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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
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (18th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (12th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (5th), AIOps (5th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 6.1%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, down 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

Rahul -Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Good for application Performance Monitoring but not stable
There are two types of teams we have in every organization. One is for DevOps, and the second one is for performance testing. Those who are using these tools, like AppDynamics, Dynatrace, or whatever tool we have on the APM side. These tools are used by two teams: one is the performance team, and another one is the DevOps team. So, the setup and the alert system belong to the DevOps team, not for performance. So, I don't use any alerts in AppDynamics, Dynatrace, or any of the tools.
Carlos Camargo - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process
One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is scalable, and it is easy because all the documentation is available."
"Using New Relic speeds up troubleshooting and resolution, giving us a clearer picture of where issues are, thus saving time and effort."
"The stability of New Relic APM is very good."
"It has prevented failures from occurring in our production environment."
"It gives insights to non-technical people about what technical issues are most important, how much it impacts customers, and potentially, where we should be targeting our development teams when they have time."
"The VPN is one of the solution's most valuable features for us."
"The solution is good for sending alerts, drawing graphs about system usage, and creating plug-ins."
"The solution offers good documentation."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."
"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."
"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 features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
 

Cons

"New Relic APM is a good tool, and it has a database of failures, but it could use a list of customer-specific failures. New Relic APM should be able to give my company advanced analytics through AI."
"They don't have an opportunity to share the dashboard with the public. If you want to share it with stakeholders or people outside the organization who just want to have a look at a couple of metrics, you can't do that without onboarding them to the product itself."
"Documentation could be improved in New Relic APM, so users would have more clarity on configuring the dashboard. If New Relic gave better guidelines, users would find it easier to understand the metrics and features of New Relic APM. Another area for improvement is integration with Kubernetes. Currently, the process isn't user-friendly. It's challenging and lacks documentation for users to understand how to integrate New Relic APM with Kubernetes quickly. With multiple levels of Kubernetes dockers and other DBs on different clouds, it's tricky to gather all into New Relic APM on a single dashboard. What I'd like to see in the next version of New Relic APM is a single dashboard where you can easily view which applications fall under specific APMs. If there's a search feature where you can type in a keyword to find out if an APM is related to a particular application, that would be great."
"The customization of the start and end time is kind of cool."
"I would like if it could have predictive analysis. Today, we only have the option to configure thresholds."
"We would like to receive more AWS-specific details from the New Relic Dashboard, like EC2 health."
"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."
"The pricing could be improved as it is quite high relative to what is offered."
"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."
"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."
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an expensive tool."
"New Relic is either free with low retention and minimal functionalities, or expensive with full options and retention."
"The pricing and licensing are too high."
"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."
"We deploy everything on AWS. Purchasing the product on AWS Marketplace made it easier for us."
"I think the pricing is reasonable."
"The price was one of the reasons we chose this solution."
"The price of New Relic APM could be less expensive. We are using the New Relic APM pro account and it is more costly. When compared to competitors the solution's pricing should be much more realistic."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"The price is too high."
"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."
"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 compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"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
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

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: July 2025.
861,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.