We performed a comparison between Kentik and SolarWinds NPM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"One of the valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."
"It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics."
"I really love the Data Explorer. I use it all the time to go in and craft exactly what I need to see. I'm able to then take that story and explain it to the executives. I've done that a couple of times and it is helpful."
"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."
"In terms of the solution’s real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, I have not been able to find any other monitoring or netflow visualization tool that gives me the kind of information I get from Kentik. If I need to take a deep-dive into something that I see, it's really easy for me to do that. Whereas with most other things, I have to use five or six other tools to get that kind of data, with Kentik, I have it all in one place."
"We're pretty happy with the API functionality. It's web, and it's very simple to set up queries. It has served us well and you don't need to be an expert on the API or the product to set these things up."
"I am able to do a lot of work on the visualization end to create different visualizations and different ways to get information out of it."
"Having the API access allows us to do a great deal of automation around a lot of our reporting and management tools."
"The ability to customize the views and dashboards is nice. SolarWinds also allows us to access the data via the API. That's probably the feature I liked the most."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"Reporting tools are a great feature along with the ability to create customized reports for you"
"From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization."
"The interface is user-friendly, making it easy to use."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"What I've found most valuable about the solution is that it's scalable."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable. Kentik is valuable, don't get me wrong, but if it had an actionable piece to it..."
"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."
"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."
"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."
"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."
"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."
"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."
"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."
"It has covered everything, so no improvement is required at their end. The only thing is the price."
"The solution's network discovery and node addition processes need more work."
"One of the challenges with SolarWinds is that in order to pull the data, we have to have a lot of false positives."
"The product is scalable, but at a cost. Extra modules have to be purchased for each extra server. The initial set up isn't complex, but will require someone who is experienced with the network monitoring system"
"The integration with video apps could be better."
"Scalability is a bit tricky because it requires more gateways in order to get the performance you may need. It also requires a lot of licensing."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
"This solution would benefit from expanding on the capabilities within the API."
Kentik is ranked 47th in Network Monitoring Software with 12 reviews while SolarWinds NPM is ranked 4th in Network Monitoring Software with 147 reviews. Kentik is rated 9.2, while SolarWinds NPM is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Kentik writes " Flexibility for creating reports and gaining more visibility is a definite strength". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds NPM writes "High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface". Kentik is most compared with ThousandEyes, Arbor DDoS, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, Datadog and Zabbix, whereas SolarWinds NPM is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, ManageEngine OpManager, ThousandEyes and Entuity. See our Kentik vs. SolarWinds NPM report.
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