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Grafana vs SolarWinds Pingdom 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

Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds Pingdom
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
68th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 2.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Pingdom is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Grafana2.6%
SolarWinds Pingdom0.6%
Other96.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Unified dashboards have empowered teams and have democratized real-time operational insights
Grafana's snapshot and dashboard sharing features are critical for our remote incident response. During production issues, I generate a public snapshot of a dashboard at a specific point and share the URL in our Slack war room so every engineer can see exactly what the metrics looked like when the error occurred. This helps significantly during the process of finding the root cause in those scenarios. The best features Grafana offers go beyond just pretty charts; it is an integration engine. The fact that I can join data from my SQL database with metrics from Prometheus in the same table is a feature I have not found performed as well elsewhere. My team uses this feature by comparing two different tables from the databases to show one single view, which Grafana is really helping with. In a visualized way, the charts can be displayed on one dashboard, allowing end users who are not familiar with these technical aspects to extract valuable data from it. Grafana has positively impacted our organization by democratizing data within our company. Before using Grafana, only developers could see the system health, but now our product managers and executives have their own high-level dashboards, which has improved cross-departmental transparency and alignment.
Jay Vekaria - PeerSpot reviewer
Linux System Administrator at Ergode
High performance, quick setup, but lacking ease of use
Some of the functions could improve by making them easier. There is room for improvement when it comes to the graphs provided by the software. Additionally, there seems to be an issue with the ping status, as it sometimes indicates that a website is down even when it is functioning properly. It appears that there are certain aspects related to cache management or other backend functionalities that are unclear. The time range graph and overall user interface could be more user-friendly. For example, when selecting a custom graph for a specific time period, clicking on it should open the corresponding website in a new tab, but instead, it displays the current graph. This lack of consistency can be frustrating when trying to navigate the interface. Furthermore, the reports shared on a weekly basis arrive one week late, reducing their usefulness. Overall, some extra efforts are required to make the user experience smoother and more efficient.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are multiple kinds of models there to create dashboards, which is quite useful."
"What I found most valuable in Grafana is that it has a lot of integrations and features that I need for data processing and visualization."
"The most valuable thing was that it had a good visualization tool."
"The installation process is easy. We have deployed it on the cloud. I have around 20 to 30 people using the solution in my company."
"If you want a scalable solution, better visualization, optimization, centralized monitoring, and improved troubleshooting, then you can choose Grafana without any doubts in your mind."
"The comparison feature is very good."
"This solution provides valuable insights into the health of our infrastructure in real time."
"The solution's application server is easy to use and its overall architecture is better for development."
"One notable feature of this software is its page speed setup, which is highly commendable. Additionally, the metrics it provides are also impressive."
"Overall, this is a very good product and one that I recommend."
"One valuable feature is real user monitoring."
"There are alerting mechanisms in place to let us know, for example, if a device is not responding to a ping test and is probably not going to work."
"My advice to anybody who is considering Pingdom is that this is a good product at an affordable price."
"Once you set the threshold on your environment, it feels very real-time"
"The most valuable features are monitoring and reporting."
 

Cons

"In the area of documentation, they must do a better job."
"Writing queries can be a bit difficult because the syntax must be maintained."
"It would be helpful if Grafana provided more information and training on how to use Prometheus."
"The interface is not well-liked by my customers."
"The look and feel of the charting and graph capabilities in Grafana could improve."
"The features are complicated and not intuitive."
"Regarding joining between queries, merging between two queries that give the same information could be simple, and there are some ways to do that, but if there was something even easier, it would be great."
"The solution should include online support."
"Some of the functions could improve by making them easier."
"Pingdom is always improving everything in its product. So, they should work on the GUI."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"Technical support could use some improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am using an open-source version"
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"We are using the open-source license."
"While I wouldn't describe it as excessively expensive, if you require specific and reliable monitoring, SolarWinds can be a suitable option. The advantage is that SolarWinds offers a free version as well. If you don't heavily rely on its monitoring capabilities and are content with its basic features, the free version could suffice for your needs."
"The license was paid yearly and included technical support."
"This price of this solution is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise27
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is very reasonable and has excellent community support.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
Currently, I do not think that any improvement is required, but there are multiple use cases.
What is your primary use case for Grafana?
My main use case for Grafana is to create and design dashboards based on the metrics provided by different exporters via Prometheus. We have different exporters, and we are creating different dashb...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana vs. SolarWinds Pingdom and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.