Introducing SimpleIPAM: IP Management Without the Complexity
We built SimpleIPAM to solve a problem we kept seeing: network engineers managing IP addresses in Excel spreadsheets that are always out of date.
The Problem
If you've managed network infrastructure for any length of time, you know this spreadsheet. It has 50+ tabs, one for each site or VLAN. The formulas break randomly. Someone edits it during a change window, and suddenly nobody knows what's assigned where. And it's always out of sync with your actual firewall configs.
Enterprise IPAM tools exist — SolarWinds, Infoblox, BlueCat — but they come with significant overhead:
- $10,000+ annual licensing
- Network scanning agents to deploy
- Credentials to manage and rotate
- Firewall rules to configure
- Security review processes
- 3-6 month deployment timelines
For small and mid-sized networks, this is overkill. Most teams end up sticking with the spreadsheet because the alternative is too complex and expensive.
A Different Approach
SimpleIPAM takes a fundamentally different approach: instead of scanning your network, we parse your firewall configuration.
Your firewall config already contains everything you need to know about your IP address space:
- Address objects (hosts, subnets, ranges)
- Address groups and their members
- Interface IP assignments
- VIP/NAT mappings
- Static routing tables
- Security zones
We extract all of this in seconds and present it in a visual, searchable format. No scanning. No credentials. No agents.
How It Works
- Upload your config: Drag and drop your FortiGate or Palo Alto configuration file. Or paste CSV/Excel data if that's what you have.
- Instant parsing: We extract every address object, group, interface, VIP, route, and zone from your config.
- Visual exploration: Browse your entire IP hierarchy. Click any subnet to see utilization. Search for specific addresses. Spot conflicts.
- Export results: Download everything as CSV for further analysis or documentation.
The entire process takes 5-10 seconds. No deployment, no infrastructure, no credentials.
What We Support Today
- FortiGate: Full support for address objects, address groups, interfaces, VIPs, zones, and static routes
- Palo Alto: XML parsing for address objects, groups, NAT rules, interfaces, zones, and routing
- Excel/CSV: Import IP address data from spreadsheets (yes, we know you have them)
Coming soon: Cisco IOS/NX-OS router and switch configs, expanding beyond just firewalls to give you complete visibility across your network infrastructure.
Why No Scanning?
This deserves its own post (which we'll publish soon), but here's the short version:
Security: No scanning means no network credentials to manage, no firewall rules to configure, and zero attack surface from the tool itself. You control what you upload.
Speed: Config parsing takes seconds. Network scanning takes minutes to hours, especially for large networks.
Compliance: Need to demo the tool but can't give us network access? Redact sensitive data from your config and upload. Perfect for security-conscious environments.
Try It Now
SimpleIPAM is live and free to use in preview mode. Upload a config and see what you think:
We're working toward a paid tier with features like saved configs, change tracking, multi-site topology, and team collaboration. The core parsing and visualization will always be free.
We'd Love Your Feedback
We built SimpleIPAM to solve our own IP management problems, but we want to make sure it solves yours too.
Questions we're asking:
- What firewall/network vendors should we support next?
- What features would make you ditch the spreadsheet?
- What's missing from the current implementation?
Send us feedback using the feedback button in the header, or email hello [at] simpleipam [dot] com.
Tagged: launch, product, ipam