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BMC TrueSight vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

BMC Helix and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. BMC Helix is ranked #30 with an average rating of 8.5, while SolarWinds is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.6. BMC Helix holds a 1.0% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of BMC Helix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.
BMC TrueSight
Read 51 BMC TrueSight reviews
  • 3,880 Views
  • 1,940 Comparison Views
86% willing to recommend
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews
  • 4,410 Views
  • 2,778 Comparison Views
89% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 7, 2025

BMC TrueSight and SolarWinds SAM compete in the infrastructure and application monitoring category. BMC TrueSight holds the upper hand with its comprehensive integration capabilities and holistic views.

Features: BMC TrueSight provides comprehensive infrastructure and application health monitoring, offering a holistic view and broad integration with various technologies, including advanced event management for centralized alert handling. SolarWinds SAM distinguishes itself with ease of installation and immediate insights into server and application performance, focusing on user-friendly monitoring of services and applications.

Room for Improvement: BMC TrueSight could enhance its deployment processes, cloud monitoring capabilities, and intuitive reporting tools, as its complex architecture requires significant resources for management. SolarWinds should improve the integration of its modules and enhance scalability and dashboard flexibility to offer a seamless experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: TrueSight's deployment is complex, requiring significant resources and customization, while SolarWinds offers a more straightforward deployment. TrueSight's technical support is generally responsive but variable, and SolarWinds can improve its support response times and resource handling to better assist users.

Pricing and ROI: TrueSight's pricing is relatively high due to its extensive features and integrations, necessitating careful planning to manage licensing costs. SolarWinds offers competitive pricing for mid-sized organizations, making it more accessible. Both solutions provide substantial ROI through operational efficiencies, but SolarWinds is noted for better accessibility due to its pricing structure.

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To learn more, read our detailed BMC TrueSight vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: February 2026).
Buyer's Guide
BMC TrueSight vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
February 2026
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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

BMC TrueSight
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
30th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (8th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th), AIOps (8th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of BMC TrueSight is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.3%
BMC TrueSight1.0%
Other97.7%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
NikhilKalwint
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Has improved monitoring efficiency and supports fast issue resolution through responsive support and reliable automation
I work with BMC TrueSight and have been using it for eight-plus years BMC TrueSight brought a positive impact and benefits to our organization. The customization part is one of the advantages of the product, along with the monitoring capabilities. Automated root cause analysis and predictive…
Read full review
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
NikhilKalwint
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility
From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.
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 event management tool builds correlation logic and protection algorithms into a field of events that is valuable when a data center goes down."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The ability to pull hosts together to show what processes are running, so it can be used for change management."
"It has provided us with a single location to host all events to be viewed/monitored by our NOC. This has greatly helped them to streamline their processes."
"What I like best about BMC TrueSight Operations Management is that it allows you to do granular monitoring and improves VM load."
"Valuable features include wide support for monitoring, strong event management, service management capability, baselining (analytics) and easy to integrate other tools with it."
"The most valuable features are the rich reports, high performance, and the look and feel of the WebEx webpage are very good."
"The event management part of TrueSight Operations Management, in my experience, is probably the best in the market. You have endless flexibility. You can build your own rules, you have the MRL language, and you can implement any kind of logic on the alerts. It may be correlation, abstraction, or executing something as a result of the alerts. You have almost the whole range of options available for event management using the available customization."
More BMC TrueSight pros
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."
"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

"The solution should improve predicting events and flaws in service. It also needs to improve integration with other systems."
"The solution could improve its price."
"The pricing could be better."
"The knowledge modules could be more lightweight in size. At present, the installation packages can be quite large."
"There are some complexities with deployment that could be improved in BMC TrueSight."
"I would like to see a little more out-of-the-box event correlation and expanded AIOps type capabilities. Where you can train your artificial intelligence operations to be able to memorize an issue once you encounter one scenario, so if you encounter that same problem, you can get to the root cause very quickly."
"Cost is an issue with BMC TrueSight Operations Management."
"The one piece that I would love to see is a general-purpose, configurable agent which would be a framework that you can deploy on anything, whether it be Java or anything else. It would allow you to easily deploy it on a platform that they support."
More BMC TrueSight cons
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"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."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"From an integration point of view, if you want to have a manager of manager kind of layer, that is currently lacking in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor."
"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."
More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is all volume-driven. I think we were paying between $80 and $85 per license. That's per unit, for a perpetual license. You pay it one time and then, every year, you pay 20 percent of that for annual maintenance and support. But now that we've grown, we've purchased tens of thousands of licenses and the cost per license has gone down to something like less than $30..."
"Pricing is very high."
"The price of BMC TrueSight Operations Management is very high. If there was more flexibility with the sizing of the licensing it would be helpful, especially during the pandemic. We have wanted to expend but the licensing cost is too high."
"They have changed the licensing fees."
"Consider scalability very carefully: how much you want to monitor and what components are very important. Then, depending on these two things, filter out unwanted metrics or attributes. If you do a good job at filtering the data, then your licensing costs will be manageable."
"There is a big upfront cost when you buy the license, then there is annual maintenance. We look at, if I bought a license and paid for maintenance for five years, then average it out, what would be my monthly cost. We have had some of the competing tools come in around four dollars. This is coming in as a premium, which is why I don't have it deployed as I would like it. Therefore, we're in negotiations right now. If I can get it down to the four dollar range, I will triple my deployment in a year and a half."
"The only possible additional cost that I can mention, that you might not be aware of, is that it uses Oracle partitioning, if you use Oracle. There are Oracle partitioning fees that go with that."
"Other products are more expensive than BMC TrueSight."
More BMC TrueSight pricing and cost advice
"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 planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"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 think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"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 licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
The solution provides visibility to our infrastructure, how it is, the resources we are monitoring, and quick updates when it has any problems. We have integrated it with ServiceNow to open instances.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
BMC TrueSight licensing costs are on the more expensive side.
See all answers
What needs improvement with BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
There are some complexities with deployment that could be improved in BMC TrueSight.
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 is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...
See all answers
 

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
BMC TrueSight
January 2026
BMC TrueSight reportDownload BMC TrueSight product report
Buyer's Guide
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
January 2026
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reportDownload SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report
 

Also Known As

ProactiveNet, TrueSight Operations Management
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

BMC TrueSight offers extensive event management and seamless integration, providing comprehensive monitoring across varied infrastructures through its centralized console and Knowledge Modules.

BMC TrueSight delivers robust event management capabilities with seamless integration and comprehensive monitoring of diverse infrastructures. Its single console simplifies management, offering automated triage for standardized alerts, enhancing efficiency. Knowledge Modules support services from hardware to cloud, while proactive monitoring and capacity optimization enhance customization. It efficiently supports mixed environments by providing detailed insights and intelligently routing alerts to reduce noise. While improvements are needed in deployment, integration, AI, automation, reporting, and complexity reduction, it still meets diverse operational needs effectively.

What are BMC TrueSight's key features?

  • Robust Event Management: Offers efficient handling of events.
  • Seamless Integration: Integrates easily with existing systems.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring: Supports hardware to cloud infrastructure.
  • Centralized Console: Simplifies management processes.
  • Automated Triage: Standardizes alerts for better efficiency.
  • Proactive Monitoring: Improves forecasting and issue prevention.
  • Capacity Optimization: Efficiently manages resources.
  • Customizability: Tailors to specific service needs.

What benefits and ROI should users seek in BMC TrueSight?

  • Enhanced Proactive Management: Reduces downtime through efficient monitoring.
  • Improved Troubleshooting: Provides visibility into systems for quick issue resolution.
  • Effective Integration: Blends well with other tools and platforms.
  • Resource Efficiency: Optimizes use of infrastructure and servers.
  • Global Support: Facilitates operations across sectors worldwide.

BMC TrueSight is widely used in performance and availability monitoring for infrastructure and applications, supporting the monitoring of servers, databases, networks, and IT environments. It is implemented to improve management and reduce downtime, serving needs in data centers and cloud services. Organizations leverage it for event management, comprehensive data center monitoring, and cloud services, using its capabilities for alerting, ticket creation, troubleshooting, and compliance, enhancing operational efficiency globally.

BMC Helix

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

Ensono, Transamerica, Boston Scientific, Park Place Technologies, inContact, TD Ameritrade, PNC Bank
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Buyer's Guide
BMC TrueSight vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
February 2026
Free Report: BMC TrueSight vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
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