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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
40th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ManageEngine Applications Manager is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.2%
ManageEngine Applications Manager0.9%
Other97.9%
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

"I used it extensively for a year, and prior to that, I was very comfortable."
"The anomaly detection feature helps with maintaining the system's health. It is regarding our IT incident center."
"The feature that I have found most valuable in ManageEngine Applications Manager is its dashboard."
"What I like about ManageEngine Applications Manager is the ease of use and ease of deployment."
"I found Application Manager better than other products, including Solarwinds, because there are so manys option in Application Manager that makes it unique, such as supporting all servers, networks, cloud systems etc."
"The features on the dashboard of ManageEngine Application Manager are much better than these other solutions, and I found that those solutions can be quite costly in comparison."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"We do not have pricing constraints as an organization, because we do have reservations about ManageEngine being functionally scalable."
"This feature from Solarwinds SAM helped us to monitor and alert whenever the SSL cert is going to expire on the server to avoid any downtime of the services running on the server specially on ADFS platform where we have Video conference, Webex, Office 365 and single sign-on services."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"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."
"If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."
"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes, everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution, it's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
 

Cons

"The information provided by ManageEngine is not deep-dive like IBM and CA provide."
"They could probably rearrange the UI so that it would be easy for people who are new to the Application Manager to configure things."
"Lacks an SIEM solution which can be found in other products."
"The information provided by ManageEngine is not deep-dive like IBM and CA provide."
"I assess the impact of real-user monitoring of this product on my application's performance as not good. I am not satisfied with monitoring."
"One area of improvement is the dashboard should be more readable and available."
"The dashboards in the interface need a lot of work."
"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."
"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."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"Having two places to build and manage alerts is not efficient and not all alerting tools are available in the trap manager."
"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."
"The technical support is nothing special."
"As per my view, Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is noted for its cost-effectiveness, a crucial consideration for potential users."
"Price-wise, it is a cheap tool...The solution's licensing model is subscription-based, in which yearly payments are to be made."
"The annual licensing depends on the number of monitors you have connected. Once you get to two hundred monitors you can see the price reflect."
"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."
"The cost of this solution is not too bad, although it could be cheaper considering what you're getting for the price."
"The solution's licensing costs are yearly."
"Its price is good."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"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 price is too high."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"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."
"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
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 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?
I am satisfied with the licensing cost for ManageEngine Applications Manager.
What needs improvement with ManageEngine Applications Manager?
The new features take a lot of time to be implemented, and that could be improved about ManageEngine Applications Manager. If I were requesting a new feature that is not existing, making it availab...
What is your primary use case for ManageEngine Applications Manager?
I use application discovery and dependency mapping. It helps with managing application health.
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

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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.