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ManageEngine ADManager Plus vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 9, 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

ManageEngine ADManager Plus
Ranking in Active Directory Management
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Active Directory Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (22nd), Server Monitoring (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of ManageEngine ADManager Plus is 11.8%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Active Directory Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ManageEngine ADManager Plus11.8%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.9%
Other86.3%
Active Directory Management
 

Featured Reviews

MUBDIUL ISLAM - PeerSpot reviewer
Junior System Engineer at Corporate Projukti Limited
User management becomes efficient and installation is straightforward
My primary use case for ADManager is to manage users and groups, perform group policy without logging into Active Directory, and provide easy and secure management and monitoring capabilities. One of my clients uses ADManager for these purposes With ADManager, I can easily complete any Active…
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

"The most valuable feature is the dashboard. They allow me to see everything in real-time and drill down and pick and choose versus running scripts."
"It makes our job easier, especially for managing data for a bulk of users."
"Makes it easy to administer your active directory."
"Almost every feature of the solution is valuable to me. This includes the importing and exporting to the active directory from the CSC firewall."
"With ADManager, I can easily complete any Active Directory tasks from anywhere, making it an excellent solution."
"Reporting is the most valuable feature of ManageEngine ADManager Plus and is highly usable."
"Simple with good automation."
"Technical support from ManageEngine is very satisfactory."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."
"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."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"I have found the visibility into server health with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor very beneficial, which we use on a daily basis."
"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."
 

Cons

"Lacks sufficient integration with management tools."
"Scalability, including the ability to add new users, is rated as six out of ten."
"It would be nice if the solution offered some sort of brochure with some high-level information that would help sell it to management. If they had details around how much time it saves an engineer, for example, to show the ROI, it would be helpful."
"The number of main controllers affects the database for creating the hardware specs."
"Some things are not very intuitive."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements can be introduced by making it available at a cheaper rate."
"This solution is not stable, it wasted my time."
"The bulk email ID creation must be improved. I had to create 50 to 60 IDs manually because when I tried the bulk option, it didn't work. I still had to cross-verify because some fields were empty."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"
"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."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I downloaded the trial version, only."
"It is not expensive."
"The pricing depends on scope and makes sense for use cases with multiple domains."
"I need to pay for the license, and I believe that it could be made cheaper."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"I am satisfied with the solution’s pricing."
"The cost of this product is a little higher than I would expect for a tool like this."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"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."
"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 like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"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."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ManageEngine ADManager Plus?
While the features in ManageEngine ADManager Plus are very good, not all features are necessary for every organization. Automation is a strong feature within the product but is not currently requir...
What is your primary use case for ManageEngine ADManager Plus?
ManageEngine ADManager Plus is used for multiple tasks, especially for reporting purposes that cannot typically be obtained from Active Directory or present difficulties requiring additional expert...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about ManageEngine ADManager Plus vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.