Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

SolarWinds NPM VS Zabbix

Compare SolarWinds NPM VS Zabbix 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!

Zabbix logo Zabbix

Track, record, alert and visualize performance and availability of IT resources
  • SolarWinds NPM Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-22
  • Zabbix Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-10-02

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.

Zabbix features and specs

  • Open-source
    Zabbix is free and open-source, allowing for extensive customization and modification to meet specific needs without licensing costs.
  • Scalability
    Zabbix can handle a large number of devices and data points, making it suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring
    Zabbix offers a wide range of monitoring capabilities including servers, networks, cloud services, and applications.
  • Alerting and Notification
    It provides robust alerting mechanisms, allowing notifications via email, SMS, and other methods.
  • Flexible Configuration
    The system allows for detailed and flexible configuration, accommodating various specific monitoring requirements.
  • Extensive API
    Zabbix comes with a comprehensive API that allows for integration with third-party tools and custom automation scripts.
  • Strong Community Support
    As an open-source project, Zabbix has a strong community that can provide support and share best practices.

Possible disadvantages of Zabbix

  • Complex Setup and Configuration
    Initial setup and configuration can be complicated and time-consuming, often requiring a steep learning curve.
  • Resource Intensive
    Zabbix can be resource-intensive, particularly on the database side, which might require substantial hardware resources for large deployments.
  • User Interface
    The user interface is considered less modern and user-friendly compared to some commercial alternatives.
  • Documentation
    While comprehensive, the documentation can sometimes be difficult to navigate for new users.
  • Maintenance Effort
    Ongoing maintenance, such as updates and troubleshooting, can be labor-intensive.
  • Dependency on MySQL
    The heavy reliance on MySQL databases can be a disadvantage for users preferring other database technologies.
  • Initial Costs for Large Scale Deployments
    Although the software is free, the costs associated with setting up and maintaining the necessary infrastructure and hardware can be significant, especially for larger deployments.

SolarWinds NPM videos

SolarWinds NPM: Your Complete Network Monitoring Solution

More videos:

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

Zabbix videos

An overview of Zabbix 4.0 and how we are using it.

More videos:

  • Review - Zabbix Monitoring Solution - Overview
  • Review - ZABBIX Network Discovery For Dynamic Deployments

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to SolarWinds NPM and Zabbix)
Monitoring Tools
16 16%
84% 84
Log Management
20 20%
80% 80
Performance Monitoring
17 17%
83% 83
Network & Admin
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using SolarWinds NPM and Zabbix. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

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

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

Zabbix Reviews

  1. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    Indispensable

    Zabbix has been part of my toolbox for quite some time. I can easily say it's an indispensable tool for me now.

    Managing a dozen servers without Zabbix would be unimaginable. I'm monitoring all of this: CPU, Memory, Hard-drives, website response times, downtime. The UI might be a bit "old school", but everything works flawlessly.

    With regards to hard-drive monitoring, I love the machine learning option that allows you to "predict" the number of days before running out of space. That's quite helpful, as I've got some of my servers down due to running out of space multiple times in the past (before I was using Zabbix).

    👍 Pros:    Open-source|It can monitor everything
    👎 Cons:    The ui is a bit unintuitive in some cases

Self Hosting Like Its 2025
If you’re looking for straightforward monitoring and the thought of setting up a full Zabbix or Grafana stack seems daunting, this software is a real lifesaver. With just one deployment, you can monitor your services and receive notifications through a wide variety of channels including…
Source: kiranet.org
11 Best Nagios Alternatives (Free & Open Source) in 2024
Unlimited scaling: Zabbix is a flexible software that lets you monitor anything you want. It is highly scalable as it helps you manage both multi-tenant enterprise environments and your home.
Source: www.guru99.com
The Best Nagios Alternatives for Server, Application and Network Monitoring
Zabbix is a very strong competitor to Nagios and its development is very encouraging. Zabbix is completely free to use, which makes it a competitor to Nagios Core. Zabbix beats Nagios in the free monitoring market because it has a good frontend, which Nagios Core lacks and it also provides NetFlow monitoring, which isn’t present in Nagios Core – that is a separate paid...
The 10 Best Nagios Alternatives in 2024 (Paid and Open-source)
Zabbix, a widely adopted open-source monitoring tool, offers a range of practical features. It allows you to monitor various aspects of your system, including transactions, application performance, and real browser monitoring. With ready-to-use templates for different servers and operating systems, Zabbix simplifies the monitoring process.
Source: betterstack.com
Top 11 Grafana Alternatives & Competitors [2024]
Zabbix offers a unified view of the entire IT infrastructure through its user-friendly web-based interface. It delivers potent visualization capabilities through customizable dashboards, complemented by robust alerting mechanisms and comprehensive support for alert escalations.
Source: signoz.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Zabbix 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.

Zabbix mentions (5)

  • Learning Resources
    Official Zabbix trainings, documentation on zabbix.com ? Source: over 2 years ago
  • zabbix installation
    Hallo, do you know a howto to install zabbix on an ubuntu 20.04 ? I tried the manuals from zabbix.com for MySQL Apache but it didn't work. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • How I am getting experience as a linux admistrator (Follow Up)
    He suggested that I indeed should set up a home-lab. To be specific he said that I should create a minimal install of Centos 8 and install zabbix server on it (https://zabbix.com) and monitor a whole bunch of other VMs, services and stuff.. He said that I should set up a variety of VMs and also maybe host a website on one of them. And then if I was able to do that, I could help to share a load of zabbix related... Source: about 3 years ago
  • Ubuntu Impish 21.10 / Zabbix 6.0 LTS
    This is a fresh 21.10 install, using the install repo as detailed on the zabbix.com download page. Source: about 3 years ago
  • One dev conference speaker's family member died, need your help to fill the speaking slot on Nov 27/28
    Well, if you can't find anyone, I am more than happy to fill the slot with something regarding Zabbix - just let me know ;). Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

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

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.

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.

Microsoft System Center - Microsoft System Center provides solutions to simplify the deployment, configuration, management, and monitoring of the infrastructure.

NewRelic - New Relic is a Software Analytics company that makes sense of billions of metrics across millions of apps. We help the people who build modern software understand the stories their data is trying to tell them.