Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Microsoft and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.8, while SolarWinds is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.4. Microsoft holds a 6.0% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Azure Monitor

Read 55 Azure Monitor reviews

12,653 Views
12,020 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

3,787 Views
2,727 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Azure Monitor compete in the server and application monitoring category. SolarWinds has an upper hand in pricing and customer support, while Azure Monitor is preferred for its integration and advanced features.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers comprehensive monitoring, robust alerting capabilities, and easy configuration. Azure Monitor provides advanced analytics, scalability, and seamless integration with other Azure services.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could enhance scalability and simplify reporting. Azure Monitor could improve its intuitive setup processes and integration documentation. SolarWinds needs better support for large-scale deployments, and Azure Monitor could benefit from improved initial setup support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor has a straightforward on-premises deployment model and responsive customer service. Azure Monitor offers cloud-based deployment, but its customer service is sometimes perceived as less proactive.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is considered cost-effective with a positive ROI due to robust features at a reasonable price. Azure Monitor's pricing is higher but offers substantial ROI through its advanced functionalities and integration with Azure services.

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

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,295 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

Azure Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

5th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 6.0%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Usman Khawar

Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC

Native integration simplifies monitoring but documentation and cost improvements are needed

The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate. It has no maintenance overhead, and users don't have to navigate to another portal to get their desired result. It's the handiness that it has, rather than the features. The interpretation from the logs and injection requires custom runbooks. While it's complex, many services provide native insights and workbooks. It does the basic job quite efficiently. They added new kinds of metrics with more integrations to send out metrics. They have even added support for third-party tools that can be integrated. Azure Monitor is working on improvements and becoming more mature. Azure Monitor is stable and scalable. Azure Monitor is evolving with new workbooks and dashboards.

Read full review

VIVEK PATHAK

Solutions Architect at Airtel

Offering reasonably good dashboarding features but needs to improve the application performance monitoring

My company uses Riverbed for application performance monitoring. I was doing research so that I could understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provide APM capabilities similar to Riverbed, which allows our company to get a packet capture of an entire session, and on the basis of it, we look at the application performance monitoring part. With SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, my company does SNMP polling, so it can drag an entire session, but it focuses more on availability, CPU memory, and server connection status. In Riverbed, my company catches an entire system, so when we deal with two applications, we have end-to-end app visibility. All the application monitoring happens through Riverbed. Our company's main problem is that, as of now, we have two different products in our organization, and we don't want to continue with the multiple products currently. I wanted to understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor already have capabilities like Riverbed, and if they do, then I wanted to figure out why our company should not go with SolarWinds and why we are using products from multiple vendors. My company needs to continue with either Riverbed or SolarWinds. I wanted to see which products are good for the organization and how much I want to continue with Riverbed.

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

"Good load and metrics gathering and very good analysis."

"It allows you to set thresholds on the metrics and receive alerts."

"I use the solution to monitor the infrastructure and applications."

"The most valuable feature is that it's stable. It hasn't crossed any thresholds."

"It is a robust, stable product."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the alert system, which can be set according to our metrics. The integration is smooth."

"It's a service from Microsoft, so it will scale."

"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."

More Azure Monitor pros

"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."

"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."

"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."

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

"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."

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

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"Lacks information including details related to where problems lie."

"The process of implementation needs to be easier."

"Azure Monitor could improve by adding capabilities for data observability and integrating more tightly with their data platform components."

"n comparison to New Relic, which I've used before, it's a bit more complicated. It's not as easy to use. It also took some time to get it working. The implementation needs to be simpler."

"Automation related to gathering metrics from more applications could be improved."

"Azure Monitor's integration with applications could be improved."

"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."

"Currently, it seems it's complicated to get the correct information in terms of what to do and how things work."

More Azure Monitor cons

"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."

"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."

"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."

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

"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company is okay with the current pricing of the solution."

"The Azure Insight is a little bit expensive."

"Azure Monitor is a low-priced solution, which is why it would work best on small-scale projects."

"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"The tool is expensive."

"Customers of Azure Monitor must pay an amount that depends largely on how many services they need to integrate and the storage space required in terms of logs, etc. If they only have a few small services to monitor, the price won't be too high, but on the opposite side of the spectrum, it can certainly get pricey."

"Since we are using the basic set, it is more cost-effective compared to other third-party APM solutions."

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."

"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."

"The product is expensive."

"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."

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

"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."

"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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.

See recommendations

865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

The primary challenge is the documentation. The major challenge that remains is the costing factor for the logs ingestion. The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that...

See all answers

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

See all answers

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 are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs Azure Monitor

Compared 22% of the time

Sentry vs Azure Monitor

Compared 14% of the time

Dynatrace vs Azure Monitor

Compared 13% of the time

Grafana vs Azure Monitor

Compared 10% of the time

AWS X-Ray vs Azure Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure Monitor Competitors

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 17% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 10% of the time

Prometheus Group vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

August 2025

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure.

With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts.

Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.

Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility.

Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

Microsoft

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

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2025

Free Report: Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report.

See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.