PingPlotter vs. SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
PingPlotter
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
PingPlotter is a graphical traceroute and ping tool that visualizes network performance in a way that makes identifying the source of problems quicker and easier for everyone from online gamers and video streamers to VoIP admins and IT pros. Features for remote deployment, network monitoring, scripting, and a web interface are included along with several additional capabilities.
$0
per user
SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds® Engineer’s Toolset (ETS) helps users monitor and troubleshoot a network with over 60 tools for network management. ETS allows users to monitor and receive alerts in real time on network availability and health, and perform network diagnostics for faster troubleshooting and resolution of complex network issues. With ETS users can deploy an array of network discovery tools including Port Scanner, Switch Port Mapper or advanced Subnet Calculator, manage Cisco® devices with specialized…
$1,585
Per Instance
Pricing
PingPlotterSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
Editions & Modules
PingPlotter Free
$0.00
per user
PingPlotter Free
$0.00
per user
PingPlotter Standard
$6.99
per user per month
PingPlotter Professional
$29.00
per user per month
PingPlotter Standard
$39.99
per user
PingPlotter Professional
$349.00
per user
One Time Price
$1,585
Per Instance
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PingPlotterSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PingPlotterSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
Features
PingPlotterSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
Network Performance Monitoring
Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of Product A and Product B
PingPlotter
8.2
Ratings
0% above category average
SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
-
Ratings
Automated network device discovery9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Network monitoring8.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Baseline threshold calculation6.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Alerts9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable reports6.80 Ratings00 Ratings
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PingPlotterSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
Small Businesses
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Medium-sized Companies
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Intermapper
Intermapper
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
PingPlotterSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
Likelihood to Recommend
9.6
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.4
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
PingPlotterSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
Likelihood to Recommend
The best scenario and best results are seen when the path does not reuse the same device for the "next hop". It is less well suited in situations where the path is being tricked by the re-use of devices for the next interface. This is seen required in many networks where the proper type of connection is not on an end device and the core device is used to provide a fiber to copper sort of "pass-through" connection.
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[SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset is] a great tool for monitoring database servers, highly recommended. The very good thing is that it keeps the history for two weeks, and you can see the time slice for all the server activities. Helps a lot to identify the memory and CPU bottlenecks, research blocking issues and kill the sessions, if necessary.
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Pros
  • Monitor traffic in network
  • Measure stops when contacting network locations such as websites
  • Measures the lag and latency it takes to contact network locations
  • Gives you both induvidual measurements as well as good oversight
  • identifies when network lag or disconnect occurs
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  • Debugging Tools
  • Saves Time for basic checks
  • Ping, Telnet, SSH right from the console and hence easy user management from console itself
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Cons
  • Its a little confusing to see which targets are currently running pings and which ones are displayed in the plots.
  • Starting and stopping pings requires a right click and that would be better with a play/pause button I think.
  • Ability to drag and drop the graphs to reorder them.
  • more columns to show which targets are running and which are displayed. Currently this is done with symbols so you cant sort by just the running targets for example I've found.
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  • The unifying component that is intended to be the initial interface to the tools seems clunky. I prefer to start the tools individually rather than using it.
  • The port scanner could use some improvements to make it easier to use.
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Usability
I installed it and it just started working. I realized I could then tweak it to show what I needed but didn't have to spend a long time configuring it before use, editing YAML files etc. Maybe that's fine for a network professional, but I only need this software if something goes wrong, and then need it to work quickly out of the box.
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Very easy to use and intuitive. Just be careful with the WAN Killer...it does what it says.
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Support Rating
I have not had much contact with the PingPlotter support, only one time have I went to them and it was a positive experience. The questions I had were answered quickly and professionally. I have no issue with the experience I had with the Support team. This was from before and after the purchase of the product.
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Our organization uses it regularly. It is reliable, and we keep finding new uses for it
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Alternatives Considered
PingPlotter has better visualizations and a stronger ability to capture historical data than other tools I've used. This makes it easier to find the root cause by looking back in the log data to find where latency or packet loss occurred.
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These tools complement the Engineer's Toolset. They are excellent at detecting most issues and at keeping the network monitored and protected. However, when it comes time to dig into an issue, especially a hard to fix intermittent issue, these products lack the granularity of monitoring needed for these types of issues. Having said that the toolset is not made to do full time enterprise level monitoring. With these tools and the toolset I am able to have a more complete view of the network and deliver higher levels of service and quicker responses to issues.
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Return on Investment
  • Great ROI, troubleshooting time has been reduced by 90%
  • Network Discoveries used to take 2 to 3 hours and were inconsistent - now it is a matter of minutes
  • lacks integration into our MSP toolkit, and we now use it as a stand alone product
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  • Spend less time downloading free buggy tools
  • All the tools in one spot, so you don't have to look around for tools
  • Get to the solution sooner
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ScreenShots

PingPlotter Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset Screenshots

Screenshot of Perform network stress tests with Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer. You don’t need to use real traffic for studying network activities, like testing traffic and load balancing. Instead, deploy Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer to help interactively test connections and adjust the IP traffic generated to achieve the desired network load based on your requirements.Screenshot of Quickly troubleshoot your network with enhanced ping capabilities and packet route tracing, among other network bandwidth usage and monitoring tools included in ETS.Screenshot of Using ETS, you can run scans to gain insight into how routers, hubs switches, and other devices are configured by analyzing SNMP queries and viewing MIB attributes. ETS is designed to help you more easily understand whether your network and ports are using appropriate settings.Screenshot of Config Compare, a part of ETS, is built to compare the running configuration of a Cisco router with the startup configuration. With the Cisco configuration compare tool, you can easily detect the changes made to the network, switch, and router configurations that are not committed to non-volatile memory (NVRAM).Screenshot of Manage your IP network from discovery to address tracking. Discover subnets on a seed router and scan the subnet or a range of IP addresses, generate a list of subnets along with their mask, size, range, and broadcast address and actively monitor subnets to identify and track which IP addresses are in use on your network.