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Nmap vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Nmap
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nmap is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.6%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

AntoSebastin - PeerSpot reviewer
Scans the network and identifies vulnerabilities on each machine
Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to scan our network and identify devices that aren't connected properly. This helps us detect any issues related to the operating systems of these devices. The tool's most valuable feature is its vulnerability scanning. It allows us to scan a specific range of IP addresses and discover devices within that range. This makes it easy to identify devices and view their details. Port scanning is crucial for network management tasks. It helps us identify vulnerabilities by finding open ports that may be unused or misconfigured. This tool makes it easy to detect such issues. The OS detection feature is great. Unlike other tools, Nmap provides accurate information about asset vulnerabilities, helping us easily detect and address them. Using Nmap provides value to the company, especially during compliance audits. It helps generate reports on assets, updates on workstations, and insights into network activities and potential attacks. Additionally, Nmap detects vulnerabilities and provides port details, allowing us to close unused ports on the client machines.
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

"The scanning procedure includes UDP ports which sets it apart from competitors."
"Nmap has a powerful command line tool and a set of diagnostic features."
"Nmap is easy to use. It's a command-line interface, and the output is quite good."
"It is a very user-friendly product."
"The best feature of Nmap is that it lets me see useful information about each endpoint in my entire network environment. For example, I can see every single connection of the network as well as each and every port."
"The solution detects the operating systems, which makes testing the software much easier before making the payload."
"The most important function, according to me, is the capability to use some arguments in the scanning. The solution's capability to go figure and do a deep dive, discovering information on specific aspects."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its scripts. These scripts prove beneficial when security features may obscure or block connections. Nmap helps identify vulnerabilities across different systems, including web servers and various server types."
"The product is lightweight in terms of memory use, requiring only 10 megabytes or less."
"The connectivity of the solution is very good."
"Provides a good level of tools and covers essential components."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks."
"It's a very good tool and a very stable tool."
"SolarWinds has greatly helped us, especially in tracing when the SoundCloud Software goes down without any apparent reason."
"The stability is fantastic."
 

Cons

"Customization is not very user-friendly in Nmap."
"The solution should increase the number of features under a free license."
"There is room for improvement in the design, the GUI. It looks a bit odd. Maybe Nmap should improve it or add more widgets to make it more attractive, but the basic functionality is good and provides what we need."
"One of the drawbacks of the standard Nmap utility is that it does not come with a graphical user interface, unlike a number of other open-source alternatives such as Zenmap."
"Nmap needs to improve its scanning speed."
"Nmap major operates through the CLI; there's no GUI component, and that's where the challenge is."
"The solution is not that easy for a beginner to learn."
"The tool's license limits the number of scans it can perform. Improving the license model could benefit customers by allowing more scans for compliance and other purposes."
"GUI needs improvement with a more graphical dashboard."
"We decided that we were no longer going to trust that their products have not been capitalized."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
"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."
"They don't have a local support team."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve by adding the deepest inspection, performance networking, and IP address discovery."
"The scalability can be better."
"The integration needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an open-source product, and I haven't seen any premiums. Options are available for those who purchase, but for my use case, everything I need is available in the community and forums."
"Nmap is an open-source product. You don't need a license to install it."
"I am using the standard free version of Nmap."
"The solution is free of cost."
"I am using the free version of Nmap."
"It's an open-source solution. Commerically, only the support service is available."
"Nmap is open source software, which suits us well because we are a manufacturing company and not an IT company, for example. If we were an IT company, we would probably need to pay for extra support or instead go for another software solution. But as it is, we don't have any need for high-end troubleshooting tools."
"The product's pricing is fine. The licensing options for Nmap include perpetual licenses and volume-based licenses. For perpetual licenses, once you purchase it, there's no need to invest in renewals. And for volume-based licenses, enterprise companies can use it multiple times based on the number of users or devices they need to scan. It's a pay-as-you-go model, similar to how you pay for what you use."
"When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low."
"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."
"It is expensive."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"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 standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
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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
Retailer
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
54%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nmap?
Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to sca...
What is your primary use case for Nmap?
Nmap is used for network scanning to map the network, identify devices, and assess their status. It helps determine open ports and services running on a particular endpoint or server within an ente...
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

Lockheed Martin, Eastern Bank Boston, Perspecta, Harris Corporation, Discovery Communication
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Nmap vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.