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ManageEngine Applications Manager vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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

ManageEngine Applications M...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
41st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (36th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ManageEngine Applications Manager is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.2%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.2%
ManageEngine Applications Manager0.7%
Other98.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

SN
Senior System Engineer at Qatar Petroleum
Managing application health has become simpler but new monitoring features still need faster delivery
I use application discovery and dependency mapping. It helps with managing application health What I like about ManageEngine Applications Manager is the ease of use and ease of deployment. I cannot remember anything specific for future updates of the product. The new features take a lot of time…
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 Service Level Management (SLM) rules engine stands out due to its flexibility and customization capabilities, making it an invaluable tool for tailoring processes to our specific needs."
"The feature that I have found most valuable in ManageEngine Applications Manager is its dashboard."
"The anomaly detection feature helps with maintaining the system's health. It is regarding our IT incident center."
"Its price and the flexibility to deploy are the most valuable. Flexibility is very important, and you can scale from very basic to more complex. This solution is a part of a complete suite of management tools. So, it can be integrated with other solutions for monitoring networks, which is very important. You can expand it or interconnect it with many other tools, which is a powerful feature. We have a very good and long relationship with ManageEngine support guys. They provide very good support for us."
"What I like most about ManageEngine Applications Manager is its price point, apart from its technicalities. The solution is cheaper than its competitors. ManageEngine Applications Manager has helpful documentation that makes setting it up straightforward."
"What I like about ManageEngine Applications Manager is the ease of use and ease of deployment."
"ManageEngine Applications Manager's installation is pretty easy."
"I am impressed with the tool's reporting feature which is simple."
"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."
 

Cons

"The inventory of assets needs improvement."
"The problem is that implementation requires a significant amount of mapping effort."
"Even with the top-notch dashboard, it could be made stronger in order to have an additional plug-in for analytics."
"They can improve the post-processing of the data. AppDynamics has more powerful tools for post-processing or analytics. It has some limitations in more complex environments, but because we are free to use different solutions, we try to find what is best for the customers or the problem we are trying to solve."
"The information provided by ManageEngine is not deep-dive like IBM and CA provide."
"The agent often crashes when there is too much load on the application side. If a sudden storm of data comes in, the agent crashes down most of the time."
"The integration process with third party tools poses some challenges; enhancing the robustness of these integrations could greatly improve overall functionality and user experience."
"One area of improvement is the dashboard should be more readable and available."
"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"
"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"They are complex to operate; users need to know what they want during setup."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"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."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of this solution is not too bad, although it could be cheaper considering what you're getting for the price."
"ManageEngine Applications Manager has reasonable pricing. It's more affordable than other solutions in the market. My company has an instance-based license for ManageEngine Applications Manager. You can purchase a yearly subscription or a perpetual license. The standard license covers most features, but you can still have some paid add-ons."
"Price-wise, it is a cheap tool...The solution's licensing model is subscription-based, in which yearly payments are to be made."
"The licensing costs for ManageEngine Applications Manager are around $1,200 per year. For additional monitors, you have to pay extra."
"The solution's licensing costs are yearly."
"Its price is good."
"The solution is noted for its cost-effectiveness, a crucial consideration for potential users."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"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."
"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."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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 Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ManageEngine Applications Manager?
The solution is noted for its cost-effectiveness, a crucial consideration for potential users.
What needs improvement with ManageEngine Applications Manager?
The integration process with third party tools poses some challenges; enhancing the robustness of these integrations could greatly improve overall functionality and user experience.
What is your primary use case for ManageEngine Applications Manager?
Our primary application of this solution revolves around IT infrastructure monitoring. We focus on alert consolidation from core network and service levels to enhance our service management framework.
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

Applications Manager
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Certis Europe, Financial Domain, SaaS Office Suite, On Demand TV, Parliament's IT Systems, Sastra Technologies, UniServity
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about ManageEngine Applications Manager vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.