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Dynatrace vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Dynatrace
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
344
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (2nd), Log Management (4th), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (2nd)
SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
157
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 12.4%, down 14.5% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 5.2% mindshare, down 6.1% since last year.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Network Monitoring Software
 

Q&A Highlights

Michael Bruen - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 11, 2022
 

Featured Reviews

Manish Ved - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution has a useful AI engine, but the reports could be a bit better
We are typically about a version or two behind. We are on the managed solution. Our model of deployment is on-premises. I would say there are a couple of thousand users of this solution in our company. We are also planning on increasing the usage as our apps migrate to the cloud. I would advise other people looking into solutions, to do their homework beforehand and not assume that by deploying all the tools everything will automatically work, so there's still a lot of configuration involved. I would rate this solution as a whole an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.
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

"It has created total transparency between technology and business on all aspects of systems and performance as well as being a proxy for network performance through user experience monitoring. This followed a major performance degradation of our primary frontline system, which highlighted inadequacy of infrastructure focus tools, e.g., Nagios and Zabbix. It helped detect and remediate several performance issues on systems on both vendor supplied packages as well as in-house developed systems. It also improved InfraOps and development teams understanding of system behaviour and performance characteristics."
"The solution's ability to assess the severity of anomalies based on the actual impact to users and business KPIs is great. It's exactly what we need. The severity impact is based on the users, the availability, and the impact it has on your business."
"We also use it in our performance testing. We found an issue that way, and we would have put that change live without Dynatrace. Finding that problem in "live", that would have been three or four days of investigation, whereas we found the issue, fixed the issue, reran the tests, all same day."
"Dynatrace provide us the in-depth details to know what is wrong in the application and what are performance issues, then really quickly we are able to debug any performance issues or any other performance-related issues."
"I like the drill-down feature, that it can drill down to the code level to point to where the problems are. It's also helpful for the developers to identify what exactly happens, rather than the operation team having to do so. It works well for the developers to fix issues."
"It is limitless when it comes down to being able to scale up or even scale back, if we need it to."
"The triaging is amazing. And at the same time, it provides depth, all the way to what kind of a method, what variables are inside those methods. Without getting too into the technical, the depth it gets to, pinpointing the problematic area - where exactly the problem is happening - is amazing."
"Of the entire stack, DC RUM and DT SaaS are definitely the most asked for in our offering catalog."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"The biggest thing for me is that it provided enough information for me to monitor. It alerts and provides you with the information you need."
"Reporting tools are a great feature along with the ability to create customized reports for you"
"Everything has been complete and stable for our needs over the past four years."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up."
"It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools."
 

Cons

"Mainly navigation needs improvement. It is easier to follow a flow. Following the flow of the admin now is not easy."
"We're not quite there yet, but the thing I would like to see is to really have that view of how issues relate to the business. Often enough, the tools that IT have for IT stop at the IT level. They cannot go into the business level part. They can't understand, because they don't have the information that the business needs to provide them with - for example how much an hour of downtime costs the business. For us, in IT, it's an hour of downtime, but it equates to money and equates to hours lost and equates to a lot of things, and often enough we don't have that information. This is where I would like to see us going."
"One piece that we think that's missing is, there were thread names that were missing in analytical information in the Dynatrace solution, versus the AppMon solution. The AppMon solution gives you that information, and it is very helpful for connecting dots and bringing all the pieces together."
"I would like to see the same features as in the New Relic Insights in the dashboard. That is the only thing I want to see improved in Dynatrace."
"More integrations could prove very beneficial to us."
"There is still a bit of redundancy in Dynatrace."
"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."
"We have multiple tenants. If you have them up at the same time, you can't see in the UI which tenant you're in. It doesn't tell you."
"The only thing that can be improved is to continually add to the existing capabilities of the product."
"It would be nice to have a test to check if you can access a particular device via API without installing it and waiting for a poll cycle. You should have the capacity to initiate a test to see if it was reachable and get the results almost immediately."
"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."
"There needs to be more integration of widgets, especially for reporting purposes."
"They have had a rather large security breach in the past. It's cost some companies customers."
"The solution could improve in many areas, such as the marketing and description of the products, providing areas of improvement, cloud capabilities, and being able to be more streamlined with the current integration points with other applications."
"The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market."
"The initial setup of SolarWinds NPM is complex, and I find it challenging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The setup costs for Dynatrace are low, however licensing costs are high."
"There is time savings. People's times have been cut in half using this solution because we were previously doing a lot of that manual work. Now, it's a lot more automated, and the data is just there."
"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."
"They could improve their price ranges, as there is no option for startups or testing."
"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."
"Getting the first agents installed, getting information, and coverage in a initial set of systems can be done in hours and with a low cost entry point."
"Financially Dynatrace was a lot more expensive than AppDynamics."
"The solution is not cheap."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"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."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
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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
34%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
57%
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

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: December 2024.
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