We performed a comparison between SolarWinds NPM and Zabbix based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: In this comparison, Zabbix comes out slightly ahead because it is open-source whereas SolarWinds NPM is not.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The set up was very easy. We didn't have any problems with the setup. The deployment took less than an hour."
"I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates."
"Reporting tools are a great feature along with the ability to create customized reports for you"
"It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools."
"We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The solution allows you to configure and customize how you want to collect information from servers or other systems."
"I have found that the reporting feature in Zabbix is most valuable. Additionally, the solution has given us bandwidth options, we are able to see where problems are. For example, we noticed a problem that occurred because of a bad interface going in the wireless VLAN."
"Zabbix can use old data to current data to set the threshold. We can use previous data to set the threshold."
"The solution allows for good integration with other products."
"We value the auto-host discovery, template import, bulk import/export features. Newer versions also add nice features, such as multi-IP per host."
"It can send messages to our ticketing system."
"The overall functionality of Zabbix is very good. The monitoring of bank applications that Zabbix provides is great. The information is displayed on a dashboard that is easily viewed."
"We use it to monitor and manage our servers."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"This solution would benefit from expanding on the capabilities within the API."
"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."
"SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"Technical support and releases are not particularly reliable."
"Currently lacks integration with SMS services."
"Technical support can be slow to respond."
"There are some features of Zabbix that are not good for reporting. The DX Spectrum solution has better reporting."
"Its UI needs to be improved a little bit more so that an end-user is also able to handle it. I can handle it, but others should also be able to handle it in a better way. It becomes complex when we are growing and need to add proxies. We need more scalability features and documentation for different use cases. A lot of articles are available, but they need to be in proper documentation. For example, when you have thousands of servers that have to be monitored in different regions of the world, there should be some kind of documentation to describe how you can create proxies and add them. Sometimes, when you are using the database, it can get overloaded. When the network is growing, the number of transactions becomes very high, and the database gets overloaded. There should be information about how to reduce the load on the MySQL database, which is what Zabbix is using. The market is growing a lot, and it should be enhanced for a lot more things. We are currently bringing enhancements at our end for different use cases. For example, when dockerization is going on, how can we check the logs inside the Dockers. We should also be able to monitor and check the number of logins and add features such as SSO login and two-factor authentication as a protocol. These are the security features and concerns that we have to deal with. Currently, we are developing modules to add features to Zabbix, but they should also work on these features."
"My company wanted to do an exercise command to access IT from Cameroon. They wanted to access an FSS to a second host with second equipment that was on another coast but it is not possible on Zabbix to do it. They want to directly access from the front-end of Zabbix to access a prompt in Zabbix to an access terminal. In the front-end, there is no way to do that. That would be an important improvement."
"We would like to see the addition of automatic push functionality to this product. This would save time when monitoring our servers and networks as, at present, we have to manually install the Zabbix agent on any hardware to be monitored."
"I am having difficulties connecting it to Grafana, as well as some of the other plugins like Kibana."
"It could be more stable."
"There are areas of improvement. The database grows really fast. So, when you install Zabbix, you have to deal with some issues, like the database. We become pretty big very fast."
"There's a small module of APM, however, it is not an enhanced version. People usually ask for a full-fledged APM solution."
SolarWinds NPM is ranked 6th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 147 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 2nd in Cloud Monitoring Software with 100 reviews. SolarWinds NPM is rated 8.2, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of SolarWinds NPM writes "High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". SolarWinds NPM is most compared with PRTG Network Monitor, ManageEngine OpManager, ThousandEyes, Entuity and LogicMonitor, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, Nagios Core, Nagios XI and Amazon CloudWatch. See our SolarWinds NPM vs. Zabbix report.
See our list of best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors, best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors, and best Network Monitoring Software vendors.
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Hello ,
just to let you know about my modest contribution, indeed its two tools are very practical: The choice of one of the solutions depends on two factors:
- The price and the competence of the system administrators
Zabbix is a free tool and requires a strong Linux, Scripting skill for all that is custom supervision. integration with third-party tools ( Grafana Dashbord , Ticketing Tools ...)
Solarwinds is very intuitive and complete (reporting, view, resources, NOC view) all its features are integrated and easily configurable.
Regards
Arsène