Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download the complete report

Helped 844,944 peers since 2012

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

4th

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

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 7.5%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.7%, up 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

"The dashboard allows us to easily track various metrics and quickly understand the overall health of our system."

"Azure Monitor gives us the observability to check everything that we have in the cloud."

"The feature that I found most valuable in Azure Monitor is its monitoring abilities. With Azure Monitor, you are able to monitor all of your cloud resources across multiple subscriptions in one dashboard and create solution-specific alerts that can trigger an email to the team responsible for that specific solution."

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

"In the last company where I worked about a year ago, it looked very simple."

"The overall product rating is nine out of ten."

"Azure Monitor's best features are its graphs and charts, the different visibility options, and reporting."

"The security and support are good."

More Azure Monitor pros

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

"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."

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

"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."

"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."

"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."

"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"

"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"When something goes down, we want the option to have automation in place to get it back up again as quickly as possible."

"The solution should have cross-connection or cross-communication between tech partners."

"We cannot use AI services with the solution."

"The biggest one is probably just the user interface. There could be more advanced logging at the database level. They can also improve their query builder to allow you to search for things better, but I last used it about a year ago. They might have already changed a ton of things in the newer versions."

"The onboarding process of certain assets and the overall UI can be improved in Azure Monitor"

"The query builder could be better. In comparison to other monitoring tools, in order to use Azure Monitor, your engineers need to have KQL experience. If they don't, it's not intuitive as a system."

"Azure Monitor could improve the visualization aspect and integrate better with other third-party services."

"The length of latency is terrible and needs to be improved."

More Azure Monitor cons

"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."

"The technical support team's response time could be improved."

"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."

"Mapping interactions between systems."

"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."

"Azure Monitor is a low-priced solution, which is why it would work best on small-scale projects."

"The licensing is a monthly fee."

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

"The Azure Insight is a little bit expensive."

"There is a monthly fee for the alerts triggered and the data stored."

"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."

"The solution is a pay-as-you-go consumption service and is the least expensive in the market."

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."

"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

"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."

"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."

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

"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

45%

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...

What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

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

What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

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

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

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.

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement. Monitoring these services is more complex compared to others.

Dynatrace vs Azure Monitor

Comparisons

Datadog vs Azure Monitor

Compared 22% of the time

Sentry vs Azure Monitor

Compared 14% of the time

Compared 13% of the time

Grafana vs Azure Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

Elastic Observability vs Azure Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More Azure Monitor Competitors

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 19% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 12% of the time

Prometheus Group vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Azure Monitor

Download Azure Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor