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Dynatrace 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

Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
347
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (10th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (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
42
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 Dynatrace is 10.2%, down from 13.0% 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

Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a comprehensive view by integrating with other monitoring systems
There may be an issue since there are many tools like Splunk involved in network monitoring. From an IP perspective, Dynatrace is performing well. If they want to develop in network monitoring, they can, as it's part of their product line. It's not rocketry, so they can accomplish it. If I, as an SI, look at it from an enterprise perspective, considering the cost from the client, I prefer not to go with multiple systems, as they don't provide a complete 360-degree view. They need to improve on claims about being an enterprise system. The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.
Carlos Camargo - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A monitoring system that can show us code level details."
"Dynatrace's new AI stuff really out shines its competitors. ​"
"This solution is perfectly stable. The main feature with this solution is that you do not need to do a lot stuff. Everything is being done by the tool itself. Everything is in there for you. There is nothing much needed from your resources; it is all in there."
"The most valuable features are end user visibility, Smartscape, and the entire visibility of our data center, including SQL queries."
"Dynatrace has helped us reduce outage times and severity of impact."
"It helps to improve code efficiency and has quicker performance analysis."
"Understanding how the user was being targeted by the application as well as knowing their behavior using those applications.​"
"The most valuable feature of the solution would be the level of visibility that you get. I haven't seen anything that gives us that level of visibility yet"
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
 

Cons

"They need better infrastructure monitoring. New Relic is beating them for infrastructure monitoring."
"Nginx monitoring service did not work out-of-the-box, so we had to tinker with it for quite some time."
"The AI is not that intelligent and there are different places where it could be even more automated."
"Needs support for more technologies."
"So far, we have not achieved the benefit of preventing issues."
"The web version of the client interface needs more features that are in the Java-based thick client."
"I would like Dynatrace to be more flexible and user-friendly."
"The one thing people really liked that we can do in AppMon is executive dashboards and, until recently, you couldn't even create the business transactions you need for the data at the back-end of those dashboards. But if I had to ask for one thing it would be: In the new platform, give me the ability to do dashboarding in the way it's done in AppMon, and I think that would bridge a lot of the missing pieces. If I could do the same type of executive dashboards on the walls, they would be happy."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"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 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."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."
"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."
"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."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the pricing is at a fair value for what it is."
"The only limitation with scaling to cloud-native environments is licensing. It all depends on how many DEM units you're willing to license. The more of DEM units that you purchase, the more user data you can collect."
"As compared to New Relic and other providers, it is more expensive, which is its biggest disadvantage. Its biggest advantage is its capability. It is more feature-rich."
"We purchased a subscription for one year and it is an expensive solution for a large enterprise like ours."
"​Make sure your leadership buy-in is in place. Ensure leadership understands that an APM solution is a fairly expensive, so they know what they are getting into."
"Always gives good ROI and total cost of ownership."
"The solution has saved us money through the consolidation of tools. With a hybrid landscape, we had multiple tools. When we consolidated, we removed four or five other monitoring tools with one. For the last ROI calculation that I did, Dynatrace was saving us up to $500,000 per year."
"Dynatrace has a place for everybody. How you use it and what your budgetary limitations are will dictate what you do with it. But it's within everybody's reach. If you're a small organization and you have a large infrastructure, you may not be able to monitor the whole thing. You may have to pick and choose what you want to monitor, and you have the ability to do so. Your available funds are going to dictate that."
"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."
"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."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"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 solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"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."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.