SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk APM comparison

SolarWinds and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #23 with an average rating of 7.4, while Splunk is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.1. SolarWinds holds a 1.9% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 40 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

4,571 Views
2,977 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Splunk APM

Read 17 Splunk APM reviews

1,166 Views
795 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Splunk APM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Splunk APM and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor are both prominent tools for application performance monitoring. Splunk APM is praised for its data analytics capabilities, while SolarWinds is favored for its comprehensive server and application management features.

Features: Splunk APM receives high marks for its AI-driven analytics, real-time anomaly detection, and ability to handle complex data. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor stands out with its breadth of monitoring capabilities, including hardware health, server performance, and wide-ranging system monitoring.

Room for Improvement: Reviews suggest that Splunk APM could improve its on-boarding process, user training resources, and integration with third-party tools. SolarWinds users point out the need for enhancements in its alert management system, more intuitive setup process, and better usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk APM is commended for its robust cloud deployment options and responsive support team, though it has a steep learning curve. SolarWinds is preferred for its straightforward installation and effective customer service, despite occasional complexities in advanced setups.

Pricing and ROI: Users find Splunk APM's pricing model to be on the higher side but value its powerful analytics. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is seen as more affordable with quicker ROI due to its all-encompassing monitoring features.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk APM Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk APM

October 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 813,161 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

23rd

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (14th)

Splunk APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

13th

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2024, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk APM is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Subhajit Nag

Senior Process Associate at Tata Consultancy Services

May 19, 2022

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

Lakshmi Padaga

Java Developer at U.S. Bank

Aug 28, 2024

Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection

Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

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

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."

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

"Identifying the problem statement is easy."

"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."

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

"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"

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

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"It is a good tool. It allows you to set alerts for application and infrastructure monitoring, and it allows you to create dashboards."

"Detectors are a powerful feature."

"The features are pretty much ready out of the box."

"The volume it handles is very good, including the number of metrics, the volume number of traces, and more."

"The company has many systems that the customer is paying to access. Splunk APM issued via AppDynamics helps find problems in the feed. It reduces the risk of supervising all the devices. I can supervise the flow and simulate the conditions of the repository across several dashboards to show what's happening at the moment."

"Once configured correctly, the analysis reporting the Splunk APM provides is better than that of the other APM tools."

"The product's deployment phase is good and very easy because it is done with OpenTelemetry for most of the parts."

"The most beneficial aspect of Slunk APM is the ATM, which is the map displaying the inbound and outbound relationships of the microservices, as well as the traffic between these dependencies. This feature provides us with valuable insights and helps us understand the interactions between different microservices."

More Splunk APM pros

Cons

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."

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

"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."

"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."

"The licensing model is expensive. We need to monitor the amount of data ingested because the cost is based on the data collected."

"There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience."

"They can improve the flow system and the keyword language. It has predefined keywords, but they can be improved."

"The monitoring of workloads when using SignalFx could be improved."

"The cardinality is pretty low."

"Splunk isn't an ideal tool for application performance management due to the extensive setup required."

"Splunk APM should include a better correlation between resources and infrastructure monitoring."

More Splunk APM cons

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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"The product is expensive."

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

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."

"The price of Slunk APM is less than some of its competitors."

"Splunk APM is expensive."

"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."

"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."

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

813,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

44%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Retailer

11%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 product is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when...

See all answers

What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SignalFx?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

We use Splunk in APM to monitor our applications. So, we integrated it into our systems to enhance our monitoring and observing capabilities, especially for our microservices. So, we have used Splu...

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 18% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 18% of the time

AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 14% of the time

Prometheus vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Observe vs Splunk APM

Compared 31% of the time

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) vs Splunk APM

Compared 16% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk APM

Compared 9% of the time

Monte Carlo vs Splunk APM

Compared 9% of the time

Sentry vs Splunk APM

Compared 8% of the time

More Splunk APM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

September 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk APM

September 2024

Download Splunk APM product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

Learn More

SolarWinds

Splunk

Overview

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.

Splunk APM is a comprehensive application performance monitoring solution that provides real-time insights into the performance and availability of your applications.

It offers end-to-end visibility across the entire application stack, from the front-end user experience to the back-end infrastructure. With Splunk APM, you can proactively identify and resolve performance issues, optimize application performance, and ensure a seamless user experience.

Splunk APM leverages machine learning and AI-powered analytics to automatically detect anomalies and provide actionable insights. The product supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks, making it suitable for both monolithic and microservices-based architectures. It also integrates seamlessly with other Splunk products, allowing you to correlate APM data with logs, metrics, and other operational data for a holistic view of your application environment.

With its intuitive interface and powerful features, Splunk APM empowers developers, operations teams, and business stakeholders to deliver high-performing applications and drive better business outcomes.

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk APM

October 2024

Free Report: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk APM

Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk APM and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

DOWNLOAD NOW

813,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk APM report.

See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability 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.