We compared Auvik and SolarWinds NPM across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Auvik excels in SNMP and WMI communication, syslog centralization, and live topology mapping. The solution offers NetFlow monitoring as well as backup and configuration management. SolarWinds NPM is commended for its adaptability and extensive network surveillance functionalities.
Room for Improvement: Auvik users would like more flexibility to customize reporting and dashboards. Reviews also suggested improvements in probe deployment and integration with third-party products. SolarWinds NPM needs improvement in edge computing capabilities and data reporting. Users also said the performance could be better and that they would like to see expanded IPAM functionality.
Service and Support: Auvik's customer service is highly rated. Users said it’s convenient to contact support through the platform, and responses are fast. Some noted that problems are typically resolved in a single phone call without the need to escalate. While some customers described SolarWinds support as helpful and responsive, others reported delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: Auvik's setup is simple, fast, and customizable, with clear instructions. Some users said SolarWinds NPM was straightforward to set up, while others perceived it as complex.
Pricing: Auvik’s pricing structure is considered reasonable and competitive. Licensing is based on the number of billable devices, and users have control over which devices are billed. The cost of SolarWinds NPM varies depending on the customer’s size and requirements. Some users find it costly.
ROI: Auvik users said the solution saves time, improves efficiency, and reduces costs through automation and better insights. Some users reported immediate benefits from using SolarWinds NPM in terms of security and business outcomes, while others have not.
Comparison Results: Auvik is a user-friendly option for network monitoring and troubleshooting. The solution stands out for its support and ease of navigation. Users like its topology maps and centralized log information. Some users noted that Auvik’s dashboard could be more customizable and suggested that it could improve probe deployment. SolarWinds NPM is a customizable solution that’s easy to deploy and features comprehensive network monitoring capabilities. However, some users consider it costly and voiced concerns about technical support and user experience.
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"With TrafficInsights, we can view the information and do something with it. In the past, we couldn't easily find that information."
"The ability to map out the network topology is one of the top features I like about Auvik. It's one of the best on the market. They have a feature called Loopback Detection, which has helped us, in many scenarios easily detect that without having to physically go to the location to see if there is a loopback somewhere."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to see usage alerts on all of our devices."
"The cloud monitoring portion of Auvik that provides visibility into each piece of my infrastructure is the most valuable feature."
"The topography and historical data are excellent; the latter essentially allows us to see back in time, which is helpful as users don't always report issues promptly. The ability to go back and look at historical data is a good feature."
"I love that Auvik can automatically back up the configuration of switches and firewalls."
"They have this live chat feature that's available most of the time, and they respond quickly. The support team can access what you're asking them to look at immediately and typically resolve issues quickly. Most of my problems are addressed during the chat session and don't require a follow-up email or phone call."
"The most valuable features for me are network monitoring and alerting."
"SolarWinds NPM has a colorful UI and many easy-to-use features. It does not need to be configured as much and is also easy to install."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"It's a very good tool and a very stable tool."
"The SolarWinds NPM framework, upon which most of their flagship products are built, empowers a wide variety of admins and users to quickly find value in their installed products."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"I want to be able to customize the layout more in terms of showing the alert timeframes. For example, I would like to customize it to show all the alerts in the last three hours, six hours, etc. You should be able to customize it so that it shows you the most critical information. We don't need to see CPU usage. We only want to see the up and down time. It would be nice to filter out many of those metrics we don't use."
"It is amazing in keeping device inventories up-to-date. It mostly keeps them up to date as things change. There were a couple of hiccups where a device would get replaced and the mapping would break, and we'd have to go in and fix the mapping. It was with devices that Auvik couldn't fully discover or devices that would change frequently, such as cell phones or other devices on the network that are dynamic and change all the time. The integration would just show up with an IP address and a MAC address. There was no other information in them, which wasn't very helpful. They were the devices that Auvik wasn't able to discover fully. If they had full SNMP or SSH credentials and Auvik knew what the device was and it was matched correctly in Auvik, then Auvik could push it through."
"It requires a lot of hands-on maintenance when it comes to cleanup. That's probably the biggest problem I've had, because I don't have a dedicated resource to manually clean up stale records. I have a customer where it shows 4,000 devices because of the duplication of devices that I have to clean up."
"It needs flexibility for the pooling of information. Because it is fully automated, it is pooling everything from the device from a given category. There is no way to exclude things that are not important or if you want to temporarily remove them to see statistics of other things. For example, we get about 100 MB from Auvik. We are unable to limit this. We would rather stop monitoring something, since some features will always give you alerts, because they shouldn't be monitored. However, it is impossible to exclude them, e.g., the internal interface. If somebody disconnects the device from the internal interface, we get an alert. So, this is something that is really painful for us. More flexibility would solve most of our issues."
"There is room for improvement on the development side. As new devices and models come out from different manufacturers, they aren't always supported by Auvik right away. For example, Sophos switches came out within the past year and we only have CLI support right now for those..."
"Some of the automation pieces for discovery still need a little bit more improvement. I wouldn't mind seeing some more security features as that's the world we're driving into. I know Auvik probably wants to try to keep itself separate because that's its brand, but even if they brought on board another brand that was able to plug into them, it would benefit us. It would lower some more network security costs if as a company, they are a one-stop shop. They have already got the network piece going. If they improved in that area and focused a lot on that, they would gain me as a customer, and they would probably gain a lot of others."
"We schedule backups in the middle of the night, and a high volume of data passes through our networks during those backups because it backs up everything for a couple of hours. That generates alerts in Auvik's monitoring systems saying that these network ports are at 99 percent utilization because they're being maxed out. I'd like to have a way to mute alerts during these hours. There's no way to whitelist this activity within a set period. I want to be able to tell Auvik not to send me alerts about high utilization on these ports between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m."
"Two weeks ago, we were able to access the support chat via a small button on the bottom right side of the screen. Now, that button has gone away... it has become pretty difficult to access support..."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
"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."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"We'd like to see a bit more automation in the future."
"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 interface could be made more user-friendly."
"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the short retention period. Currently, it's just for seven days of data, which is very low, making it hard for my organization to keep that data. SolarWinds recommended a seven-day retention period, but my organization needs a fourteen-day data retention period. Hence, I'd like an increase in the retention period or the database limit in SolarWinds NPM because you can't go back to the data for any investigation if seven days have passed. Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the database, which needs to be a bit more mature. I want a modified database in the next release of SolarWinds NPM. I'd also like more options added to groups because, currently, it's very limited."
"The only real caveat that we have or that I have an issue with is when I go on vacation, it's a little hard for me to go and modify alerts so that I don't get alerted about things when I'm on vacation."
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Auvik Network Management (ANM) is ranked 3rd in Network Monitoring Software with 139 reviews while SolarWinds NPM is ranked 4th in Network Monitoring Software with 147 reviews. Auvik Network Management (ANM) is rated 8.8, while SolarWinds NPM is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Auvik Network Management (ANM) writes "Enables us to get on top of issues before they become an outage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds NPM writes "High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface". Auvik Network Management (ANM) is most compared with PRTG Network Monitor, LogicMonitor, Zabbix, Meraki Dashboard and Domotz, whereas SolarWinds NPM is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, ManageEngine OpManager, ThousandEyes and Entuity. See our Auvik Network Management (ANM) vs. SolarWinds NPM report.
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