Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Google and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Cloud Monitoring Software category. Google is ranked #18 with an average rating of 10.0, while SolarWinds is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.4. Google holds a 0.9% mindshare in CMS, compared to SolarWinds’s 4.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Google Cloud's operations s...

Read 10 Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) reviews

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1,647 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SolarWinds NPM

Read 161 SolarWinds NPM reviews

26,624 Views
9,851 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Google Cloud's operations s...

SolarWinds NPM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

SolarWinds NPM and Google Cloud's operations suite are two competitive solutions in the network performance monitoring and cloud operations domains. Considering the features, SolarWinds might have the upper hand in on-premises network management with its extensive features, while Google Cloud tends to excel in cloud-native environments due to its scalable infrastructure monitoring.

Features: SolarWinds NPM stands out with customizable alerts, vendor integration, and modular pricing allowing users to purchase only necessary features. Its extensive on-premises solutions are favored for managing in-house infrastructure. Meanwhile, Google Cloud's operations suite provides seamless integration with Google services, effective cloud monitoring capabilities, and scalability that benefit cloud-native operations without hindrance.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM struggles with network discovery, topology mapping, and managing alerts across diverse devices, highlighting the need for better automation and integration capabilities. Google Cloud's suite faces challenges with detailed request-level analytics, complex cost tracking, and a need for improved profiling capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM is strong in hybrid environments and is appreciated for its on-premises management capabilities. It receives generally favorable customer service feedback, though with suggestions for better response times. Alternatively, Google Cloud's operations suite offers smooth deployment in public cloud landscapes and good integration with cloud services. Its technical support is praised, yet sometimes noted for slow responsiveness in non-critical situations.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM's pricing can be high, especially for additional modules, but its ROI is seen positively due to its comprehensive features and effective infrastructure insights. Google Cloud's operations suite offers a flexible, usage-based pricing model that is cost-effective for cloud operations, though it has faced issues with unexpected billing. SolarWinds remains strong in providing immediate infrastructure insights, while Google Cloud offers managed services at lower costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. SolarWinds NPM Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. SolarWinds NPM

September 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Google Cloud's operations s...

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

18th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (31st), Log Management (23rd)

SolarWinds NPM

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

161

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.6%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM	4.6%
Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)	0.9%
Other	94.5%

Cloud Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Anand_Patel

Senior Technical Architect at T-Systems International GmbH

Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations

As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or Big Query can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings. It has default integration for all gcp services. recently managed Prometheus support gives more flexibility to organizations to remain connected with their current Prometheus setup. We leveraged integrated FinOps Hub for recommendations for our workloads and server configurations, helpd us lot in order to get maximum TCO.

Read full review

Vivek Jaiswal

Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards

Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"

"Google's technical support is very good."

"We find the solution to be stable."

"The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS."

"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."

"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."

"I would tell potential users that the current version is much nicer than the previous one."

"It's easy to use."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) pros

"The ability to customize the views and dashboards is nice, and SolarWinds also allows us to access the data via the API, which is probably the feature I liked the most."

"With SolarWinds, it’s easy to monitor everything and, with a little setup, everyone can help out."

"It's just having visibility of the entire networking estate for myself and for my clients; that's the main benefit of it and it's probably the best product out there."

"Awesome product with a lot of info available and great support team."

"Without NPM monitoring, we would be in a world of hurt and constantly responding to outages and unexpected downtime."

"Quick to launch. No agents required. Many configuration options."

"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."

"The SolarWinds NPM framework, upon which most of their flagship products are built, empowers a wide variety of admins and users to quickly find value in their installed products."

More SolarWinds NPM pros

Cons

"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it."

"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."

"It could be even more automated."

"It could be more stable."

"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver."

"Google Stackdriver is a stable product, but there is some lagging we cannot stop."

"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."

"The logging functionality could be better."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) cons

"I faced a problem with GRE over IPSec tunnel traffic, it was not showing Netflow enabled traffic and without IPSec tunnel traffic Netflow was working fine."

"If we go for the NT license, then we have to purchase the NPM, Network Performance Monitor; that is a dependency."

"Technical support hasn't been the most reliable. Sometimes it takes them a long time to respond or resolve the issues."

"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."

"Customer service: I rate technical support everywhere from poor to great."

"Wireless monitoring needs improvement. We need to get a little bit more information from the thin clients or wireless LAN controllers than we already do."

"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."

"Overall speed of the software could be improved as it is incredibly slow at times."

More SolarWinds NPM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."

"The cost could be lower."

"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."

"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."

"I find that the pricing is acceptable."

"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."

"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."

"We pay a yearly licensing fee."

"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."

"Some solutions are open source and free."

"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."

More SolarWinds NPM pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Construction Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	60
Midsize Enterprise	33
Large Enterprise	87

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Stackdriver?

As Ops Suite, is a google product which effectively comes at zero setup cost, in order to manage your on-premises logs on onsite, it involves negligible cost for using ops agent and it also include...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

From my point of view, SolarWind is the best tool.

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 3% of the time

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Nagios XI vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 3% of the time

DX Spectrum vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 3% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 3% of the time

ManageEngine OpManager vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 3% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM

Compared 2% of the time

More SolarWinds NPM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

October 2026

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) report

Download Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds NPM

September 2026

Download SolarWinds NPM product report

Also Known As

Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer

Overview

Google Cloud's operations suite is a comprehensive toolset offering multi-cloud support, insights into performance, uptime, health, and scalable logging for seamless cloud operations.

This suite by Google Cloud provides robust features for organizations managing workloads on GCP and AWS. It offers real-time logging and monitoring, aiding in efficient troubleshooting and performance analysis. With automatic monitoring, statistical insights for Kubernetes and VPNs, and the ability to manage logs, it helps in optimizing technology changes and supports risk management. Despite needs for better APM, cost clarity, migration tools, and enhanced documentation, companies benefit from its capabilities in tracking errors and analyzing metrics in execution environments.

What are the key features of Google Cloud's operations suite?

Multi-cloud Integration: Seamless support for GCP and AWS environments.
Performance Visibility: Insights into system health and uptime.
Scalable Logging: Efficient log management and export capabilities.
User-friendly Interface: Intuitive interaction for easy monitoring configuration.

What benefits and ROI can be expected from Google Cloud's operations suite?

Enhanced Monitoring: Real-time updates facilitate swift response to performance issues.
Efficient Troubleshooting: Detailed log analysis helps resolve code issues quickly.
Performance Analysis: Dashboards support engineering load testing and SLA monitoring.

Industries utilizing Google Cloud's operations suite find it invaluable for optimizing cloud operations, especially in sectors involving extensive database requests and workload execution. Java and Python teams leverage its logging and alert capabilities for improved error tracking and metrics analysis, crucial for maintaining high-performance standards in tech-driven environments.

Google

SolarWinds NPM is a network performance monitoring tool offering a user-friendly interface with customizable dashboards. It provides real-time tracking of device health, latency, and bandwidth utilization, supporting diverse integration and scalability needs.

SolarWinds NPM's robust features include real-time monitoring of network performance and efficient tracking of device health, latency, and bandwidth utilization. The tool is appreciated for its ease of deployment, scalability, and support for integration with other tools. Features like SNMP monitoring, NetPath, and comprehensive reporting enhance its diagnostic capabilities and network visibility. However, users identify areas for improvement such as real-time analytics, advanced customization options, and enhanced scalability for larger enterprises. Better customer support, improved integrations, and security measures are also desired.

What are the key features of SolarWinds NPM?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies navigation and operation.
Customizable Dashboards: Allows personalized data views.
Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant updates on network performance.
Strong Alerting Capabilities: Offers immediate notifications for issues.
Scalability: Supports growth with ease.
Integration: Works smoothly with other tools for comprehensive monitoring.
SNMP Monitoring: Tracks device stats effectively.
NetPath: Helps visualize network paths and performance.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Improved Network Visibility: Enables proactive issue resolution.
Enhanced Diagnostics: Facilitates quicker troubleshooting.
Real-Time Performance Data: Supports informed decision-making.
Ease of Deployment: Reduces setup time and complexity.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Ensures network stability and reliability.
Custom Integration: Adapts to existing IT environments.

In enterprise environments, SolarWinds NPM is deployed to monitor network health and device status, sending alerts for any issues. It provides visibility into network performance, tracking bandwidth utilization and server metrics efficiently. Its applications span from monitoring routers, switches, and firewalls to supporting infrastructure monitoring across industries.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. SolarWinds NPM

September 2026

Free Report: Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. SolarWinds NPM

Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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