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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
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Server Monitoring (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of ManageEngine ADManager Plus is 10.1%, down from 14.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Active Directory Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ManageEngine ADManager Plus10.1%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor2.6%
Other87.3%
Active Directory Management
 

Featured Reviews

AliImran - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Administrator at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Reporting features have supported regular user management while some automation capabilities remain unused
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 required due to the organization's environment and needs. There are always possibilities for improvements in the initial setup of ManageEngine ADManager Plus.
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 solution provides oversight, reports, and logs that are easy to understand."
"The most valuable feature for me is automation."
"Almost every feature of the solution is valuable to me, including the importing and exporting to the active directory from the CSC firewall, and the user interface is good."
"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."
"The solution is perfect for moving myself from first to second-level support and empowering technicians to handle certain tasks such as resetting passwords, reporting expiring passwords, etc."
"The most valuable feature of this product is that it makes it easy to administer your active directory."
"The scalability is also good. ADManager Plus is being used by seven to eight system administrators right now, and it has been working fine."
"The most valuable feature was conducting the automation of our cloud and all services of the Active Directory."
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
"The solution can be deployed quickly."
"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."
"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."
"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."
 

Cons

"The main downside is that, for my environment, I must have two products to conduct the same purpose."
"I think the cost of this product is a little higher than I would expect."
"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."
"With the number of available integrations these days, it would be beneficial to have more ready-to-integrate technologies in other products as well."
"API integrations are not supported for all HR tools."
"All of it needs to be improved. It has corrupted my environment."
"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."
"This solution is not stable, it wasted my time."
"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"Having two places to build and manage alerts is not efficient and not all alerting tools are available in the trap manager."
"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."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am satisfied with the solution’s pricing."
"The pricing depends on scope and makes sense for use cases with multiple domains."
"I downloaded the trial version, only."
"The cost of this product is a little higher than I would expect for a tool like this."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"It is not expensive."
"I need to pay for the license, and I believe that it could be made cheaper."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Healthcare 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 ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...
 

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: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.