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Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (6th), Active Directory Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 2.0%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure Monitor2.0%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.0%
Other97.0%
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

"One of the most useful aspects of this solution is the out-of-the-box functionality on all areas, especially on Application Insights, zero instrumentation, and artificial intelligence for event correlation."
"You can scale the product."
"The product is very good for developers who want to integrate with Visual Studio."
"The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate."
"Technical support is helpful."
"It is a helpful tool and provides proactive information about the infrastructure."
"The solution's most valuable features are its ease of use and support for multiple environments"
"Azure Monitor is a monitoring solution that you should not miss out on the second you move workflows, solutions, infrastructure, and much more onto the cloud."
"If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product."
"As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best"."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"Identifying the problem statement is easy."
"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."
"SolarWinds is one of the best products on the market and if they eventually support the IBM Mainframe then it will be perfect."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
 

Cons

"Azure Monitor could improve the visualization aspect and integrate better with other third-party services."
"Using Azure Monitor and Azure Arc separately to monitor different environments can be complicated."
"In terms of pricing, Azure Monitor's billing based on data size can sometimes lead to increased costs, especially when developers need to purge data frequently. While there are mechanisms in place to track and manage this, there is room for improvement in terms of optimizing data pausing and related processes. Enhancements in this area could help mitigate potential billing concerns and provide a more seamless experience for users."
"The onboarding process of certain assets and the overall UI can be improved in Azure Monitor"
"It's really complex to retrieve or query the logs in Azure Monitor."
"Although it's not always the case, the price can sometimes get expensive. This depends on a number of factors, such as how many services you are trying to integrate with Azure Monitor and how much storage they're consuming each month (for example, how large are the log files?)."
"I need connectivity with cost management."
"have used multiple products like Webex and PRTG. Some features could be added. Azure Monitor should add SMS and APIs. We have very limited access to Azure Monitor. I usually get alerts on my phone when they are integrated with Slack. I am not always available, but my team is. Sometimes, I am traveling and don't have access to my email, but I have Slack and other third-party projects that send me instant messages if a sensor goes down."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"PerfStack can be made more effective."
"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."
"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."
"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."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."
"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a monthly fee for the alerts triggered and the data stored."
"Regarding pricing, Azure Monitor is free with Azure license, so there are no additional costs for using it."
"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."
"It's a costly solution"
"The Azure Insight is a little bit expensive."
"The solution’s pricing depends on how much logs it collects."
"Azure Monitor is a low-priced solution, which is why it would work best on small-scale projects."
"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"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."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
13%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
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 ...
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...
 

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: August 2026.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.