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Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
344
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (4th), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 12.4%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
The single-agent format is easy to use and accurately captures issues
We are currently migrating from AppDynamics to the solution. AppDynamics is moving toward a fast model and has a few issues with vendor support. It also requires multiple agents for each function. For example, a Java-related APM requires the installation of another agent. The solution is a bit higher priced than AppDynamics but is more user friendly and only requires one agent, so our application teams prefer it.
Subhajit Nag - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Transparency and visibility into application performance, errors, incidents, etc. helps to foster a collaborative environment."
"It is a robust solution that would help anyone get to the solution and resolution pretty fast.​"
"The user interface is like a type of dashboard. You can use the tool as an end user into the tool interface, which is good."
"Simplified the way to monitor a medium to big environment."
"Ease of problem detection and alerting, visual timeline, and user-sessions are some of the best features of Dynatrace."
"Our main use is to monitor our applications for any issues that might arise and use the data to assure that our performance trending is headed in the right direction."
"Automatic instrumentation of new services and technology without the need to install specific agents or modules."
"Dynatrace shows the customer path, common errors on desktop and mobile, and allows us to achieve faster page loads."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"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."
"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"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."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"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."
"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."
 

Cons

"With Linux or Windows, it automatically takes care of everything, so there's no need for you to do any manual config changes. But when it comes to AIX - because I implemented it two weeks back - you have to go back to kind of an AppMon approach, where you instrument agents for .NET applications. So if Dynatrace could make those changes and make it automated, that would be one of the biggest action items."
"Provide much better alignment between AppMon and Dynatrace."
"Its price, for sure, should be improved. Its price is quite high. Other than the price, there are always improvements to be made as technologies change. When we move into cloud-based technologies, Dynatrace will also have to adapt so that they can monitor those as well. It should have the adaptability to quickly transform to monitor those new technologies."
"It was difficult to initially use the solution, how to use it and where to navigate."
"The con of Dynatrace is that, at times, because it has so much information, it becomes difficult to see the root cause of your problem, and then you have to dig around to find the root cause."
"The integration with PagerDuty is currently broken on mobile."
"I have not had very positive experiences with tech support in the last year. I found them to be arrogant, rude, not solving my problems, and not interested in solving my problems."
"They seriously have to improve their Web UI dashboard configuration and SSL timeouts. Their Web UI dashboards are very slow."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"The technical support team's response time 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."
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think that the price is reasonable."
"Consider volume because that is where you will get the most benefit. Doing a point solution is not cost-effective."
"We asked for a three-year license, and the price was quite good."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace is excellent."
"Financially Dynatrace was a lot more expensive than AppDynamics."
"We license it for two environments, typically all of production and all of one lower environment, usually our staging environment. If there is a downside to Dynatrace, the only thing I can think of would be the cost. If it were cheaper, I'd have it in all my environments. I don't think they're charging more than it's worth, by any means. It's just that good software costs money."
"Dynatrace's pricing for their consumption units is rather arcane compared to some of the other tools, thus making forward-looking calculations based on capacity planning quite hard."
"Its licensing is complicated or not transparent."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"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."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"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."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
34%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
45%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.