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BMC TrueSight vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 7, 2025

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
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…
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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 is outstanding; still is the most interesting part of the product."
"Helix Innovation Studio is a very good feature. It allows us to develop our own enterprise applications and make them available for the customers."
"Its event management capabilities are very open and flexible. I haven't seen a use case scenario with a customer that we couldn't actually solve the problem for, so it's really good. There are some interesting things that happen in an enterprise network (things that people don't normally expect), and the event management product is very flexible. You can solve problems as far as your imagination can go with it."
"We're using native monitoring capabilities for all our server hardware, for visibility for applications, for URLs, for webpage response and accuracy, and for monitoring network throughput in a lot of particular instances. We're using lightweight protocols for pinging, for DNS, for LDAP."
"What I like best about BMC TrueSight Operations Management is that it allows you to do granular monitoring and improves VM load."
"The most valuable feature of BMC TrueSight Operations Management is the dashboard presentation server."
"We have one application, which is fairly large. In the past, we had Level 1 and 2 NOC support teams who were responsible for watching dashboards. When they saw an issue in the application, they would call Level 2 or 3 support and escalate the call, if necessary. Now, through the use of this product, we have been able to reduce the headcount by five people, as we are able to eliminate the eyes on the glass. We no longer have people watching the dashboard. We have events which are processed automatically through the system and get to the right people. We had six people in L1s, and now have one. So, we reduced five out of six headcount, which is pretty significant."
"The most valuable features of the solution are alert management, alert generation, and event management."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"Management Console - Managing service to each server enrolled in the Solarwinds is much easier. Using a web base console, you can control your service much convenient way. There is no need to login remotely. It save a lot of time and effort."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
 

Cons

"BMC's online documentation is often incorrect or incomplete."
"The solution's support service could be better."
"Cost is an issue with BMC TrueSight Operations Management."
"Specifically around application performance monitoring, BMC is definitely not the market leader. The Dynatraces, the New Relics and the like are more of the market leaders in that space. I would like to see them grow that space a little bit more aggressively. It has not really been their bread and butter."
"In our company, we faced some issues with the solution’s application endpoint, IP, and the physical location of the transactions."
"The dashboards are not good. We have a limited dashboard, and if we want better dashboards, we need to use other solutions like Grafana because the TrueSight dashboards are not good."
"I would really like to see out-of-the-box support for monitoring uninterruptible power supplies."
"We have a unique use case because BMC typically sells this solution into enterprises that are deploying it within their IT, versus to a managed services provider like us where we're supporting thousands of customers. Multi-tenancy and the scalability have been challenges along the way, as we've grown... If anything could have gone better as we were ramping this up and adding a lot of volume to it, I would say it's the scalability. That would be one thing that could be improved."
"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."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."
"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
 

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..."
"It is a large, complex product. So, there is a commitment of manpower to deploy it, as it is not a cheap product."
"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."
"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 tool is moderately expensive."
"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."
"Use conservative figures. In terms of hardware, monitored servers and also effort. The product is not cheap. But as with other products, you get what you pay for."
"Pricing is very high."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"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."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The product is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
6%
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.
What needs improvement with BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
There are some complexities with deployment that could be improved in BMC TrueSight.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

ProactiveNet, TrueSight Operations Management
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ensono, Transamerica, Boston Scientific, Park Place Technologies, inContact, TD Ameritrade, PNC Bank
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.