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 7.8, and holds a 4.2% mindshare in the category. SolarWinds is ranked #9 in SM , with an average rating of 7.3, 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

7,245 Views
4,886 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

1,122 Views
747 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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.

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

Buyer's Guide

Network Monitoring Software

March 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 845,040 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:

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 (8th), 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 (16th), Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (12th)

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 4.2%, down 5.0% 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

"PRTG is simple to manage. First, you can create a template for a device, then apply it to hundreds of similar devices. That's a great advantage."

"It has made our infrastructure more reliable."

"Technical support has been very helpful so far."

"PRTG gives us true visibility of the downtime of particular circuit functions. So if a circuit is up but not routing traffic, I will know with this tool. I can write a customized script for a sensor to detect specific things."

"Network Discovery is a feature that our customers like a lot."

"The Slack integration is fantastic, and I've actually found it to be very useful recently."

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

"The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."

"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."

"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 the network devices' performance monitor is the best."

"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."

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

"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 most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

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

"I would like to see them take their graphing tools and convert them into a collector so that we can point telemetry to them"

"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."

"The scalability of this solution could improve as well as the automated provisioning of the infrastructure."

"PRTG Network Monitor can improve Layer 2 and Layer 3 network maps and the GUI more user-friendly. Additionally, they should bundle the features so I can monitor everything on one particular device."

"Its price can be better. Its price is a problem for us because it is in dollars, and there is a high conversion rate. In terms of new features, it can have BGP monitoring. It should also have a dashboard and maps editor."

"In a very few cases, customers want more detailed reports, which we cannot meet."

"PRTG's documentation could be improved."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

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

"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"Mapping interactions between systems."

"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."

"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."

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

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We bought a license for 4000 sensors."

"We pay for a perpetual license and we have a support fee."

"It is about £4,500 for the first year, then about another 15 to 20 percent annually after that. So, we are looking at about £1000 running costs a year. When you think about how much an outage costs per minute, it's negligible."

"It's an annual license that is based on the number of endpoints that we're tracking and using."

"We've got the unlimited package... I believe it was around the £15,000 per year mark."

"The price of PRTG is reasonable. PRTG's competitors like SolarWinds and ManageEngine charge more for the same functionality."

"While I am not the person who deals with pricing, I would say that we pay around 1000 pounds a year."

"When you buy PRTG, everything comes in one bundle. Licensing is very easy."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."

"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 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."

"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."

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

LibreNMS vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

PRTG Enterprise Monitor vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

More PRTG Network Monitor Competitors

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 12% of the time

Prometheus Group vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

Elastic Observability 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

Network Monitoring Software

March 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: March 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.

We monitor all Network Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.