Auvik

Auvik, maker of cloud-based network management software, is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and was founded in 2011. It has over 150 employees, with over $17 million in sales (USD) annually. It has additional offices in the UK, and in Australia to serve its over 2,000 customers globally, and protect over 54k networks. Its notable client list includes Cisco, Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Palo Alto Networks.

Auvik's pricing may be opaque but at least there's a free trial (Image credit: Auvik)

Plans and pricing

When we head to the pricing tab to navigate the company website, it is disappointing to see that we need to exchange our company credentials- including a business email- in order to get the pricing info. While we do appreciate the offer of a two week free trial to test out the product, we can’t say we are enthused to follow Auvik’s plan to “Get started for free. Pick a plan later.” After all, what is the point in falling in love with a plan, only to subsequently learn that it does not fit into our budget?

That out of the way, at least Auvik gives some insight into what the offerings are, with a two tier plan structure. Both plans have unlimited users, an unlimited number of network sites, and unlimited support. We also did not spot any a la carte additional options. 

The lower plan is called Essentials and features network monitoring with alerts, remote management, and global dashboards among the detailed features. The better plan is designated as Performance, which carries forward the features of the lower plan, and adds the notable features of Geo IP tracking, forensic traffic data, and application visibility powered by machine learning.

Detect issues, know what's on your network and manage it over the cloud with Auvik (Image credit: Auvik)

Features

Auvik is designed to monitor your network for events, and provide alerts that can be used preconfigured (with 50 available), or even customized for your needs. The included alerts are based on the best practices from the industry, and range from informational to emergencies. With the custom options available, administrators can also select the frequency to receive the alert.

With Auvik in action, much better control of the network can be performed. Administrators gain access to real time network metrics with data on topology, config history, and device performance, that not only gives a snapshot on current performance, but also can be compared as this data gets stored for years back for comparison purposes. Insights then get revealed, such as if the poor performance is due to the IDP or the internal network, or if the SSL VPN has reached the license limit by tracking the number of simultaneous VPN licenses in use.

Support

We often get curious when there is a direct phone number prominently featured for sales, but not for support, and unfortunately this is the case for Auvik. While the sales toll free number is right at the top of most of the web pages, as hard as we tried we did not locate an equivalent number for support.

There is a login for support for this product, but while Google or Microsoft credentials can be used, as we did not have a subscription, it did not proceed. Therefore, we cannot comment on the availability of chat, or a direct email when issues arise. There is a support portal available as seen in the image above via the “Send a Message” button.

Auvik also provides an extensive knowledgebase with plenty of useful articles (Image credit: Auvik)

We were able to find an extensive Knowledge Base. It is well organized by category, and can also be searched. There are well done articles, such as “How do I launch a tunnel connection?” in the Remote Access subsection of the Using Auvik category of articles.

Final verdict

Auvik is a cloud based, network management solution that can bring industry best practices to your enterprise network. We highlight the simplified two tier pricing plan without a plethora of add ons, the 50 preconfigured alerts that can be further customized, the free trial, and the unlimited support. Before signing up though, realize that the pricing is opaque and requires contact with the company and exchanging business credentials, that there is no direct phone or email support that we could find, and that the upper tier plan is needed for network flow monitoring and analytics. While this solution is certainly worthy of consideration, we would like to see some of the drawbacks improved so we could give it a higher recommendation.

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