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New Relic 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

New Relic
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (4th), AIOps (3rd)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 6.6%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Iqbal Khowaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a simple user interface and end-to-end monitoring and self-healing features
My organization uses many application performance management solutions, such as AppDynamics, New Relic APM, Splunk, and Datadog. I'm the CTO for the state of Hawaii, and across the board, different departments use different APM tools. I'm using the latest version of New Relic APM, but I cannot recall the exact version. My company has a dozen engineers using and monitoring New Relic APM. I'd tell anyone planning to use New Relic APM that it has to fit what you have. For example, most of my company's payload is in AWS, and the tool has adopters and features that CloudWatch cannot provide. Still, New Relic APM can, so you should do a demo or trial run first and see if it's a tool that'll help you with end-to-end monitoring. New Relic APM is working well for my company, so an excellent way to start is to do a trial run to see how the tool works out for your current applications. My rating for the tool is nine out of ten because my experience with it has been great. New Relic also worked closely with my company and has always been upfront on what's available and what's not. My company is a New Relic APM customer.
Subhajit Nag - PeerSpot reviewer
The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow
SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the ability to receive in-depth information about applications. It can detect a lot of important information."
"The solution offers good documentation."
"To me, the most valuable feature of New Relic APM is the traceability, mainly based on the time travel method, so you get the overall response time, which is pretty helpful for developers and ADR techs looking into issues on a deeper level. New Relic APM is a very good, tailor-made solution."
"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."
"It is easier to create new dashboards in the New Relic interface, and it is also easier to query if when I want to monitor a different parameter or time duration on my dashboard."
"It allows the restriction of privileges and control of users."
"New features are added often."
"You don't have to go through a list of 500 servers."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."
"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"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

"Some of our customers see New Relic as a promising product to have, and we would like to deliver it to them. The only way we would be able to do that would be if we had server appliance for clients that we could install in their data centres."
"New Relic does enable frontend performance monitoring by default. However, when we are troubleshooting the issue, New Relic is not able to trace back to the service where the issue is. Other solutions, such as Dynatrace are better."
"The connectivity between legacy and newer cloud applications is not great."
"It is a serious tool and requires a lot of time invested in order to understand how it works."
"It is complicated, especially in how you interpret the data that it provides. If it had a bit more canned, out-of-the-box features, especially some of the reporting features, that would be more useful."
"Some AIOps are missing in New Relic APS, and I would like to see more features in this area."
"I would like the ability to set up certain dummy accounts and do the actual things that the customer is doing, without impacting the production environment."
"Data Dog captures the entire session and then provides it as a video player path, which gives more insight into what the user was doing. It's pretty impressive. New Relic does that, yet it only captures using a couple of screenshots, which is not very detailed since you are unable to see the entire user flow."
"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."
"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cheap, but prices can go up when users grow."
"The pricing and licensing are good if you have an account manager and a partner manager who are looking to help out."
"The pricing is okay comparatively their competitors. The only concern was whether it should be purchased on demand or bring your own license, and which way passes some savings onto the end customers."
"This solution required a license and it is better than some other competitors."
"The new licensing model is great, as we pay for what we use (in computational units). However, the pricing is expensive compared to other tools."
"There is a picture which goes to your browser and it monitors requests from other users. However, it's impossible to use now because the price is very high. The feature is very nice, but I tried it during the trial period, and the current price makes it impossible to use."
"I recommend using the free version of New Relic. If you like the free version and understand its importance for your company, you can move to the trial. Then, you can migrate to the paid version."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was easy. The product is easy to deploy and manage, which is why our company purchased through the AWS Marketplace."
"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."
"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 like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"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."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"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 would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
53%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Educational Organization
43%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
What do you like most about New Relic Insights?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?
Email alert customization is limited; it cannot be tailored much, which makes the system more rigid than optimal. The handling of logs from integration tools is not as advanced compared to other to...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

New Relic Browser, New Relic Applied Intelligence, New Relic Insights, New Relic Synthetics, New Relic Servers, New Relic APM
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

World Fuel Services, Verizon, FootLocker, McDonald's, Trainline, Mondia Media, Confused, Costa Coffee, Ryanair, Marks & Spencer, William Hill, Delivery Hero, Skyscanner, BASF, DAZN, Veygo, Virtuo, movingimage, talabat, Australia Post, Tokopedia, Seven Network, Virgin Australia, Zomato, BigBasket, Mercado Libre, Lending Club
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
845,589 professionals have used our research since 2012.