AlertSite vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Why PeerSpot?

SmartBear and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SmartBear is ranked #41 with an average rating of 8.0, while SolarWinds is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.0. SmartBear holds a 0.6% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of SmartBear users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

AlertSite

Read 8 AlertSite reviews

2,593 Views
2,308 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

8,842 Views
5,040 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

AlertSite

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

AlertSite and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor compete in the monitoring solutions category. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor has the upper hand with advanced features justifying its higher price.

Features: AlertSite is known for its ease of use, comprehensive monitoring capabilities, and straightforward deployment. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers an extensive range of features, detailed insights, and advanced monitoring options.

Room for Improvement: AlertSite could improve its reporting capabilities, dashboard customization, and scalability. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could simplify its navigation, enhance scalability, and reduce deployment complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AlertSite is praised for its easy deployment and responsive customer service. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, while effective, has a more complex deployment but similarly well-regarded customer service.

Pricing and ROI: AlertSite is considered more cost-effective with better initial setup costs and quicker ROI. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, despite higher initial costs, is seen as a worthwhile investment due to its advanced features.

To learn more, read our detailed AlertSite vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AlertSite vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

September 2026

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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

AlertSite

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

41st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

API Monitoring Software (3rd)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (5th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AlertSite is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.0%
AlertSite	0.6%
Other	98.4%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

RituRaj

SDE 2 at Virtusa

Proactive monitoring has improved uptime and now detects performance issues before users suffer

The user interface and configuration experience could be more modern and streamlined in some areas, especially when managing a large number of monitors or creating complex monitoring workflows. Better navigation, integration, and more intuitive customizations for the dashboard and alerts would improve the overall operational experience. Dashboard customizations and reporting flexibility represent another improvement area. More advanced visualization options and an easier way to create tailored operational dashboards would help the team analyze trends and share insights more effectively. The integration ecosystem could also be expanded further, especially for modern DevOps and cloud-native workflows. Stronger native integrations with collaboration tools, observability platforms, and CI/CD pipelines would make it easier to fit into the evolving engineering environment. It would also help to have more automation-friendly capabilities such as easier API-based configurations, management, and infrastructure as code support for monitor provisioning. That would make large-scale monitoring management more efficient for the DevOps team. From a support perspective, the experience has been generally stable, but faster turnaround times for more complex technical issues and more detailed troubleshooting guidance would be beneficial. Improved documentation and more advanced implementation best practices for enterprise-scale deployment would also help the team onboard and optimize the platform more effectively. AlertSite would benefit from continued modernizations in a few areas. The biggest improvement would be a more intuitive and modern user experience for configuring monitoring, managing alerts, and navigating dashboards, especially in larger environments with many monitored services. Stronger integrations with modern cloud-native DevOps ecosystems including better automation support, richer APIs, and easy integration with CI/CD pipelines and observability platforms would also be helpful. Another improvement area is intelligent alert management. Features such as smart alert correlations, anomaly detections, and noise reduction would help operations teams focus on the most critical incidents more effectively.

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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.

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 alerting capabilities of AlertSite were really helpful."

"AlertSite has helped improve issue detection, reduce downtime risk, and support faster troubleshooting in the production environment."

"I highly recommend AlertSite to other users."

"The best feature of AlertSite is that it shows you a visual graph and also sends you notifications about errors, so you get immediate notifications about errors which means that your support team can start taking steps and more quickly make sure the site is up and that customer experience isn't interrupted in terms of using your system and your products. AlertSite is a very good tool. It's user-friendly, and you can see everything on the dashboard. Configuring it is also easy."

"The return on investment of this solution is well witnessed in our organization because of the integration and various capabilities that it offers to interact with the upstream or downstream systems."

"This solution has numerous advantages; it's extremely simple to configure, and either digital monitors or single-URL monitors are simple to configure and build."

"My company went with AlertSite because as a tool, it's fast, easy to maintain, and provides great support."

"I found multiple features in AlertSite that I like. One is data monitoring history, for example, a history of the blackouts and the data. Sometimes, there's a glitch in the application that AlertSite can capture, and the tool notifies you about that glitch. It also identifies issues that could happen in the future. AlertSite is also a fast tool that you can use to monitor on-premise servers, internal applications, and even global applications. The data is available on a single UI in AlertSite, so there's no need to monitor and click on different applications or URLs. I also love that the tool is quite user-friendly, apart from being fast."

More AlertSite pros

"SolarWinds is one of the best products on the market and if they eventually support the IBM Mainframe then it will be perfect."

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

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

"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"

"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."

"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 is scalable."

"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"I could use a few changes to the user interface."

"It is not compatible with all of the product platforms that we use."

"AlertSite requires improvements related to security, even at the enterprise level."

"AlertSite sometimes triggers false alerts or fake alerts, which needs to be rectified. When we see an alert and go ahead and run certain tests on it, the test always passes. However, on the main screen, it shows up as critical. Therefore, the false alert needs to be fixed."

"One area that needs improvement in AlertSite is the slow UI. I'm using the classic UI because it's quite user-friendly, or in human-readable format, but it's a little slow. It takes time to load all the monitors, so if that could be sped up, that would be helpful. The AlertSite support team also needs improvement in terms of availability. Most of the agents in the team aren't available 24 x 7, so if there's something you need to discuss, you need to tell the support team ahead of time to schedule it. Multiple times, when a case comes up during weekends or whenever my team is doing an update, support needs improvement, availability-wise. I use AlertSite for synthetic monitoring, so whatever is available right now is okay, but if I want to request a new feature on a website, currently, the UI refreshes automatically. I would like to have the option on AlertSite to configure that manually. The UI auto-updates every few minutes, so if I can control that manually, that would be helpful."

"Additionally, support from AlertSite is not at an enterprise level since it is not offered 24/7."

"I would like the ability to get more data points with regard to some of the unique requirements that we have."

"What needs improvement in AlertSite is the documentation, particularly the lack of documentation. If there's a specific activity you want to do, you can't even find information on how to do it, so you have to contact the AlertSite support team to assist you, and only then would the issue be resolved. At the moment, it's not easy to find or get full documentation on how to deal with different issues. You always have to go back to AlertSite support and get help. The documentation for AlertSite could be improved and it's what I'd like to see in the next release of the tool because at the moment, the documentation isn't complete, so you'll have to contact support, but contacting support isn't an issue because the team responds to you quickly."

More AlertSite cons

"We are looking into other solutions because it is just too expensive to keep scaling."

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

"I believe that SolarWinds should spend more effort in reporting."

"SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern."

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

"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"

"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased the license once and had the option of selecting the number of user licenses."

"My company pays to use AlertSite, but I'm unsure of the exact costs because it depends on how many monitors you have."

"The cost is high."

"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."

"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 solution is overpriced in terms of application management."

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."

"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

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

20%

Comms Service Provider

17%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

13%

University

Financial Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	8

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

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlertSite?

The experience with the pricing and licensing of AlertSite was generally reasonable for an enterprise monitoring solution, especially considering the value it provides for proactive monitoring and ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AlertSite?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for AlertSite?

AlertSite is primarily used for applications and website monitoring to ensure uptime and performance availability for customer-facing services and APIs. The main use cases include monitoring web ap...

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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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...

See all answers

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AlertSite

October 2026

Download AlertSite product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

October 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

AlertSite offers efficient transaction monitoring with easy script creation through DejaClick Recorder. It supports multi-factor authentication, ensuring security. Analytical capabilities and rapid alerts enhance response times, making it ideal for enterprise-level monitoring.

AlertSite prioritizes transaction-based monitoring with DejaClick Recorder, allowing users to create scripts without coding. Its user-friendly dashboard and fast error notifications support time-sensitive issue resolution. Location features and data monitoring history are beneficial for tracking and analysis. While AlertSite excels in ease of use and speed, improvements are needed in support, generative AI, and documentation. Security weaknesses and slow UI issues are noted, requiring attention.

What are the key features of AlertSite?

Script Creation: DejaClick Recorder enables simple script creation without coding.
Security: Supports multi-factor authentication and OTP delivery.
Analytics: User-friendly dashboard for data analysis.
Alerts: Immediate notifications trigger under a minute.
Location Tracking: Comprehensive monitoring history and geographical data.

What benefits or ROI can users expect from using AlertSite?

Quick Response: Fast alerts improve time-sensitive resolution.
Cost Efficiency: Rapid issue resolution reduces downtime costs.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies data analysis and monitoring.
Scalability: Ideal for enterprise-level operations and cloud application monitoring.

Organizations implement AlertSite primarily for monitoring complex transactions, application performance, and server reliability. Its deployment on on-premises servers gives enhanced control, while features like DejaClick assist in monitoring cloud applications, user logins, and system uptime across sectors such as retail kiosks and IT infrastructure.

SmartBear

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive server, application, and infrastructure monitoring, focusing on integration, application dependency, and network insights through user-friendly interfaces and detailed dashboards.

With AppStack and AppInsight support, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers service management, detailed resource dashboards, and integration capabilities. It monitors hardware metrics and performance parameters, facilitating database and network insights for cloud and virtual environments. Robust alerting, predictive analytics, and capacity planning ensure efficient management of server health and application performance.

What are the key features?

Integration: Seamlessly connects with existing tools.
AppStack: Provides a holistic view of applications.
AppInsight: Supports widely-used applications.
SNMP Polling: Efficient network data collection.
Diagnostics: Real-time troubleshooting.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailored monitoring views.

What benefits should users expect?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Extends from servers to databases.
Transparent Control: Enhances visibility into performance metrics.
User-Friendly: Simplifies proactive monitoring with alerts.
Predictive Features: Supports capacity and trend planning.

Industries implement SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to enhance server utilization reporting, network configuration, and AV equipment performance tracking. They benefit from monitoring critical services across diverse deployment models, improving management efficiency and decision-making.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

JetBlue, Payless ShoeSource, Hilton Inc., StubHub, Symantec, Newegg, Sapient, AstraZeneca, Dell, Quest Diagnostics

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

AlertSite vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

September 2026

Free Report: AlertSite vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

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