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Dynatrace vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Dynatrace
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
344
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (2nd), Log Management (4th), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd)
SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
156
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Dynatrace is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 12.7%, down 14.7% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 5.2% mindshare, down 6.2% since last year.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Network Monitoring Software
 

Q&A Highlights

Michael Bruen - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 11, 2022
 

Featured Reviews

Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 29, 2022
The single-agent format is easy to use and accurately captures issues
Our company uses the solution to identify performance issues. Our database is in Oracle and our user interface is Maps. The solution helps us to gather required information and manage systems.  For example, we just had a big data center issue with cluster settings, voting, and updating. The…
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 30, 2022
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
Our company uses the solution to monitor NPM for 100 large accounts that typically have 40,000 interfaces.  Basic monitoring includes CPU memory, errors, and interfaces. Advanced monitoring includes F5 load balancers, in-depth tunnels, and AP alarms.  We also monitor CM for backup parts and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dynatrace is heavily automated which is a big advantage. You don't have to configure a lot, it installs and it runs straight away. There's direct return on investment and you can focus on more interesting stuff than always have to configure and change the configurations. Issues or problems in detection is also fully automated, which is great."
"​It provides the whole perspective in a single place when trying to guide the right people to go to the right solution at any given point in time."
"​The stability for the solution is pretty solid overall."
"In terms of AI, I love the base-lining Dynatrace provides us. It baselines the application over a seven-day period; we have it at the default of seven days. The artificial intelligence is so amazing because it can automatically track each transaction and their response times: how much CPU they use, how much memory, resources that they use. If there’s any deviation from that Dynatrace will tell me like right away. If there’s a deployment and the deployment has increased response time or is taking up CPU or has caused a memory leak, I can say, “Hey guys, you need to look at this, it’s this function on this page in this microservice, in this docker container. You need to go here, you need to fix it, it’s not going live.” It has just increased our productivity off the charts."
"With the Agentless monitoring and ability to create custom plugins, we've been able to transform the tool not just into a great APM solution but a really good enterprise monitoring solution too."
"Capability to troubleshoot isolated customer complaints with the user session feature."
"The most valuable feature is the beautiful UI."
"Customers are looking at our site, every second, constantly. They're able to do that because, if for some reason it goes down, I can instantly get it back up, because I know what needs to be fixed. In the past, before having the tool, we were being notified by the brand, or the brand manager, "Hey, customers are complaining that our site is down." And then there was me, as a developer, trying to track down what was causing this issue. With Dynatrace, it's right there in front of me, it's a JavaScript error, or something I can narrow down."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"The connectivity of the solution is very good."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
"I like SolarWinds support because it's 24/7. You describe your issues, your situation and maybe two or three hours later you can discuss a solution with a technical engineer."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"The product is scalable."
 

Cons

"Add support for Ruby."
"I did like the old dashboards, the legacy 6.3 for example; the way we were able to do the dashboarding in the client. I would like to be able to see that in the new version of Dynatrace."
"I do not like after 60 days or 90 days it gets aggregated to summary data. I would like to be able to analyze specific PurePaths after 30 days or 60 days with real numbers."
"It could be more affordable and therefore, more widely used by including more features like DEM as part of licensing cost rather than an additional expense."
"One thing that I would like to see is for companies like us - large AppMon customers that have a lot of presence in AppMon, a lot of manually configured things and customizations - would be something that would help us be able to make that journey more easily, the transition from to AppMon to Dynatrace."
"Documentation is slightly in error as far as directory set ups and guidance. We came to our own solution for distributing the disk loads."
"They should provide a guide to arrive at the solution for non-super experts."
"The new Managed Edition is too complex. I feel like a fish out of water."
"The dashboard of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"Each model has different features, so clients need to purchase a separate model for SQL monitoring, database monitoring, network traffic analyzer, HTTP traffic, etc. So each feature they need is in a different model, but customers would prefer an all-in-one solution."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve by adding the deepest inspection, performance networking, and IP address discovery."
"The response time of the support team needs to improve"
"The solution's customer service is not very good because the support takes too long."
"It is difficult for stakeholders to translate technical requirements, which results in difficulties selecting a platform or implementing a solution."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is superior to others, but it comes with a price tag that is often difficult to position back to clients."
"Surprisingly, it is quite expensive. That is something that we could always see: Improved pricing and the overall construct on how do we use each license in regards to usage of the tool."
"It is quite costly. Dynatrace was the most expensive, compared to the other products we looked at. But it was also a lot better. If you want value for your money, Dynatrace is the way to go."
"Look at the product and the product features, not the price. Too often people look at the price and turn away. Dynatrace costs a little bit more than the other products I researched, but it can do far more.​"
"It's more expensive than other solutions, but worth it. We use full APM monitoring on our primary systems, but only resource monitoring on lesser systems. We shift licenses around our environment when a deeper dive into lesser systems is required."
"We purchased a subscription for one year and it is an expensive solution for a large enterprise like ours."
"The price range is quite high."
"There is a license cost, which is obviously more expensive than an open-source solution, but for the return on investment from what you get from it, it's a great investment. Of course, it could always be cheaper."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
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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…
 

Answers from the Community

Michael Bruen - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 11, 2022
Feb 11, 2022
Dynatrace is the leader in the APM market with reason, it is well worth giving it a decent evaluation for full end-to-end monitoring of infrastructure and code.
See 2 answers
Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 27, 2022
Hi @Michael Bruen ​, Probably, the below data has already been published on PeerSpot and can help you identify the difference. Hope this helps. Please kindly share your views. https://www.peerspot.com/produ...
DF
Feb 11, 2022
Dynatrace is the leader in the APM market with reason, it is well worth giving it a decent evaluation for full end-to-end monitoring of infrastructure and code.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
33%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
56%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: November 2024.
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