SolarWinds AppOptics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

SolarWinds AppOptics vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download the complete report

Helped 844,944 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

SolarWinds AppOptics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

48th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (50th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

John Yuko

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.

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

"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."

"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."

"The product has a great dashboard."

"The reporting of the solution is very good."

"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."

"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."

"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."

"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."

"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"The solution should be more user-friendly."

"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."

"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."

"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."

"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."

"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring."

"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."

"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."

"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."

"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."

"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."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."

"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."

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

"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."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

61%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

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 do you like most about SolarWinds AppOptics?

The product has a great dashboard.

What needs improvement with SolarWinds AppOptics?

The solution should be more user-friendly.

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds AppOptics?

I used the solution for monitoring servers and network equipment.

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?

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.

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Comparisons

Compared 29% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 13% of the time

New Relic vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 13% of the time

Zenoss Cloud vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 11% of the time

DX Performance Management vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 11% of the time

More SolarWinds AppOptics 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

SCOM vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 2% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Download SolarWinds AppOptics product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Also Known As

AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

AppOptics is a SaaS-based simple, powerful and affordable Infrastructure & Application monitoring for custom on-premises, cloud, and hybrid systems.

Your business runs on applications, and when they go down or run slowly, it can impact the business in lost productivity, customers, or revenue. To add to the complexity, your IT environment is changing, and workloads can be spread across data centers, and cloud resources. You need to monitor the availability and performance of applications and infrastructure, regardless of where they are, so you can identify potential issues early and address them before they impact users

SolarWinds

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

TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

SolarWinds AppOptics vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor