Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Alluvio Aternity vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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

Alluvio Aternity
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
33rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Mobile APM (4th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (6th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Alluvio Aternity is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.3%
Alluvio Aternity0.5%
Other98.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Akhilesh Mishra - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at M.TECH Solutions India Pvt. Ltd.
Monitoring end-user activity has improved visibility into device and application performance
In my opinion, Riverbed can make Alluvio Aternity better by having the same Aternity agent help in security, such as antivirus or EDR, which would be useful, allowing customers to avoid having multiple agents installed on their endpoint machines. Deploying multiple agents can use the processor and utilize memory, so it's better to go with one agent. If one agent can do end-user activity monitoring and act as an EDR, then it would be better for the end-user, allowing easy avoidance of installing multiple agents on their machines.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, I would rate Aternity a 10 out of 10."
"The infrastructure data, especially the CPU and memory data, is per second, which makes it outstanding as compared to other solutions. Its licensing cost is very low for us."
"We have absolutely seen ROI; we were completely disconnected from what was really going on in our fleet, and this has really given us that visibility to understand problems and impact, scope them in our environment, and understand how the configuration changes we are making are affecting performance."
"The solution is highly stable and always available."
"It's one of those rare, genuine products that does what it says on the tin."
"The item we use the most and what upper management wants is the SLA reports. It's a good summary of how the applications are performing over time from month to month."
"There are many valuable features. If I had to single out one, it would be the UXI score. That's a proprietary Aternity score that tells you how good or bad the experience is for a user on that particular machine, for a particular app. It neatly encapsulates the pain of the user in a single score. It's very easy to find issues and then drill down further into those issues, based on that score."
"We have seen return on our investment with Aternity."
"It is scalable."
"The product integrates with Remedy."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."
"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."
"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."
"We choose the Solarwinds based on the simplication of managing the tool itself."
 

Cons

"Riverbed is costly in the Indian market; I would rate the pricing for Alluvio Aternity as a higher price."
"I would say the reporting capabilities of this product could use room for improvement. The standard reports that are given are not the greatest, and no custom ones can be created; however, I am told that the latest version of Aternity offers this!"
"Aternity does provide performance numbers, the data. However, it doesn't tell you what you can do about it."
"I would like to see more granular performance counters collected and viewable from the endpoints. That would be great."
"They have a lot of features built into the product, but it would be nice if they had some additional features that I think a lot of organizations would benefit from."
"The thing that I think most companies like ourselves would want would be an easier way to customize custom scripts."
"They've additionally added some great color coding, but they need to explain better and drive down further on the meanings of this workflow."
"I want more reporting around asset management, with greater flexibility and customization ability."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"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."
"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"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."
"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."
"I had some stability issues. I lost my environment, but with the help of SolarWinds support, I was able to get back to a stable platform."
"Having two places to build and manage alerts is not efficient and not all alerting tools are available in the trap manager."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not a cheap product. There are no two ways about that. If you compare it with a couple of the other solutions operating in the space, it might be on the slightly more expensive side, but it is one of those tools where, once you've got it, you understand the true value. You will get that money back."
"Our management squeezed Aternity pretty hard on the pricing, in my opinion a little too much. I advise negotiating for sure, but I do think it left kind of a sour taste in Aternity’s mouth that we were being so pushy despite the fact that we were only purchasing a small number of licenses."
"Its licensing cost is very low. That's one of the reasons why we have kept it for so long. We get more than a 70% discount on the maintenance licenses. Its cost is very low for us, but if you buy it new, it would be much more expensive at the retail price."
"It’s a little on the costly side, but if you license intelligently, accounting for your various hosts connecting in through VDI or terminal servers, you can make it well worth your money."
"We always try to reduce costs and purchase the Alluvio Aternity Essentials license."
"You have to purchase it for 12 months, which is an issue because a lot of our customers are on a per-user-per-month type billing. There are a few additional costs. A lot of customers only get the essential licenses, and then they get what they call the application add-ons on top. They have to pay depending on how many customers and applications they want to monitor."
"Regarding cost, compared to other solutions, Aternity is pretty low. It's definitely lower-cost than others that we looked at, like Nexthink."
"If the scale of your monitoring will be to go everywhere in an organization, a site license is key."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aternity?
Riverbed is costly in the Indian market; I would rate the pricing for Alluvio Aternity as a higher price.
What needs improvement with Aternity?
In my opinion, Riverbed can make Alluvio Aternity better by having the same Aternity agent help in security, such as antivirus or EDR, which would be useful, allowing customers to avoid having mult...
What is your primary use case for Aternity?
The main use case for Alluvio Aternity is end-user activity monitoring, which is the process I'm mainly using currently.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Aternity, Workforce APM, Aternity Frontline, Riverbed SteelCenter Aternity
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Maersk, SwissRe, Travis Perkins, Michelin, National Instruments, Simmons & Simmons, Lighthouse Guild
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Alluvio Aternity vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.