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Ixia Hawkeye vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

Ixia Hawkeye
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
32nd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
35th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Unified Communications Monitoring (4th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Ixia Hawkeye is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.7%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

José Enrique Cano Rodriguez - PeerSpot reviewer
A valuable tool for optimizing network performance and security with comprehensive network monitoring capabilities, user-friendly interface, and flexibility for scripting
Distinguishing itself from network management systems like SolarWinds Orion and Dataminer, Hawkeye offers a distinctive feature. It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games. In contrast, SolarWinds and Dataminer typically offer a more general evaluation of network health. Hawkeye's unique capability enables a detailed analysis of network performance through specific tests, allowing administrators to identify areas in need of improvement and take precise actions to enhance network performance.
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

"Our customer was happiest with the price of this product."
"It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games."
"The most valuable feature is the deployment because it's very easy to deploy real flow through the network."
"The ease of setup is the most valuable aspect of this solution. It's easy to set up and run tests."
"The product is scalable."
"What I've found most valuable about the solution is that it's scalable."
"SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"Monitoring capabilities are at a high level and it is easy to see utilization, access ports, and CPU memory in real time or through a lens for long-term visualization."
"The benefit of this solution is the reporting. We're able to report on and see our network in a graphical form. We are able to detect when a device is added to a network."
"The product is lightweight in terms of memory use, requiring only 10 megabytes or less."
 

Cons

"Ixia has one flaw, which is that they do not print the license code on the paper licenses that are shipped to the customers."
"Improvements in network performance are essential."
"You can't delete more than one thing at a time. It would be great to be able to highlight three out of five things and delete them, whether it's a test or an actual report."
"The customization of tests and even the results can be improved."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve by adding the deepest inspection, performance networking, and IP address discovery."
"The evaluation time for the product is too short especially for large corporations."
"The scalability can be better."
"Technical support can be slow to respond."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"We also had to be attentive to vulnerabilities, because SolarWinds NPM have some issues in that area. We had to work with our security team, so that they could help us check and backup the data, and check what they needed to secure."
"One of the challenges with SolarWinds is that in order to pull the data, we have to have a lot of false positives."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It cost us approximately 25,000 for two years. This is cheaper than ThousandEyes."
"In larger networks, the costs for licenses tend to be more reasonable, but for smaller networks, it appears relatively costly."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"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."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"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."
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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
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Educational Organization
58%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Ixia Hawkeye?
It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games.
What needs improvement with Ixia Hawkeye?
Improvements in network performance are essential.
What is your primary use case for Ixia Hawkeye?
Our objective is to evaluate the performance of GPON and DOCSIS networks which involves considering factors such as pricing, sales, and the technical aspects of conducting tests. To achieve this, v...
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

EMA
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Ixia Hawkeye vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.