Cacti vs WhatsUp Gold
A side-by-side comparison on deployment model, data residency, licensing basis and security coverage. Structural facts are verifiable against vendor documentation; the scored dimensions are our assessment.
Cacti
The Cacti Group
6.7
Average across eight dimensions
- Deployment
- Self-hosted
- Licensing
- Free
- Time to value
- Medium
- Segment
- SMB / education
- G2
- —
WhatsUp Gold
Progress Software
7.1
Average across eight dimensions
- Deployment
- Self-hosted
- Licensing
- Points / per device
- Time to value
- Fast
- Segment
- SMB / mid-market
- G2
- 4.4 (388)
Score by dimension
| Dimension | CA | WU |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency control | 10 | 8.5 |
| Pricing value | 9.8 | 6 |
| Detection accuracy | 6 | 7 |
| Response speed | 5.5 | 7 |
| Ease of setup | 6 | 8 |
| Management UX | 5.5 | 7.5 |
| Integration depth | 6 | 7.5 |
| Security coverage | 4.5 | 5.5 |
What the comparison says
Both platforms are self-hosted, so deployment model is not what separates them here. Cacti is described as medium to reach value, against fast for WhatsUp Gold.
Cacti licenses on free, WhatsUp Gold on points / per device. Neither bills on data volume, so the comparison is about what each licence includes rather than how much you send it.
Cacti leads on residency and pricing value. WhatsUp Gold leads on fault detection, alerting speed, ease of setup, management UX, integrations and device coverage.
Cacti
- +Free, stable and extremely light on resources.
- +Long-established SNMP graphing with a large body of community templates.
- +Runs happily on modest hardware in small or isolated environments.
- −Graphing-first: alerting requires plugins and is not a core strength.
- −Interface and workflow are dated, and development pace is slow.
Best for Small or isolated networks needing long-term interface graphing at no cost.
Watch out Treat this as a graphing tool rather than a monitoring and alerting platform.
WhatsUp Gold
- +Straightforward setup with strong Layer 2 and Layer 3 discovery mapping.
- +Self-hosted with clear point-based licensing.
- +Good hybrid cloud and on-premises visibility in one view.
- −Windows server requirement limits it in Linux-first environments.
- −Point-based licensing and add-on modules make total cost harder to forecast.
Best for Windows-centric SMB and mid-market networks wanting commercial support.
Watch out Add up the modules you actually need. The base licence covers less than it appears.
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Data last verified 2026-10-06. nPro publishes this comparison. Where nPro appears as one of the platforms listed, its card is marked and its scores are our own assessment. Third-party review scores are sourced from public vendor profiles. Structural facts are verifiable against each vendor's documentation: deployment model, licensing basis and residency.