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Broadcom DX Application Performance Management 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

Broadcom DX Application Per...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
162
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (7th)
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 Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is 1.4%, up from 0.6% 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 (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.0%
Broadcom DX Application Performance Management1.4%
Other97.6%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

EG
Director of Technical Part at NOS SGPS
Dashboards facilitate prompt alerts but discovery feature needs enhancement
I would recommend Broadcom DX Application Performance Management if a customer doesn't have any existing performance solution. However, ten years ago, the solution was better, and now there are many competitive options. My overall rating would be between six and seven. The product rating I would give is 6.5 out of 10.
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

"In terms of end user experience, it is very useful."
"If there's something that you really need to get at that doesn't come out of the box, you can pretty easily put together some custom metrics and get those in place."
"What's most valuable about this solution is that it completely monitors code-level visibility."
"We receive good transactions from it with good graphs, as well, documenting the activities of total visitors on the site. We can pull the reports and provide them to the client, as required."
"We are able to see errors in the code that users would experience and then give that information to our developers to troubleshoot."
"It’s a great product and provides a lot of in-depth data."
"It takes care of our issues."
"The traditional Introscope portion of the product is the most valuable, as it provides good visibility to the JVM and Java application."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."
"The ROI for SolarWinds products is unmatched in the industry."
"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."
"Identifying the problem statement is easy."
"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"The solution has good alerts; notifications are sent via email to technicians, and you can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well, which is excellent."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
 

Cons

"Since Broadcom bought it, I would no longer recommend this product to other users."
"Issue resolution needs to be faster, rather than having users wait for the next release for issues to be fixed."
"We’ve been working with CA for a while on a trial and error basis, which has been painful."
"We aren't getting the value we imagined out of the product."
"I have faced scalability and stability issues. When we needed to monitor a large number of data metrics, then these kinds of issues occur."
"There needs to be more ability to report on the performance of the applications, so you could easily have a report run and give you all your performance stats for an application at the end of the month, or week, or after a release."
"It was complex configuring the service transactions from CEM."
"Out-of-the-box report templates need to be incorporated."
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
"Having two places to build and manage alerts is not efficient and not all alerting tools are available in the trap manager."
"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"They are complex to operate; users need to know what they want during setup."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All discounts are case by case to accommodate the client's budgets."
"There is some research needed to determine licensing costs, based on the number of DataPower instances for the Nastel agent, for example."
"The licensing costs are expensive."
"The pricing structure should be based on memory or CPU usage rather than the number of agents, as it makes the solution more expensive for us."
"Setup costs are quite competitive relative to other solutions, and simpler."
"Depends on the size of the product you need."
"On pricing, CA is very competitive. I think that's going to help in the long run."
"Althougth it is a bit expensive, it is really worth it"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
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 Business27
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise124
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
The initial pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions. The challenge arises during annual renewals, as the price increase can be significant, around twenty percent or more, ...
What needs improvement with Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
The first area for improvement is the discovery feature, which should be enhanced to collect comprehensive information from applications and services. This includes using agents or scripts to gathe...
What is your primary use case for Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
Our primary use case involves having a large dashboard with significant information for alerts, alarms, and metrics to summarize the state of critical businesses and applications. When an issue ari...
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

DX APM, CA APM, CA NetQoS Performance Center, Wily Introscope, CA Wily APM, CA App Experience Analytics, CA AXA
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark, Intermountain Healthcare, National Australia Bank, BBVA Compass Bank, Innovapost, Dansk Supermarked Group, U.S. Cellular, Orange, Cetip
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.