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ManageEngine ADManager Plus vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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 (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of ManageEngine ADManager Plus is 10.0%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.9%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Active Directory Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ManageEngine ADManager Plus10.0%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor2.9%
Other87.1%
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

"Technical support from ManageEngine is very satisfactory."
"It makes our job easier, especially for managing data for a bulk of users."
"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."
"Simple with good automation."
"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."
"With ADManager, I can easily complete any Active Directory tasks from anywhere, making it an excellent solution."
"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 is the dashboard. They allow me to see everything in real-time and drill down and pick and choose versus running scripts."
"We choose the Solarwinds based on the simplication of managing the tool itself."
"As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best"."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements, so the threshold gets configured automatically, and it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."
"The OOTB (Out of the Box) implementation does have very good node specific pages and can provide a wealth of information."
"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."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
 

Cons

"Lacks sufficient integration with management tools."
"The solution is very complex, especially when there's an active directory of more than 1,000 users, which makes it hard to administrate. They need to improve the management of the administrative process."
"This solution is not stable, it wasted my time."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in support, they should work on overall competence and turn-around time."
"All of it needs to be improved. It has corrupted my environment."
"With the number of available integrations these days, it would be beneficial to have more ready-to-integrate technologies in other products as well."
"Some things are not very intuitive."
"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."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently."
"The technical support is nothing special."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"MS Azure Service and user experience monitoring is an area in which the SolarWinds tools are lacking; without a doubt, this is the Achilles heel of the Orion monitoring tools, and I am currently reviewing other vendors for Azure service monitoring tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing depends on scope and makes sense for use cases with multiple domains."
"I am satisfied with the solution’s pricing."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"It is not expensive."
"The cost of this product is a little higher than I would expect for a tool like this."
"I need to pay for the license, and I believe that it could be made cheaper."
"I downloaded the trial version, only."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Educational Organization
13%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
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: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.