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Azure Monitor 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

Azure Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (4th)
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 Azure Monitor is 2.9%, down from 7.7% 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 (%)
Azure Monitor2.9%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.3%
Other95.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Andy Rabern - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Telemetry insights have improved how I track user behavior and application performance daily
I feel Azure Monitor does a fair job. I do feel it is not a streaming service in my opinion. There are advantages to having stream messaging and logging on that level. But for what it is, I feel it does well. My perspective is more based on an Application Insights agent running on a service or an app service and sending the telemetry via the agent, and also doing the filtering of telemetry at the agent level so you are not having a ton of telemetry. I believe Azure Monitor does pretty much the same thing. I have also used tools such as New Relic, and New Relic is a much more robust tool, but that is a different product and you are going to pay for that. It is a different offering altogether. The subscription that we had at the time allowed for a couple gigabytes of telemetry during the month, and I believe that telemetry only lives for about two months. You have to experiment with it to see how much you want to pay. I was not really involved in the pricing. It was more along the lines of we were running up against our limits in terms of the amount of free telemetry or telemetry that we get with our subscription, and so we either needed to scale back or turn specific telemetry types off or do some more sampling. It is nice that those capabilities are there so that you can reduce the amount of telemetry. I cannot really speak to pricing but I do believe that it is somewhat reasonable for Azure Monitor. New Relic is pretty expensive, I believe.
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

"Azure Monitor is really just a source for Dynatrace. It's just collecting data and monitoring the environment and the infrastructure. It is fairly good at that."
"For me, the best feature is the log analysis with Azure Monitor's Log Analytics. Without being able to analyze the logs of all the activities that affect the performance of a machine, your monitoring effectiveness will be severely limited."
"The feature that I found most valuable in Azure Monitor is its monitoring abilities. With Azure Monitor, you are able to monitor all of your cloud resources across multiple subscriptions in one dashboard and create solution-specific alerts that can trigger an email to the team responsible for that specific solution."
"The solution very easily integrates with Azure services and in one click you can monitor your resource."
"It is a move-in powerful feature compared to other market-leading tools."
"Azure Monitor is very stable."
"In the last company where I worked about a year ago, it looked very simple."
"I am impressed by the reporting on the average eight ports that we get from this solution."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"We choose the Solarwinds based on the simplication of managing the tool itself."
"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."
"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 have found the visibility into server health with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor very beneficial, which we use on a daily basis."
"SolarWinds fit the bill because it gave many possibilities in monitoring with a good amount of out of the box capabilities."
"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."
"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."
 

Cons

"No improvements are needed from my perspective."
"Azure Monitor could improve the visualization aspect and integrate better with other third-party services."
"What I feel is when I open a screen of Azure, some places are very complex to navigate to. It is not very user-friendly when it comes to accessing certain sections."
"The scalability could be improved as there are some limitations."
"I believe Azure Monitor is already a top-notch solution with excellent functionality and there is not much I would suggest for improvement. However, there is one limitation that certain features require payment, even for testing purposes, which can be a challenge."
"The solution needs better monitoring. It requires better log controls."
"They did have an alerts feature before and it was quite well automated, but since they've gone to a dynamic model and did a few updates, it broke a few things."
"They need to work on a more hybrid deployment that will allow us to monitor local on-premise deployments and connect to different systems."
"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."
"The technical support is nothing special."
"PerfStack can be made more effective."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"Having two places to build and manage alerts is not efficient and not all alerting tools are available in the trap manager."
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product offers a pay-as-you-go model to users. The charges are to be paid according to the usage of the product."
"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."
"My company is okay with the current pricing of the solution."
"Azure Monitor's price is minimal to the point of being almost negligible."
"The tool's pricing is very good. I could say that Microsoft offers different cost models, which are listed on the product's website."
"The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."
"It is a pay-as-you-go model. I find it very cost-effective."
"I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."
"The price is too high."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"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 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."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
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 Business23
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
I feel Azure Monitor does a fair job. I do feel it is not a streaming service in my opinion. There are advantages to having stream messaging and logging on that level. But for what it is, I feel it...
What is your primary use case for Azure Monitor?
I am a developer who uses Azure Monitor for telemetry of the applications that I work on. Application Insights is one of those tools, and I have also used other non-Azure products before. 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

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.