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Dynatrace vs SolarWinds AppOptics 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

Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
359
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (3rd)
SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
57th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (60th), Cloud Monitoring Software (45th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 6.0%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dynatrace6.0%
SolarWinds AppOptics0.8%
Other93.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration
We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.
John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd
Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions
I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Improves the ability to isolate issues and determine root cause with the same tool."
"Capability to focus on root cause problems."
"We obtained a better insight into our environment and consolidated a lot of our old apps into one app."
"We like the alerting feature. For example, my applications are going out on some thresholds. So I get alerts, according to the thresholds I set. I get that data via emails as notifications."
"For cloud, AI has been pretty useful so far when it comes to IT's ability to scale."
"I have reduced our disruption time. With the automatic alerts, we prevent and better catch the root cause of problems."
"No one else works with security gateways. I am able to configure those perfectly well within the banking and FDIC infrastructure to pass audits."
"It gives you a great level of detail into whatever the issue is: Using troubleshooting and getting to the root cause."
"The product has a great dashboard."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"Customer service is exceptional, as they are very much in tune with our service needs and are always in contact for both enhancement requests and overall satisfaction."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"AppNeta provides a range of products, all based around intelligent network testing algorithms."
 

Cons

"The analytics feature provides us some information, but is limited for now. We want to see how we can consume the data further down and have analytics guys look at the datacenter information.​"
"They could spend more time and effort in creating brand awareness."
"There is still a bit of redundancy in Dynatrace as well."
"The one thing I am really missing is the final Azure dashboard."
"​Configuring nodes and agents should be more like plug and play."
"I would like to see income monitoring for the servers and infrastructure monitoring."
"We need more AI in the product to avoid manual analysis."
"Dashboards are too clumsy, so it is good to keep less on dashboards and be easier to find the sections."
"I'd like to see the ability to use other internal instrumented applications as filters in the overview/aggregation screen."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."
"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was a pretty straightforward process. We had no hiccups."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"Licensing is a bit complicated for Dynatrace, and pricing is dependent on how much your organization invests."
"The product is really fast to implement and gives customers instant value. This is important, because it reduces costs on the implementation."
"We license it for two environments, typically all of production and all of one lower environment, usually our staging environment. If there is a downside to Dynatrace, the only thing I can think of would be the cost. If it were cheaper, I'd have it in all my environments. I don't think they're charging more than it's worth, by any means. It's just that good software costs money."
"Consider volume because that is where you will get the most benefit. Doing a point solution is not cost-effective."
"There are additional Professional Services costs which ensure the solution is configured with meaningful names so you're getting the most money for your investment."
"Pricing can be high, especially for Portuguese standards. But as one says, you get what you pay for."
"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."
"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise299
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
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Also Known As

No data available
AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds AppOptics and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.