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SolarWinds AppOptics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
56th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (62nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (44th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (5th), Active Directory Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.0%
SolarWinds AppOptics0.8%
Other98.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd
Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions
I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"AppNeta provides a range of products, all based around intelligent network testing algorithms."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"It's a solid application."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"Customer service is exceptional, as they are very much in tune with our service needs and are always in contact for both enhancement requests and overall satisfaction."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
"Identifying the problem statement is easy."
"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."
"This feature from Solarwinds SAM helped us to monitor and alert whenever the SSL cert is going to expire on the server to avoid any downtime of the services running on the server specially on ADFS platform where we have Video conference, Webex, Office 365 and single sign-on services."
"The recommendations are a life saver."
"Once we got our IT inventory organized and aligned with the business, we were able to leverage our Orion Platform to provide more than just a reactive-based monitoring service to the business."
"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."
"From a customers point of view, they get a good return on investment because they are not paying a lot of money when you compare to what they used to pay for IBM and other large vendors."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its real-time node monitoring and Help Desk's feedback."
 

Cons

"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"We had a stability issue with a portion of the installation (Sequencer) when it was first introduced and have chosen not to install that specific function."
"The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard."
"Because of its inability to monitor mobile solutions, I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"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."
"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."
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"AppInsight needs to include more applications, the current list is very limited."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"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."
"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."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"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."
"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."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
13%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

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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 ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...
 

Also Known As

AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds AppOptics vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
912,801 professionals have used our research since 2012.