Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Microsoft and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.8, while SolarWinds is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.4. Microsoft holds a 7.1% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Azure Monitor

Read 54 Azure Monitor reviews

13,842 Views
12,446 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

3,510 Views
2,527 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Azure Monitor compete in the server and application monitoring category. SolarWinds has an upper hand in pricing and customer support, while Azure Monitor is preferred for its integration and advanced features.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers comprehensive monitoring, robust alerting capabilities, and easy configuration. Azure Monitor provides advanced analytics, scalability, and seamless integration with other Azure services.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could enhance scalability and simplify reporting. Azure Monitor could improve its intuitive setup processes and integration documentation. SolarWinds needs better support for large-scale deployments, and Azure Monitor could benefit from improved initial setup support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor has a straightforward on-premises deployment model and responsive customer service. Azure Monitor offers cloud-based deployment, but its customer service is sometimes perceived as less proactive.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is considered cost-effective with a positive ROI due to robust features at a reasonable price. Azure Monitor's pricing is higher but offers substantial ROI through its advanced functionalities and integration with Azure services.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (5th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (10th), Active Directory Management (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 7.1%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid

Snr. Infrastructure Architect at LogicEra

Monthly and weekly resource monitoring has improved efficiency

Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs. I can get the runtime logs alone, yet if Azure Monitor can independently add one gigabyte, two gigabytes, or five gigabytes at least to log storage, I can fix the logs without syncing with Log Analytics Workspace and Sentinel. If they do that, and if they can integrate a little pricing adjustment, it will be profitable for the Microsoft tool.

Read full review

Subhajit Nag

Senior Process Associate at Tata Consultancy Services

The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow

SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Log analytics and log queries are the most valuable features of Azure Monitor."

"The solution's most valuable features are its ease of use and support for multiple environments"

"I can conclude reports for the monthly, weekly, and peak time of the resources."

"The most valuable feature is that it's stable. It hasn't crossed any thresholds."

"For me, the best feature is the log analysis with Azure Monitor's Log Analytics. Without being able to analyze the logs of all the activities that affect the performance of a machine, your monitoring effectiveness will be severely limited."

"It allows you to set thresholds on the metrics and receive alerts."

"It is a robust, stable product."

"Some good integration capabilities are present in the tool."

More Azure Monitor pros

"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements. The threshold gets configured automatically, so it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."

"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."

"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."

"Identifying the problem statement is easy."

"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."

"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."

"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"If I contact the First Line Support, they seem disconnected and lack technical information."

"This solution could be improved with more out-of-the-box functionalities and artificial intelligence to complete event correlation."

"The solution's monitoring feature has limitations for analyzing multiple metrics."

"I believe Azure Monitor is already a top-notch solution with excellent functionality and there is not much I would suggest for improvement. However, there is one limitation that certain features require payment, even for testing purposes, which can be a challenge."

"We cannot use AI services with the solution."

"Although it's not always the case, the price can sometimes get expensive. This depends on a number of factors, such as how many services you are trying to integrate with Azure Monitor and how much storage they're consuming each month (for example, how large are the log files?)."

"The product should integrate well with other tools or clouds in the future, as it is one of the areas where the product currently has certain shortcomings."

"In my opinion, they should improve the overall user experience, especially when it comes to indexing and searching collective logs."

More Azure Monitor cons

"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."

"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."

"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."

"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."

"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."

"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Besides standard licensing fees the customer needs to additionally pay based on the ingested data size"

"The solution’s pricing depends on how much logs it collects."

"It's a costly solution"

"Since we are using the basic set, it is more cost-effective compared to other third-party APM solutions."

"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."

"Azure Monitor is a competitively priced solution."

"Regarding pricing, Azure Monitor is free with Azure license, so there are no additional costs for using it."

"Its cost depends on the ingestion of the logs. It could go anywhere. For an out-of-the-box platform such as FrameFlow, you pay pretty much a fixed price and you get what you get, whereas, with something like Azure Monitor, you pay by the ingestion charge, so you can have one client who pays hardly anything for the same alerts, and another client pays loads and loads."

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."

"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

36%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?

Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...

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What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

See all answers

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

The initial cost is quite high, but the renewal cost is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

May 2025

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

April 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure.

With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts.

Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.

Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility.

Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

Microsoft

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

April 2025

Free Report: Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

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