SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Stackify comparison

SolarWinds and Stackify are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.3, while Stackify is ranked #62. SolarWinds holds a 1.7% mindshare in APM, compared to Stackify’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 71% of Stackify users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

3,793 Views
2,563 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Stackify

Read 6 Stackify reviews

498 Views
351 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Stackify

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Stackify and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor are two prominent solutions in monitoring server and application performance. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor has the upper hand with its feature-rich offering, making it a worthwhile investment for users.

Features: Stackify offers seamless integration, efficient performance monitoring capabilities, and intuitive dashboards. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive monitoring features, in-depth insights, and broad compatibility with various environments.

Room for Improvement: Stackify could enhance its troubleshooting tools, offer more detailed analytics, and improve user interface customization. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve its complexity, ease of navigation, and manage the steep learning curve.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Stackify is praised for its quick, hassle-free deployment, and responsive customer service. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor often requires a more intricate setup and seasoned IT knowledge, and though effective, its customer support is perceived as less approachable.

Pricing and ROI: Stackify is noted for its competitive pricing and good ROI, especially for small to medium-sized enterprises. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, despite higher setup costs, delivers substantial ROI through its extensive features and reliability, making it a favored choice for larger-scale implementations.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Stackify Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Stackify

April 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

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)

Stackify

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

62nd

Average Rating

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (57th), Log Management (63rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stackify is 0.2%, down from 0.2% 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

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.

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Moses Arigbede

Head of DevOps at Partsimony

Easy to set up with great custom dashboards but needs to improve non-.NET infrastructure

They need to improve non-.NET infrastructure. We always had difficulty when it comes to reporting or metrics that come from Linux operating systems and Docker containers. For anything that runs within the Unix environment, we always had problems with them, however, if it was a document-based application, Stackify was 100%, it gave everything. Now, the aggregation agent, the metric agent for Stackify for Linux, collects everything. When I say everything, I mean, everything. It collects so much information that we now started to term it as useless data as all that ingestion will just come in and overwhelm your log retention limit for the month and really this spike up your cost at the end of the month. You'll need to do a lot in order to train down the data coming in from all your Linux environments, to get to what you really need, which actually takes some time as well. I would like to be able to see metrics about individual running containers on the host machines. Stackify has not really gotten that right, as far as I'm concerned. Netdata has done a better job and New Relic has also done a better job. They need to improve on that. We need to be able to see the individual resource usage of containers running within a particular host.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."

"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"The deployment is very fast."

"The filter feature on Stackify is one of the features I found valuable. It's awesome. When I want to get the application logs, the solution gives me many filters. For example, if I want to get logs from my test environment, the option is there for me to select the environment from Stackify, and you can also select the particular application, and you'll see the information you need there. The filter feature alone and the fact that Stackify offers a lot of different filters is what I like the most about the solution because I've used other tools with the filter feature, but the filtering was very difficult, versus Stackify that has good filtering. On Stackify, you can filter the information by the last one hour, or the last four hours, and you can also select the date range and specify the timestamp, then the solution will give you the information based on the date range you specified. Another feature I found valuable on Stackify is its rating feature because it tells you how your application is faring. For example, a rating of A means excellent, while a rating of F means very bad, or that your application is not doing well at all. The ratings are from A to F. I also like that Stackify helps you in terms of load management because the solution gives you information on overutilized resources. These are the most valuable features of the solution."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"The performance dashboard and the accurate level of details are beneficial."

Cons

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

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

"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."

"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."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"I've not used Stackify for a while, and I'm currently using a solution now that's not as good as Stackify. Among the solutions I've been using so far, Stackify has been one of the best for me, but there's always room for improvement. For example, I don't know if it's just me, but when I try to get the log from Stackify, sometimes it doesn't appear in real-time. It takes a few minutes before the logs appear. When I redeploy my solution and the application starts, I don't see the logs immediately, and it would take two to three minutes before I see the logs. I don't know if other customers have a similar experience. It's the wait time for the logs to appear that's a concern for me, could be improved, and is what the Stackify team should be looking into. In terms of any additional feature that I'd like added to the solution, I'm not sure if Stackify has a way to export logs out. I've been trying to do it. On the solution, you can click on a spiral-like icon and it shows you the entire error, and I'd prefer an export button that would let me download the error and save that into a text file, for example, so it'll be available on my local machine for me to reference it, especially because the log keeps going and as you're using the solution, the system keeps pushing messages on to Stackify, so if I'm looking at a particular error at 12:05 PM, for example, by the time I go back to my system and would like to revisit the error at 12:25 PM, on Stackify, the logs would have gone past that level and I won't see it again which makes it difficult. When you now go back to that timestamp, you don't tend to see it immediately, but if the solution had an export feature for me to save that particular error information on my local machine for reference at a later time, I won't have to go back to Stackify. I just go to that log, specifically to that particular export that I've received on my local machine. I can get it and review it, and it would be easier that way versus me going back to Stackify to find that particular error and request that particular information."

"I would like to be able to see metrics about individual running containers on the host machines."

"It should be easily scalable and configurable in different instances."

"The search feature could be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

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

"The price is too high."

"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."

"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."

"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The price is variable. It depends on how much data we have received in that particular month. Usually, it goes up to $2,000, or, at times, $3,000 USD per month."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

40%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

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.

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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.

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What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...

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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

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

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Dynatrace vs Stackify

Compared 43% of the time

New Relic vs Stackify

Compared 40% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Stackify

Compared 17% of the time

More Stackify Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

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Buyer's Guide

Stackify

March 2025

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Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

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.

SolarWinds

Stackify is an application performance management (APM) solution that combines application performance monitoring with logs, errors, and reporting. It is a SaaS solution that is developer-focused. Users can quickly scan, identify, and repair issues with applications. Stackify APM offers valuable tools, such as Prefix and Retrace, which help to make it a comprehensive and valuable APM solution. Stackify is now part of the Netreo family of IT Infrastructure Management (ITIM), which is considered one of the fastest-growing IT organizations in the marketplace today.

Stackify Prefix

Stackify Prefix helps developers write better code, faster. The tool examines, tests, and approves code as it is being written. Almost every new application is code-perfect, negating the need for exhausting troubleshooting and frustrating time-consuming code review.

Prefix is able to discover poor-performing SQL queries, ORM queries, potential bottlenecks, and concealed exceptions prior to moving the application into production.

Prefix offers Summary Dashboards, intuitive suggestions, integrated logs, and distributed tracing. Distributed tracing expands visibility to cloud-native applications, microservices, and containers and can also provide additional transparency to cache services, web services, third-party services, and more. Users are able to easily move from logs to traces and back.

This valuable tool ensures developers are able to consistently release the best code possible in the least amount of time, while improving performance, productivity, and profitability.

Prefix is a very robust and easy-to-use tool. It can be used seamlessly with Linux, macOS, and Windows. Prefix integrates well with numerous languages, such as Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, Node.js, .Net, and .Net Core.

Stackify Retrace

Stackify Retrace is a user-friendly, trusted APM solution used in more than fifty countries worldwide. Users know that Retrace is able to ensure they can complete quicker, more efficient application development and consistently enhance overall application performance by suggesting important intuitive suggestions users need.

This solution is beneficial to both developers (Dev) and operations (Ops) personnel to learn to improve code and immediately finetune issues by:

Establishing effortless collaboration between Dev and Ops personnel via an easy-to-use GUI dashboard.
Delivering complete transparency of all stages of the application development process, from pre-development to production.
Utilizing performance protocols, such as error tracking, application logs, and code profiling, in real time in order to thoroughly understand how long a code will take to complete various tasks.
Improving overall efficiency and productivity by immediately discovering and repairing application issues.

Retrace Real User Monitoring (RUM) uses both front-end and back-end monitoring to give users a complete picture of what is going on with the applications. This intuitive dashboard displays performance with a complete breakdown of resource usage and integrates the server-side and client traces into one engaging, user-friendly, extensive view.

Retrace is an out-of-the-box solution that works seamlessly with Java stacks, PHP, Node.js, Ruby, Python, .Net, and .Net Core. It is also compatible with many of today’s popular frameworks, such as AWS, Azure, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Redis, and SQL Server. Additionally, Retrace will work effectively with many cloud providers, containers, and languages, and offers excellent and easy integration with today's favorite tools such as Jira, Slack, Jenkins, and more.

Stackify

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

MyRacePass, ClearSale, Newitts, Carbonite, Boston Software, Children's International, Starkwood Media Group, Fewzion

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Stackify

April 2025

Free Report: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Stackify

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