Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

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Helped 860,592 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

4th

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

19th

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 July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 6.3%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, down from 1.6% 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

Carlos Camargo

Senior Operations Manager at Sencinet

Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process

One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

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

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

"You can scale the product."

"It has good troubleshooting features."

"Among the valuable features of this solution, Application Insights stands out as one of the most significant. It provides insights into application performance and helps identify issues and bottlenecks."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"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."

"I find the query language in this tool very beneficial, as it allows me to customize some dashboards and create alerts according to my thresholds and metrics."

"The most valuable feature is that it ensures our servers are up."

More Azure Monitor pros

"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."

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

"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."

"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."

"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."

"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."

"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

"There are a lot of things that take more time to do, such as charting, alerting, and correlation of data, and things like that. Azure Monitor doesn't tell you why something happened. It just tells you that it happened. It should also have some type of AI. Environments and applications are becoming more and more complex every day with hundreds or thousands of microservices. Therefore, having to do a lot of the stuff manually takes a lot of time, and on top of that, troubleshooting issues takes a lot of time. The traditional method of troubleshooting doesn't really work for or apply to this environment we're in. So, having an AI-based system and the ability to automate deployments of your monitoring and configurations makes it much easier."

"The troubleshooting logs need improvement. There should be some improvement there. I have a hard time finding the right logs at the right times whenever there is an issue occurring."

"They need to work on a more hybrid deployment that will allow us to monitor local on-premise deployments and connect to different systems. I would like to see more integration."

"We cannot use AI services with the solution."

"They need to work with other cloud providers - not just Azure."

"Using Azure Monitor and Azure Arc separately to monitor different environments can be complicated."

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

"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."

More Azure Monitor cons

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

"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."

"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."

"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."

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

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

"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."

"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."

"The solution is a pay-as-you-go consumption service and is the least expensive in the market."

"The product offers a pay-as-you-go model to users. The charges are to be paid according to the usage of the product."

"It is a pay-as-you-go model. I find it very cost-effective."

"Regarding pricing, Azure Monitor is free with Azure license, so there are no additional costs for using it."

"It's a costly solution"

"Besides standard licensing fees the customer needs to additionally pay based on the ingested data size"

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

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

"The price is too high."

"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."

"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."

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

"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."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"The product is expensive."

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.

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860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

19%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

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...

What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

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

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...

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

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

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.

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...

Dynatrace vs Azure Monitor

Comparisons

Datadog vs Azure Monitor

Compared 22% of the time

Sentry vs Azure Monitor

Compared 14% of the time

Compared 13% of the time

Grafana vs Azure Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

Prometheus Group vs Azure Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure Monitor Competitors

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 19% 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 6% 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

Azure Monitor

Download Azure Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor