Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

SolarWinds NPM VS Netdata

Compare SolarWinds NPM VS Netdata and see what are their differences

SolarWinds NPM logo SolarWinds NPM

Advanced network monitoring for on-premises, hybrid, and cloud. Download a FREE 30-day trial of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) today!

Netdata logo Netdata

Monitor your servers, containers, and applications, in high-resolution and in real-time.
  • SolarWinds NPM Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-22
  • Netdata Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-02-16

Netdata collects metrics per second & presents them in low-latency dashboards. It is designed to run on all physical & virtual servers, cloud deployments, Kubernetes clusters, and edge/IoT devices, to monitor your systems, containers & applications.

Scales nicely from a single server to thousands of servers, even in complex multi/mixed/hybrid cloud environments & given enough disk space it can keep your metrics for years.

KEY FEATURES:

💥 Collects metrics from 800+ integrations OS metrics, container metrics, VMs, hardware sensors, apps metrics, OpenMetrics exporters, StatsD & logs.

💪 Real-Time, Low-Latency, High-Resolution All metrics are collected per second & are on the dashboard immediately after data collection. Netdata is fast.

😶‍🌫️ Unsupervised Anomaly Detection Trains multiple ML models for each metric collected & detects anomalies based on the past behavior of each metric individually.

🔥 Powerful Visualization Clear & precise visualization that allows you to quickly understand any dataset, but also to filter, slice & dice the data directly on the dashboard, without the need to learn any query language.

🔔 Out of box Alerts Hundreds of alerts out of the box to detect common issues & pitfalls, revealing issues that can easily go unnoticed. It supports several notification methods to let you know when your attention is needed.

📖 systemd Journal Logs Explorer (BETA - nightly release channel) Provides a systemd journal logs explorer, to view, filter & analyze system & apps logs by directly accessing systemd journal files on individual hosts & infrastructure-wide logs centralization servers.

😎 Low Maintenance Fully automated in every aspect: automated dashboards, out-of-the-box alerts, auto-detection & discovery of metrics, zero-touch ML, easy scalability, high availability &CI/CD friendly.

⭐ Open & Extensible Netdata is a modular platform that can be extended in all possible ways and it also integrates nicely with other monitoring solutions.

SolarWinds NPM

Pricing URL
-
$ Details
-
Platforms
-
Release Date
-

Netdata

$ Details
freemium $3.0 / Monthly (Netdata Pro, $3 /Node /mo - Netdata Business, $4 /Node /mo )
Platforms
Linux Docker AWS Azure Mac OSX Cloud Windows Edge NGINX Oracle
Release Date
2018 June

SolarWinds NPM features and specs

  • Comprehensive Monitoring
    SolarWinds NPM provides detailed insights into network performance by tracking metrics like bandwidth usage, latency, and packet loss. It supports a wide range of devices and vendors, making it versatile for varied network environments.
  • Customizable Dashboards and Alerts
    The platform offers highly customizable dashboards and alerting mechanisms, allowing users to tailor notifications and visualizations according to their specific needs.
  • Scalability
    SolarWinds NPM can scale to support large and complex network environments, making it suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The software has an intuitive, web-based interface that makes it easy for users to navigate and utilize its features without requiring extensive training.
  • Robust Reporting
    SolarWinds NPM includes advanced reporting capabilities that help administrators analyze network trends, generate compliance reports, and present data to stakeholders.

Possible disadvantages of SolarWinds NPM

  • Cost
    The initial cost and ongoing maintenance fees for SolarWinds NPM can be significant, particularly for small businesses or non-profits with limited budgets.
  • Resource Intensive
    The software can be resource-intensive, requiring robust server infrastructure to operate efficiently, which may necessitate additional investments in hardware.
  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and configuring SolarWinds NPM to fit specific network environments can be complex and time-consuming, often necessitating a steep learning curve or professional assistance.
  • High Volume of Alerts
    While customizable, the alert system can generate a high volume of notifications, which could lead to alert fatigue if not properly configured.
  • Limited Integration with Some Tools
    Although SolarWinds NPM integrates well with many systems, there are some third-party tools and platforms with which integration is less straightforward.

Netdata features and specs

  • Dashboards & visualizations
    Digestible, intuitive, and visually appealing charts for troubleshooting.
  • Configurable
    Zero configuration. Zero maintenance. No preparations. Sane defaults. Auto-detection for all metrics. Immediately usable.
  • Metrics
    Netdata collects, stores and visualizes all the metrics available. We almost never filter out metrics. The more metrics, the better.
  • Real time monitoring
    Netdata is real-time. It collects all metrics every second and it has a data collection to visualization latency of less than a millisecond.
  • Analytics and Reporting
    Detailed analysis on how applications and systems are performing

Analysis of SolarWinds NPM

Overall verdict

  • SolarWinds NPM is generally considered a robust and effective network monitoring solution. It is well-suited for enterprises of various sizes seeking detailed insights into their network performance. However, its cost, particularly for larger deployments, and the complexity of setup for the most comprehensive monitoring can be a drawback for smaller companies or those with limited IT budgets.

Why this product is good

  • SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is often praised for its comprehensive set of features that allow users to monitor the health and performance of their network infrastructure. It provides real-time alerts, customizable dashboards, and in-depth reporting capabilities. Its intuitive interface and ease of deployment make it accessible even for teams without extensive technical expertise. The tool is especially useful for identifying and troubleshooting network issues quickly, leading to reduced downtime and improved network reliability.

Recommended for

    SolarWinds NPM is recommended for medium to large enterprises with complex network architectures that require detailed monitoring and reporting. It is particularly beneficial for IT teams looking to proactively manage and optimize their network infrastructure to ensure high performance and reliability. Industries with critical network uptime requirements, such as healthcare, finance, and large-scale IT services, may find this tool especially useful.

Analysis of Netdata

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Netdata is generally regarded as a valuable tool for system monitoring and troubleshooting. It is praised for its speed, ease of use, and detailed insights, making it an effective solution for diverse monitoring needs.

Why this product is good

  • Netdata is considered good because it provides real-time monitoring and troubleshooting of systems. It offers detailed insights with minimal resource consumption, and features a user-friendly interface, making it accessible for both technical and non-technical users. Its open-source nature allows for customization and integration with other data sources, enhancing its capabilities.

Recommended for

  • IT professionals who need real-time system diagnostics
  • DevOps teams seeking efficient monitoring tools
  • Small to medium enterprises looking for cost-effective monitoring solutions
  • Open-source enthusiasts who prefer customizable software
  • Organizations that require scalable monitoring solutions across different environments

SolarWinds NPM videos

SolarWinds NPM: Your Complete Network Monitoring Solution

More videos:

  • Review - Overview of Quality of Experience Dashboard in SolarWinds NPM

Netdata videos

Install Netdata on Linux in two minutes

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Netdata's standard dashboard

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to SolarWinds NPM and Netdata)
Monitoring Tools
73 73%
27% 27
Log Management
80 80%
20% 20
Performance Monitoring
69 69%
31% 31
Network & Admin
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using SolarWinds NPM and Netdata. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare SolarWinds NPM and Netdata

SolarWinds NPM Reviews

The Best Cacti Monitoring Alternatives
The SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is a paid tool, the best of the best. It’s a network monitoring solution to help you find, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues. The tool is mainly focused on maintaining the health of the devices within your network.
13 Best Nagios Alternatives for Networks, Servers, IT Systems Monitoring
Unlike Solarwinds NPM described above which is focused only on networking, checkmk can monitor a wide range of devices such as servers, network devices, applications etc.
Best Open Source Network Monitoring Tools and Software (Linux/Windows)
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor is another Great monitoring tool that has a large community behind it and has updates almost every year.
15 Best IT Monitoring Tools and Software
SolarWinds NPM is SolarWinds’s network troubleshooter. NPM is easy to use, can be used across physical, cloud-based, or mixed businesses.
Source: blog.inedo.com

Netdata Reviews

The Best Cacti Monitoring Alternatives
Netdata gives you access to sublime real-time health and performance monitoring for all your systems. The Netdata GitHub community has made its growth abundantly clear throughout its last six years of active development.
10 Best Open Source Monitoring Software for IT Infrastructure
Netdata provides unparalleled real-time health monitoring and performance troubleshooting for systems and applications. Over the past six years of development, Netdata’s GitHub community has been essential to its growth.
Source: geekflare.com
4 Best Open Source Dashboard Monitoring Tools In 2019
“Pull” method : you can set Netdata to run on individual nodes and plug your dashboards directly to it. This way, you can scale your node to your needs and you are not concerned about the scaling of different nodes. Also, storage is scoped to what’s really needed by a particular node thus more efficient;

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Netdata seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 5 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

SolarWinds NPM mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of SolarWinds NPM yet. Tracking of SolarWinds NPM recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Netdata mentions (5)

  • Trying to decide best practices for production environment
    Pros are instant HA and Migration. Cons are huge bandwidth hits. With your 4x1gbe you would be maxed out on replicating those 25 VMs. You wouldn't have anything for users. I have a test lab with 4 nodes, 22cpu 100gbram and 30tb space, using low end stuff, 12hdds. Proxmox, ceph dashboard, (the native ceph dashboard you can turn on), and a netdata.cloud account. So I watch it like a hawk and like to load test. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Reducing the maintenance surface area of hosting a small internal app
    Docker-compose, not k8s. Set up a script to update the OS, pull all your containers and reboot after hours once a week or once a day. Make sure the script specifies non interactive. Set up alerting for low disk space, see https://netdata.cloud or use your own tool. - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
  • What’s your preferred stack?
    There can be some issues if you mix and match elastic versions, wazuh versions, logstash versions. But the documentation guides you very well with matrix of what is and is not compatible. You will want a beefy VM to run it in, I started smaller than I should of, and after running a while it kind of puked on itself, certain things would randomly stop working. After giving it 32GB RAM, plenty of disk 4TB, and 8... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Netdata on MacOS
    $ brew info netdata Netdata: stable 1.29.3 (bottled) Diagnose infrastructure problems with metrics, visualizations & alarms Https://netdata.cloud/ Not installed From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/netdata.rb License: GPL-3.0-or-later ==> Dependencies Build: autoconf ✘, automake ✘, pkg-config ✔ Required: json-c ✘, libuv ✘, lz4 ✘, openssl@1.1 ✔ ==> Caveats To start netdata: brew... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Netdata cloud and data control
    What I know is that each node's data is still primarily stored on the node itself, and I've figured that the Registry used by Netdata cloud stores only URLs and randomly generated UUIDs. So my question is, will any other data be stored outside of my nodes? Does Netdata Cloud have access to my servers 24/7 or only when I got a browser tab with Netdata cloud open? Is there more information on security and data... Source: about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing SolarWinds NPM and Netdata, you can also consider the following products

Zabbix - Track, record, alert and visualize performance and availability of IT resources

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.

Grafana - Data visualization & Monitoring with support for Graphite, InfluxDB, Prometheus, Elasticsearch and many more databases

Dynatrace - Cloud-based quality testing, performance monitoring and analytics for mobile apps and websites. Get started with Keynote today!

Nagios - Complete monitoring and alerting for servers, switches, applications, and services

Wireshark - Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.