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.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"Auvik offers free monitoring for all devices except routers and firewalls. This includes devices like network-attached devices, PCs, and printers, making it cost-effective for monitoring a wide range of assets."
"Among the most valuable features are the hardware life cycle and configuration backups, when applicable... When it does show you the hardware life cycle for, say, a Cisco device and the configuration backup, that's the most useful aspect for me as a network engineer."
"The ability to have visibility on a network to see the traffic and the ability to see if devices are misconfigured and if something changes in that configuration, are most valuable."
"One feature that is the most valuable for me is that after we added all of our firewalls, every time we make any configuration change in the firewall, it creates a backup and retains the change history for months. We can see and find out when a change was done and what was the change. The best part is that if we want to compare the current config with the config from two weeks ago, the tool pulls up both config files and tells us what the difference is."
"The fact that it provides a single, integrated platform for our organization is important as well. Having 50 different accounts to log into would make things difficult at times."
"I like the way everything can be integrated. Auvik uses SMNP and various protocols to ensure we can monitor any device on the network."
"It's hard to say that one feature is my favorite, but I like Auvik's ability to map networks using SNMP. It maps the network, so I can look at all the devices and set them to provide alerts or automatically create tickets when outages occur. If clients need it, I can export all of the data into an Excel spreadsheet."
"It shows all my devices and it shows everything that is possibly connected to the network... It gives me how many devices or switches are connected, and what is connected to each switch, including how many printers are on it."
"The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
"One of the best features is the reports feature."
"SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of SolarWinds NPM."
"SolarWinds dashboard is very fast. Also, their interface is very good, it looks very user-friendly. The product allows me to see a summary of the network being monitored at a glance."
"It is very extensible with 'SWQL' and APIs to where we are beginning to integrate it with network automation."
"This solution offers a very good view of our network and allows us to effectively monitor performance."
"It did a good job of the collection and then an investigation of the net flow of information for understanding the applications that were being used at certain locations."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"Auvik mostly supports large vendors such as the Cisco Aruba networks, Meraki, and Extreme Networks."
"The mapping automatically finds all the interfaces but tags some of them incorrectly. For instance, if it can't find how a CPU interface is connected, it will use the MAC address last seen on the router and sometimes attribute cloud-connected devices to the route, but it's not actually there. That's not a true connection."
"It's missing the license checker feature. We are using Salesforce and the license is a really crucial part of the development, and we have to monitor it. Now, I have to write a script and then run it on a random Linux box and get a notification if it's expiring. It's a really specific feature. I'm not sure Auvik will develop it."
"Auvik doesn't communicate very well with Ubiquiti devices and will incorrectly flag facets as down. Compatibility with Ubiquiti is my biggest pain point with Auvik."
"Sometimes it's a little bit slow to load, but I can't think of anything else that could be improved."
"The reporting needs a little bit of improvement. Sometimes, I get too many reports. Or, I don't get reports when I should be getting reports. I don't know if this is Auvik's fault or the devices that the reporting is coming from, but I have noticed there have been some discrepancies."
"We have some clients that are rather large and the topology display can be a little bit of a mess. For smaller organizations, Auvik is perfect... But for some of our larger clients, the topology view is almost unusable."
"The network mapping is just okay when I consider what I would typically see in a network map... that whole overview map in a single pane of glass can be pretty messy and a little bit of a performance hog on computers. The network mapping needs improvement in Auvik, as a whole."
"GUI needs improvement with a more graphical dashboard."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"We also had to be attentive to vulnerabilities, because SolarWinds NPM have some issues in that area. We had to work with our security team, so that they could help us check and backup the data, and check what they needed to secure."
"There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better."
"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."
"One of the challenges with SolarWinds is that in order to pull the data, we have to have a lot of false positives."
"It would be nice to have a test to check if you can access a particular device via API without installing it and waiting for a poll cycle. You should have the capacity to initiate a test to see if it was reachable and get the results almost immediately."
"The reporting module that got integrated into the system itself, used to be a standalone solution and I preferred that."
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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, Domotz and Meraki Dashboard, 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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We monitor all Network Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.