# 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to solve a problem we kept seeing: network engineers managing IP addresses in Excel spreadsheets that are always out of date.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**

1. **Upload your config:** Drag and drop your FortiGate or Palo Alto configuration file. Or paste CSV/Excel data if that's what you have.
    
2. **Instant parsing:** We extract every address object, group, interface, VIP, route, and zone from your config.
    
3. **Visual exploration:** Browse your entire IP hierarchy. Click any subnet to see utilization. Search for specific addresses. Spot conflicts.
    
4. **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:

[**Try SimpleIPAM Free**](https://www.simpleipam.com/analyze)

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.