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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
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (33rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (21st)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
8th
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 May 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 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.0%
Netdata2.0%
Other95.0%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Yess Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
SRE at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
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

"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 is very stable, and we are using it with hundreds or thousands of customers and there are no stability issues."
"This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"SolarWinds fit the bill because it gave many possibilities in monitoring with a good amount of out of the box capabilities."
"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements. The threshold gets configured automatically, so it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"The key area for improvement is data retention and historical analysis."
"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."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"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."
"They are complex to operate; users need to know what they want during setup."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"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."
"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."
"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 have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Transportation Company
66%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
Construction Company
3%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
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?
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...
What is your primary use case for Netdata?
I have been using Netdata for the past one and a half years, mainly for real-time monitoring and quick visibility into system performance. During this time, I have used it to monitor CPU, memory, d...
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 Zabbix, Broadcom, NinjaOne and others in Server Monitoring. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.