Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

NetBrain vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

NetBrain
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (14th), Network Automation (6th)
SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
155
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. NetBrain is designed for Network Troubleshooting and holds a mindshare of 1.9%, up 1.8% 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.
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 14, 2022
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.
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

"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"The alerting and usage tracking notifications on disk space capacity, network and processor utilization."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"What I've found most valuable about the solution is that it's scalable."
"It is scalable."
"We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"We are looking to change away from this solution because of the documentation and the solution doesn't have enough integration in our country. The documentation is too weak."
"The SolarWinds notification and alerting configuration could be simplified as it would be easier to find if it was within the NPM web application instead of in a separate client application."
"Time: A worldwide deployment can be confusing for dispersed users with non-local times. Each node should have a local time (with summer offset if appropriate) & each user should view & report in their local time."
"The price could be better."
"The integration with the APIs and the web servers deployed can definitely be improved."
"The evaluation time for the product is too short especially for large corporations."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds added some technical protocols like Modbus. The market needs a simple solution for monitoring a technical device."
"This solution would benefit from expanding on the capabilities within the API."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"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."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"It is not an expensive product."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Troubleshooting solutions are best for your needs.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
56%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about NetBrain vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: May 2020.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.