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SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Zabbix comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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
22nd
Ranking in Server Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Active Directory Management (14th)
Zabbix
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
9th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Subhajit Nag - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
ASM Naushad Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes
We have not yet purchased the commercial version so have a lack of technical ability. We do not yet fully know the key points or key features of the solution. We just use what we use along with WhatsUp Gold. Based on our use only, stability is rated a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."
"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."
"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."
"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."
"We are able to do problem determination on runaway processes."
"The solution's design has recently changed and it is visually pleasing with more color, for example, there is blue, black, and white."
"The most valuable feature is the support for monitoring Cisco switches."
"The overall functionality of Zabbix is very good. The monitoring of bank applications that Zabbix provides is great. The information is displayed on a dashboard that is easily viewed."
"It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."
"It provides high scalability, alerting, notification, templating, and end-to-end security."
"Zabbix has a roadmap and they are continuously and frequently adding new features."
"It not only provides the preconfigured item monitoring feature, but it is also easy to configure custom items."
 

Cons

"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"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."
"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."
"I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE."
"My company wanted to do an exercise command to access IT from Cameroon. They wanted to access an FSS to a second host with second equipment that was on another coast but it is not possible on Zabbix to do it. They want to directly access from the front-end of Zabbix to access a prompt in Zabbix to an access terminal. In the front-end, there is no way to do that. That would be an important improvement."
"An area for improvement would be the ease of doing aggregation from the value or different devices."
"Outside of the normal standard monitoring, I would like to extend patching, importing patching, and supporting patching for Windows Servers."
"The reporting features need improvement, especially detailed inventory reporting. Since it's freeware, reporting may not be a major focus."
"The stability could be better."
"Sometimes, the documentation is a little bit written in Estonia – a country in Europe. The language barrier and translation to English can sometimes make it difficult to understand what they're trying to get at. It's just a language thing."
"The networking monitor is not too easy to work with."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Zabbix is an open-source tool, and it's free to use."
"We pay the subscription for support by year."
"This is an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed."
"The product is an open source and free solution."
"Its licensing is fair. It seems to be much cheaper than others."
"There are no licenses."
"This is an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
46%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
39%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Zabbix?
The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
I'm using the free version of Zabbix, and I'd like to see more customization options, especially for setting trigger thresholds.
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Zabbix and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.