Microsoft Configuration Manager vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Zabbix comparison

Microsoft Configuration Man...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Configuration Manager, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, and Zabbix based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, ServiceNow, Oracle and others in Server Monitoring.

To learn more, read our detailed Server Monitoring Report (Updated: March 2025).

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Server Monitoring

March 2025

Helped 849,190 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 6.0%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 28.2%, up from 23.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Monitoring

Featured Reviews

MikeNelson2

IT Infrastructure Coordinator at NSW Government

Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements

While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow

Subhajit Nag

Senior Process Associate at Tata Consultancy Services

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.

Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes

ASM Naushad Alam

Network Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have not yet purchased the commercial version so have a lack of technical ability. We do not yet fully know the key points or key features of the solution. We just use what we use along with WhatsUp Gold. Based on our use only, stability is rated a seven out of ten.

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the scalability."

"We are happy with the collaboration of SCCM with Patch My PC, which allows us to do patch work."

"This solution captures all the devices in our infrastructure."

"Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is valuable in keeping our systems updated. We are able to send updates to all the systems. Additionally, the Intune integration is helpful."

"It's helped us solve problems surrounding patching, installing, and reporting different patches, etc., on the virtual machines."

"Microsoft Configuration Manager gives different tools in one solution."

"The cloud account management is a valuable feature."

"The product is suitable for our size, handling 800 devices."

"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."

"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."

"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."

"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."

"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."

"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."

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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"The solution is quite mature and very stable."

"The features I found most valuable are the user interface and a wide range of network devices that are easy to configure."

"The flexible licensing model is one of the solution's most valuable aspects. It really allows for great flexibility for companies."

"We have found that Zabbix is more easy to use than other applications."

"It meets my organizational needs. It's pretty easy to use."

"Simple network monitoring that is easy to install and manage."

"Like other common Linux distributions, some of the most valuable features of this solution are the ease of use and deployment. It's simple and has a lot of packages and a lot of software."

"The most valuable feature is network traffic monitoring."

More Zabbix pros

Cons

"They should improve their anti-malware policies like the SCEP policies. For instance, you can't have different policies for different servers, there is only one policy in all the servers, and everything is covered under that. For example, say you want to scan one group of servers on Saturday, and then you want to scan another group of servers on Sunday, you can't do that. You have to scan all your servers, a regular scan or a full scan, on the same day and at the same time. That's definitely one thing they need to resolve. In the next release, it would actually be nice if they included Apple products. It will also help if you can use Intune again. Their compliance reporting feature could also be better. They can maybe work a bit on that for patching now. It would be better if SCCM came with the functions of Right Click Tools built-in. If SCCM would have all those functions already built-in, we won't have to go and spend $5,000, just as an add-in from another company to get those functions."

"I'm looking for a single solution for all discovery needs. It fulfills about 40% of the requirements, and I'd like to see the other 60% so that I don't have to keep doing this."

"The availability of technical support could improve."

"It does seem a bit buggy from time to time."

"They need to improve the support for the Mac operating system."

"In terms of the monitoring, the timeframe it takes to actually report back on the compliance of a device after it has been patched is a bit too long."

"A lot of experience is needed in terms of troubleshooting, as this is one of the most difficult tasks in MECM. We were seven people in a group and I was the only one that had the patience to do the troubleshooting at times."

"The solution can be improved with the addition of a mobile device manager."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager cons

"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"

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

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

"Mapping interactions between systems."

"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."

"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."

"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"The documentation could be improved."

"In an upcoming release, there should be automated reports which we are currently doing manually. For example, if we collect a report file every day and want to send it to a moderator for review. We are expecting this feature to come out soon but it would be valuable to have now."

"The main problem with Zabbix is that you have to spend time writing templates for all of the products that you have."

"The graphical user interface could be customized a little bit more, and also the dashboard could be more friendly."

"There are not too much documentation or manuals. We found the tutorials very easy to understand but do not go deep enough in the use of Zabbix. We need more manuals, proper use, documentation, etc."

"Zabbix technical support is sold separately."

"There are a lot of areas for improvement, specifically in the dashboards and reports functionalities."

"The GUI could be more intuitive. Also, we'd like streaming telemetry. Zabbix might have this feature, but I haven't seen it yet. It took us a long time to get started because the documentation isn't very descriptive. We had to go through various sources like YouTube and forums to get this solution working."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is negotiable with Microsoft, depending upon which of their packages you choose."

"When you compare this solution with other tools in the market you might actually find a lot of variation in the pricing and that's why people opt for the other tools rather than Microsoft tools."

"The price is competitive and reasonable."

"The price of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is expensive."

"Pricing and licensing are a downside of SCCM. It's expensive. I'd have to confirm this, but I think they changed the licensing to core-based instead of socket-based. It's not cheap, because you have to buy the software, you have to buy SQL. Another thing we learned from talking to Microsoft is that they provide you a license for SQL if you run it on the same box as the primary server. If you run it outside that box, you have to buy SQL. Microsoft does recommend you running it on the same box because of performance. But then, in order to run SQL, SCCM, and everything on the same box, you better have some resources. It's an expensive solution. There's no doubt about it."

"Microsoft provides a steep price for their enterprise products, but they offer very competitive pricing for their legacy customers."

"Its licensing is quite complicated because we are getting the license not only for SCCM but for the full Microsoft package. We don't need to pay for a separate license. We need to have one license that includes everything we need, such as Windows, Microsoft 365, SCCM, encryption, and so on. So, we don't have a specific price for it. Perhaps, it is good that it includes the full suite of licensing of Microsoft. It is expensive, but we are getting a lot of features."

"There is an annual license needed to use the solution."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pricing and cost advice

"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."

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

"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."

"The price is too high."

"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 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."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"It is freeware. We still use the free version of Zabbix."

"This is an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."

"Zabbix and Grafana are both open source products, we only needed to go to their website and download the application and we began to use them. The solutions are free."

"My manager is very happy because it doesn't cost anything."

"It’s free of cost."

"It is free, which allows us to reduce costs."

"We were searching for an open source solution and Zabbix fit the bill because it is free and open source under the GPL license."

"Zabbix is an open-source tool, and it's free to use."

More Zabbix pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

39%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

33%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...

How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?

ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. Wh...

What do you like most about SCCM?

One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages effi...

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?

There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and App...

What do you like most about Zabbix?

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?

The cost is minimal. It is literally free.

What needs improvement with Zabbix?

For me, Zabbix is very straightforward. I cannot think of any improvements needed. It's a very mature product. The on...

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Comparisons

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

NetXMS vs Zabbix

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Microsoft Configuration Manager

April 2025

Download Microsoft Configuration Manager product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Download Zabbix product report

March 2025

Also Known As

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Configuration Manager helps IT manage PCs and servers, keeping software up-to-date, setting configuration and security policies, and monitoring system status while giving employees access to corporate applications on the devices that they choose. When Configuration Manager is integrated with Microsoft Intune, you can manage corporate-connected PCs and Macs along with cloud-based mobile devices running Windows, iOS, and Android, all from a single management console.

New features of Configuration Manager, such as the support of Windows 10 in-place upgrade, co-management with Microsoft Intune, Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise Servicing Dashboard, integration with Windows Update for Business, and more make deploying and managing Windows easier than ever before.

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

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.

It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.

With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.