problems have been addressed, and that you're providing value.”

Thomas C., Managing Director, Canada at Eva, comments, “The most valuable feature of the solution is the flexibility, the ability to integrate all kinds of equipment. As long as something has an IP you can monitor it. What we try to achieve all the time is not only saying a company's system is available, but to give additional data on the performance of the equipment. So the flexibility is what matters the most to us, where we can script everything. Centreon has a lot of Plugin Packs, meaning they support, by design, a lot of devices. And on top of that, we have the ability to add our own scripts and do whatever we want and display the data as we want in the central dashboards.”

Marcilio L., President at ITS Solucoes, expresses, "The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."

Florent Q., Network Engineer at a computer software company, mentions, "The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."

Centreon

SolarWinds Netflow Traffic Analyzer enables you to capture data from continuous streams of network traffic and convert those raw numbers into easy-to-interpret charts and tables that quantify exactly how the corporate network is being used, by whom, and for what purpose.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Airbus, Bollore, BT, Canal Plus, Kuehne Nagel, Limagrain, LVMH, Oberthur Technologies, Orange, Darty, Addax Petroleum, Plastic Omnium, Auchan, Valeo, Saint Gobin, Clarins, Hugo Boss, JC Decaux, French Government (Defense, Justice, Environment, Agriculture), OptiComm, Thales, Zeiss.

Oceaneering International, Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, 335th Signal Command, Immofori

Buyer's Guide

Centreon vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

September 2020

Free Report: Centreon vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.

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