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SolarWinds NPM vs Versa Director 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

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)
Versa Director
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
53rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.7%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Director is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
PriyankDubey - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly and simpler than its competitors
Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management. Its UI is also excellent compared to Fortinet and Cisco Versa Director's on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software are not integrated, so you have to buy a separate subscription for the SSL VPN. In…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The stability is fantastic."
"The alerting system in SolarWinds NPM aids in proactive network management."
"It is scalable."
"I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates."
"The connectivity of the solution is very good."
"The initial setup was straightforward. We deployed the solution from new and completed the upgrades."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools."
"The most valuable functionality is some of the policy pieces that are quite useful."
"The most valuable feature of Versa Director is analytics."
"Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management."
"Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market."
"The integration with the APIs and the web servers deployed can definitely be improved."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"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."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers."
"The solution's customer service is not very good because the support takes too long."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market."
"Versa Director's deployment process is not the best."
"It requires some simplification."
"Versa could be more AI-oriented."
"What needs improvement in Versa Director is maturity because, from an operating point of view, it's not mature enough. You'll still need to do a lot of research on Versa Director, so if it could mature faster, that would be very good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"Price could be improved on"
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"It is too expensive."
"Having to buy separate licenses for the on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software makes Versa Director very costly compared to other solutions like Fortinet and Cisco."
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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
Educational Organization
58%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
7%
 

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...
What do you like most about Versa Director?
Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management.
What is your primary use case for Versa Director?
We use the solution to monitor customer networks.
 

Also Known As

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
Versa Networks Director
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. Versa Director and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.