SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Zabbix comparison

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Zabbix and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor are robust monitoring tools used by businesses to oversee their IT infrastructure. SolarWinds often garners higher marks for feature-richness and ease of deployment, though Zabbix still has strong user support for its pricing and customization options.

Features: Zabbix is known for its deep customizations, scalability, and the ability to monitor a diverse range of devices. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor stands out for its comprehensive out-of-the-box capabilities, detailed insights, and advanced alerting options.

Room for Improvement: Zabbix users often mention that the initial setup can be challenging, and the learning curve is steep. Enhancements in documentation and more intuitive initial configurations are frequently suggested. SolarWinds users commonly point out the need for better licensing models, more cost-effective pricing tiers, and optimized system resource utilization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is frequently highlighted for its straightforward deployment process, which includes detailed guides and responsive customer support. Zabbix is generally reported to have a more complex setup process. Customer service experiences vary, with SolarWinds receiving more positive feedback for support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Zabbix, being open-source, offers substantial cost savings, which is a significant advantage for budget-conscious users. Despite this, the return on investment is perceived to be slower due to the time needed for configuration and optimization. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor users often view the higher price point as justified by the robust features and efficient performance, leading to quicker ROI for enterprises willing to invest in its comprehensive capabilities.

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

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Zabbix

December 2025

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Helped 881,176 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 Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

Ranking in Server Monitoring

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Active Directory Management (8th)

Zabbix

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

10th

Ranking in Server Monitoring

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

108

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.2%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 2.5%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Zabbix	2.5%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.2%
Other	96.3%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint

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.

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KamranBhatti

Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Helps reduce response time but has room to improve customization complexity

We are not working on simple standalone solutions like Kaspersky DDoS Protection or Hybrid Cloud Security. Once you understand Zabbix, then it is easy to customize those web pages and graphs for our customer use. It is fully automated to your requirements. Zabbix is working fine with no issues, and I am satisfied with it. We have combined Zabbix and SolarWinds. The integration works fine, and it is easy to integrate Zabbix with the IT environment. We were trying to purchase MDR (Managed Detection and Response), but we are not working on that. I don't have real experience with MDR. We are using Falcon software for that. We are working with Falcon Complete, not with Sandbox. We are not using Kaspersky for business or cloud protection. For that, we are using Zabbix CrowdStrike Falcon Complete solution. I have given this review an overall rating of 8.

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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

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

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."

"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."

"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 more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."

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

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."

"The solution is open-source, easy to manage, and user-friendly making it easy for anyone to use."

"It's a flexible solution."

"The solution's design has recently changed and it is visually pleasing with more color, for example, there is blue, black, and white."

"The product is very stable."

"We use it to monitor and manage our servers."

"The most valuable feature is the alert and alarm monitoring."

"The initial setup, while not simple, is easier than other products."

More Zabbix pros

Cons

"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."

"From an integration point of view, if you want to have a manager of manager kind of layer, that is currently lacking in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor."

"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."

"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."

"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."

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

"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."

"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"There are a lot of areas for improvement, specifically in the dashboards and reports functionalities."

"The main problem with Zabbix is that you have to spend time writing templates for all of the products that you have."

"The stability could be better."

"Zabbix isn't very good at automation just yet."

"I think the reporting part of Zabbix can be improved in terms of more user-friendly graphics to display the collected data. Many simple users who don't know how to use Zabbix properly might get confused by the reporting, although at the same time it is very versatile for my company."

"Its UI should be improved. They did some improvements in version 5, but it could benefit from some more work. Its integrations should also be improved. They've been active for one year, and they seem to have noticed that. It has new integrations, but it could benefit from more integrations. As far as I know, there is no model to push statistics, metrics, or events towards Zabbix. This type of API isn't yet there, whereas some other tools provide an API for this."

"In the next release, I'm hoping for features targeted towards larger users with more customizable options. Despite this, I think pre-canned reports that can be used straight out of the box would be beneficial rather than having to configure each report individually. Additionally, a deeper dive into software configurations on the machines would be useful, although I understand there may be challenges in implementing this due to scripting requirements. More documentation would also be appreciated."

"The reports are not great and should be improved."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"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."

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

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

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"This is an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."

"Zabbix and Grafana are both open source products, we only needed to go to their website and download the application and we began to use them. The solutions are free."

"It is free, which allows us to reduce costs."

"It is open source. If you want to have a subscription or official support, you can pay for it. They have different plans, which are not that expensive. The plans are based on per monitoring server, not per monitored equipment. So, it is not at all expensive, and you can also live without the support if you want a cheaper option."

"The product is an open source and free solution."

"Its licensing is fair. It seems to be much cheaper than others."

"This solution is open-source and free to use."

"This solution is completely open-source, so it is quite affordable."

More Zabbix 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.

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881,176 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	56
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	34

Questions from the Community

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?

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 do you like most about Zabbix?

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?

I think Zabbix is economical, whereas SolarWinds is expensive. SolarWinds has a lot of secure features, but Zabbix is providing everything free of cost. Zabbix is economical, and you can install it...

What needs improvement with Zabbix?

The potential and customization is a little difficult because you have to learn scripts. I think Zabbix needs to improve the customization better. At present, I am satisfied with the functionality ...

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Product Reports

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

January 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

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January 2026

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

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.

It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.

With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.

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