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Observer Apex 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

Observer Apex
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
101st
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
1
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 March 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Observer Apex is 0.1%, down from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.7%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Jeroen-Dubbelman - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good network visibility
The primary use case is for monitoring and troubleshooting. We also use it for security.   The correlation of data in Apex helps to get full visibility of the entire enterprise. Apex is where we get the end-user experience score from one to ten. Network visibility is the most valuable feature.…
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

"Network visibility is the most valuable feature."
"Everything has been complete and stable for our needs over the past four years."
"The solution is user-friendly and has many options for customized monitoring that other tools don't have."
"SolarWinds NPM provides an overview of network monitoring, extending its capabilities to cover other aspects, such as virtual machines and servers. The platform has features like NetPath, which is particularly beneficial for end-users, offering insights into issues like latency, packet loss, and connectivity problems with routers, switches, or servers."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly interface and the ease of deployment."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"The product is scalable."
"The alerting system in SolarWinds NPM aids in proactive network management."
"It gives us a map of the network setup and one console to see the entire network."
 

Cons

"The pricing and AI can be improved."
"One of the challenges with SolarWinds is that in order to pull the data, we have to have a lot of false positives."
"SolarWinds NPM can be very slow at times. The database optimization can be done to improve the product performance."
"If they could combine everything into one product, that would be very helpful."
"SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."
"The reporting is good, but I want it to be a little easier when creating custom reports. The reports are all on the website now, but it takes some know how to get some to display the way you would like."
"The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"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 can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
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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
No data available
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 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

No data available
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Capita
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: February 2025.
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