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Netdata vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Netdata
Ranking in Server Monitoring
15th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Cloud Monitoring Software (20th)
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 Netdata is 2.0%, down from 2.4% 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%
Netdata2.0%
Other95.1%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Yess Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Sre at Akamai Technologies
Real-time monitoring has improved incident detection and simplifies per-second troubleshooting
The key area for improvement is data retention and historical analysis. Netdata is excellent for real-time monitoring, but for long-term storage and deep historical insights, it usually needs to be integrated with other tools. Improving built-in long-term retention would make it more complete. Another area I see is data aggregation, where it correlates multiple nodes; while it provides great per-node visibility, having more advanced centralized views and correlations across systems would help in larger-scale environments. Customization of alerts and anomaly detection could also be enhanced. One area needing improvement is access control and security features. Stronger RBAC and user management would help control who can view data. Another area would be customization of dashboards, alerting integrations, and improving enterprise-level scalability features.
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

"Netdata has positively impacted my organization by improving downtime and incident response workflows through real-time visibility into infrastructure and application performance."
"The biggest ROI I have seen is in incident detection, with improvements of forty to fifty percent, troubleshooting time by thirty to forty percent, and productivity gains of around twenty-five to thirty percent."
"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"If a company would really like insight into its database utilization or performance and why their servers are slow or why the database is not giving a proper response, this solution will help."
"The solution has good alerts; notifications are sent via email to technicians, and you can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well, which is excellent."
"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."
"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."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"The ROI for SolarWinds products is unmatched in the industry."
 

Cons

"The key area for improvement is data retention and historical analysis."
"We are looking into other solutions because it is just too expensive to keep scaling."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring."
"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently."
"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."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"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."
"The price is too high."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"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."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Transportation Company
64%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Netdata?
As I am going with the subscription-based model in the SaaS, the pricing and setup cost are very nice, and the setup is very easy since I am running the server inside GCP.
What needs improvement with Netdata?
Netdata can be improved by incorporating AI-driven anomaly detection and predictive monitoring capabilities to forecast potential bottlenecks. Additionally, broader native integrations with enterpr...
What is your primary use case for Netdata?
Netdata serves as my real-time monitoring and observability platform for infrastructure and application performance monitoring, providing highly detailed real-time metrics with minimal setup and lo...
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 Netdata vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.