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NetCrunch vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

NetCrunch
Ranking in Server Monitoring
27th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (77th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (61st), Log Management (52nd)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Active Directory Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of NetCrunch is 2.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.9%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor2.9%
NetCrunch2.3%
Other94.8%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1038504 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator, Technical Lead at Connectivity Wireless
A network monitoring platform with a useful reporting feature, but permission-based options could be better
The initial setup is fairly easy. Most of it's wizard-based. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to set it up. But if you don't know certain things related to protocols and everything else, it might be difficult. If you know how SNMP works, it'll be fairly simple to set up.
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

"Reporting on NetCrunch is pretty good; it's very similar to SolarWinds, just with a different interface, and the majority of everything there was beneficial."
"The setup is very intuitive and quick - it all just took a few minutes we were done."
"The product integrates with Remedy."
"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."
"SolarWinds allows network administrators to easily monitor the network by customizing the pages to see what exactly is needed, in addition to the deep statistics shown for nodes and interfaces like response time, packet loss, interface CRC, interface errors, as well as the rich graphs for all network elements."
"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."
"SolarWinds fit the bill because it gave many possibilities in monitoring with a good amount of out of the box capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."
"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."
 

Cons

"Our network is made up of a lot of Cisco devices, and it needs improvements."
"I didn't care for the role-based, permission-based options, which were not the best."
"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."
"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."
"The technical support team's response time could be improved."
"PerfStack can be made more effective."
"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."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
24%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Agriculture
6%
Educational Organization
13%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

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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

manufacturing, banking, utilities, energy, universities, healthcare institutions, school districts, military and police entities, non-profit organizations, 
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about NetCrunch vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.