PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

The compared Paessler GmbH and SolarWinds solutions aren't in the same category. Paessler GmbH is ranked #5 in NMS , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 4.1% mindshare in the category. SolarWinds is ranked #10 in SM , with an average rating of 7.1, and holds a 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Paessler GmbH users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 101 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

7,647 Views
5,102 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

1,180 Views
785 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between PRTG Network Monitor and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software.

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Network Monitoring Software

March 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

PRTG Network Monitor

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

101

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (5th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (18th), Server Monitoring (10th), Active Directory Management (14th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. PRTG Network Monitor is designed for Network Monitoring Software and holds a mindshare of 4.1%, down 5.1% compared to last year.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, on the other hand, focuses on Server Monitoring, holds 2.6% mindshare, down 3.4% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software

Server Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Tochukwu Uzomba

Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited

Efficiently monitor networks across regions with seamless setup and robust feature set

PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational. It is an all-in-one monitoring solution without extra costs. For example, we set it up for an insurance company with branches across Africa. We are able to monitor from Lagos without installing anything in the branches, using the agentless feature. We just put in the IP address and the parameter, and we monitor from those ends. Additionally, all the sensors are very useful. Most people are interested in the bandwidth monitoring sensor to see what bandwidth the users are consuming. The pricing is affordable compared to SolarWinds.

Read full review

Subhajit Nag

Senior Process Associate at Tata Consultancy Services

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.

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

"Ability to create a dashboard inside software monitoring."

"PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up."

"The up-to-date graphs and the history are very good."

"Nice product with an easy interface to use and a large variety of sensors."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to span multiple technologies and multiple vendors."

"I can create my own program sensor. This means I can add extra monitoring capabilities into the already fundamentally strong foundation."

"PRTG is relatively intuitive and fairly straightforward. It has net flow monitoring and that works all right. I would describe it as a decent middle-of-the-road solution."

"PRTG Network Monitor is user-friendly and offers flexible alerting systems."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"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."

"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."

"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 is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."

"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."

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

"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"PRTG access works best from the web GUI. There are dedicated apps on Windows/Android/iOS, but they are slow and don’t work as well as the web GUI."

"Other monitoring tools that I have used are easier to use."

"Having a Unix implementation or Unix installation could be an improvement. Right now, it's based just on Windows, and that's a problem for some customers."

"I would like to see a more robust platform and a new dashboard. In addition, the code is good, but it needs improvement."

"The remote probes seem to be a little bit buggy at times. They just stop working or they say they can't communicate. What we tend to do to is install the remote app onto the servers that we use. That seems to clear it up."

"PRTG Network Monitor could improve by having a feature to allow uploading of preset standard network switch configurations and the ability to monitor the SLA configuration, such as uptime for the switches or internet connectivity. This would be very useful."

"The product could be improved by being cross-platform friendly."

"I have an issue with DFS, distributed file services... there isn't one by default. Taking into account the difference between DFS and DFSR as well would be great."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

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

"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."

"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."

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

"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."

"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."

"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."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One thing I like is that when you buy sensors, it's a perpetual license, so once you buy 2,000 sensors, you've got 2,000 sensors; it's not a recurring cost."

"I'm paying something like €1000 per year for the maintenance. I've got unlimited sensors."

"We are using the premium version of PRTG Network Monitor. The price of the solution is a bit higher than competitors but it is worth the extra money. However, it would be helpful if the price was lower."

"PRTG Network Monitor's price is a little high."

"There is a license to use PRTG Network Monitor and it is annually."

"The price of PRTG Network Monitor is reasonable for the features that the solution provides. They charge you per monitoring, not per node, it is per port that you need for a device."

"On a yearly basis, I believe it's between £1,200 and £1,500."

"Cost was a factor when selecting this solution, but it just did everything we wanted it to do."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."

"The price is too high."

"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."

"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."

"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."

"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."

"The product is expensive."

"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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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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

53%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

45%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it avoid the configuring the device in PRTG. It automatically discover the device an...

See all answers

What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?

The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?

The prices are very high for PRTG Network Monitor. That's why I'm using the free100 sensor license.

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?

Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement. Monitoring these services is more complex compared to others.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time

LibreNMS vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

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Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 19% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 19% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 13% of the time

Prometheus Group vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Grafana vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 3% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

March 2025

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

PRTG Network Monitor runs on a Windows machine within your network, collecting various statistics from the machines, software, and devices which you designate. PRTG comes with an easy-to-use web interface with point-and-click configuration. You can easily share data from it with non-technical colleagues and customers, including via live graphs and custom reports. This will let you plan for network expansion, see what applications are using most of your connection, and make sure that no one is hogging the entire network just to torrent videos.

To monitor a large IT environment, it's important to be able to scale PRTG up. Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes all the proven capabilities of PRTG Network Monitor, which are enhanced by exclusive ITOps Board for a service-oriented, central overview of multiple PRTG servers.

Paessler GmbH

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

Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

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March 2025

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