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 #28 with an average rating of 9.0, while SolarWinds is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.6. BMC Helix holds a 1.0% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.2% 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

3,620 Views
1,810 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

4,008 Views
2,605 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

BMC TrueSight

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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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.

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

Buyer's Guide

BMC TrueSight vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

December 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

BMC TrueSight

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

28th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Event Monitoring (8th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Cloud Monitoring Software (25th), AIOps (5th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of BMC TrueSight is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.2%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.2%
BMC TrueSight	1.0%
Other	97.8%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

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…

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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

"It provides common administration, and a Single Sign-On Platform with RBAC, which eases the cross launch between multiple tools"

"The tool is flexible enough to be customized based on customer requirements."

"The most valuable features of the solution are alert management, alert generation, and event management."

"What I like best about BMC TrueSight Operations Management is that it allows you to do granular monitoring and improves VM load."

"It is a stable solution."

"The noise reduction for ticketing works much better than we have seen in a lot of other companies."

"It works irrespective of the operating system we’re running."

"It is very helpful to be able to apply rule-based routing to alerts."

More BMC TrueSight pros

"Identifying the problem statement is easy."

"This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure."

"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."

"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."

"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."

"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."

"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."

"I have found the visibility into server health with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor very beneficial, which we use on a daily basis."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"The pricing could be better."

"The dashboard and performance graphs should include a way to automatically schedule and export reports."

"Reporting would be an area for improvement in TrueSight... We have almost 800 customers today on TrueSight and just under 10,000 assets. We need to be able to give a customer some information. If the customer's product fails, they'll ask us, "Did it have a problem beforehand?" We have all those events and we know all the problems it had beforehand. We have to be able to give them access to that kind of reporting. That's an enhancement that we need."

"The UI for the end users could be improved and more flexible than it is now."

"In our company, we faced some issues with the solution’s application endpoint, IP, and the physical location of the transactions."

"The solution is a little obsolete."

"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."

"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."

More BMC TrueSight cons

"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."

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

"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."

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

"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"

"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."

"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."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is very high."

"Other products are more expensive than BMC TrueSight."

"Though I have no clue about the tool's actual price, I know that it is astronomical."

"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..."

"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."

"The solution is based on endpoints and knowledge models which can be costly."

"We pay license fees of between $150 and $200 per asset. There is an enterprise software license fee, and then you pay a percentage for your maintenance, and then Premier Support. For example, if you buy a two-year license for the product, then the maintenance fee is added to that for two years at X percent a year. Then there's a small fee on top of that for Premier Support..."

"We did a five-year, multimillion dollar deal."

More BMC TrueSight pricing and cost advice

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

Government

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	24

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

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

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs BMC TrueSight

Compared 8% of the time

BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps vs BMC TrueSight

Compared 5% of the time

Zabbix vs BMC TrueSight

Compared 4% of the time

ServiceNow IT Operations Management vs BMC TrueSight

Compared 4% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs BMC TrueSight

Compared 4% of the time

More BMC TrueSight Competitors

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Prometheus-AI Platform vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

BMC TrueSight

January 2026

Download BMC TrueSight product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

January 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download 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

December 2025

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