Elastic Observability vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Elastic and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Elastic is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.9, while SolarWinds is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.6. Elastic holds a 2.2% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Elastic Observability

Read 29 Elastic Observability reviews

8,553 Views
6,586 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

4,708 Views
2,919 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Elastic Observability are two leading tools in their respective domains. Based on user feedback, Elastic Observability seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced analytics and versatile features.

Features: SolarWinds offers in-depth performance monitoring, alerting mechanisms, and a user-friendly interface. Elastic Observability provides robust data analysis, visualization tools, and highly customizable dashboards.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds needs better integration with third-party tools, more frequent updates, and improved scalability. Elastic faces a steep learning curve, requires a more intuitive setup process, and could benefit from enhanced user documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds is relatively straightforward to deploy but has mixed customer service feedback. Elastic is slightly more complex to deploy but receives consistent praise for responsive and knowledgeable support staff.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds users are satisfied with the initial setup cost but are concerned about long-term ROI due to recurring subscription fees. Elastic’s pricing is higher upfront, but users find the advanced features justify the expense, resulting in a better perceived ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 2026

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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

Elastic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (15th), Log Management (15th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 2.2%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Elastic Observability	2.2%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.3%
Other	96.5%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities

In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.

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NikhilKalwint

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Good design and easy to use once implemented."

"The most valuable feature of Elastic Observability is the text search."

"All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important."

"We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it."

"The customizable dashboards in Elastic Observability allow us to group relevant data to specific aspects of our solution, giving us around 20 interlinked dashboards which provide an overview, and if one aspect shows weird behavior, we can focus on that specific aspect of our software with a dedicated dashboard."

"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."

"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."

"The solution allows us to dig deep into data."

More Elastic Observability pros

"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."

"From a customers point of view, they get a good return on investment because they are not paying a lot of money when you compare to what they used to pay for IBM and other large vendors."

"SolarWinds allows network administrators to easily monitor the network by customizing the pages to see what exactly is needed, in addition to the deep statistics shown for nodes and interfaces like response time, packet loss, interface CRC, interface errors, as well as the rich graphs for all network elements."

"It is scalable."

"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"

"The most valuable features of the solution are its real-time node monitoring and Help Desk's feedback."

"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."

"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."

"There is room for improvement regarding its APM capabilities."

"More web features could be added to the product."

"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."

"There's a steep learning curve if you've never used this solution before."

"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."

"Elastic Observability is reactive rather than proactive. It should act as an ITSM tool and be able to create tickets and alerts on Jira."

"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."

More Elastic Observability cons

"SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern."

"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."

"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."

"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."

"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."

"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."

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

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."

"The product is not that cheap."

"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."

"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."

"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."

"We have been using the open-source version."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."

"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."

"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 think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

"The price is too high."

"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

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

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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?

The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...

See all answers

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

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time

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Datadog vs Elastic Observability

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Opsview vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

March 2026

Download Elastic Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

February 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Elastic Observability offers a comprehensive suite for log analytics, application performance monitoring, and machine learning. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Teams and Slack, enhancing data visualization and scalability for real-time insights.

Elastic Observability is designed to support production environments with features like logging, data collection, and infrastructure tracking. Centralized logging and powerful search functionalities make incident response and performance tracking efficient. Elastic APM and Kibana facilitate detailed data visualization, promoting rapid troubleshooting and effective system performance analysis. Integrated services and extensive connectivity options enhance its role in business and technical decision-making by providing actionable data insights.

What are the most important features of Elastic Observability?

Centralized Logging: Streamlines the collection, analysis, and storage of log data.
Powerful Search: Provides robust search capabilities for quick access to relevant information.
Scalability: Supports growing data needs across diverse environments.
Real-time Telemetry: Ensures up-to-date insights and monitoring.
Platform Integration: Seamlessly connects with services like Teams and Slack.
Data Visualization: Enhances visibility with Elastic APM and Kibana.

What benefits and ROI should users explore in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers significant savings through efficient data management.
Rapid Incident Response: Minimizes downtime with quick troubleshooting tools.
Comprehensive Insights: Supports better business decisions with detailed data analysis.
Performance Tracking: Enables assessment of system effectiveness and improvements.

Elastic Observability is employed across industries for critical operations, such as in finance for transaction monitoring, in healthcare for secure data management, and in technology for optimizing application performance. Its data-driven approach aids efficient event tracing, supporting diverse industry requirements.

Elastic

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

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 2026

Free Report: Elastic Observability vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

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