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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
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (5th), AIOps (4th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (10th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 5.1%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
New Relic5.1%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.3%
Other93.6%
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.
VIVEK PATHAK - PeerSpot reviewer
Offering reasonably good dashboarding features but needs to improve the application performance monitoring
My company uses Riverbed for application performance monitoring. I was doing research so that I could understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provide APM capabilities similar to Riverbed, which allows our company to get a packet capture of an entire session, and on the basis of it, we look at the application performance monitoring part. With SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, my company does SNMP polling, so it can drag an entire session, but it focuses more on availability, CPU memory, and server connection status. In Riverbed, my company catches an entire system, so when we deal with two applications, we have end-to-end app visibility. All the application monitoring happens through Riverbed. Our company's main problem is that, as of now, we have two different products in our organization, and we don't want to continue with the multiple products currently. I wanted to understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor already have capabilities like Riverbed, and if they do, then I wanted to figure out why our company should not go with SolarWinds and why we are using products from multiple vendors. My company needs to continue with either Riverbed or SolarWinds. I wanted to see which products are good for the organization and how much I want to continue with Riverbed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The service maps that it creates, the health maps that it creates, the insights that it provides, etc., are all quite useful."
"The pricing is pretty good."
"It has a simple initial setup."
"The simplicity of the dashboard is very good."
"We use it for monitoring, identifying when services go down, or when they are outside of what we would consider normal operations."
"The best features in New Relic include its numerous API integrations and a good source of support."
"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."
"The tool's most valuable features were APM and core reliability. We get alerts whenever an anomaly is detected. The solution is very friendly."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."
"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."
"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."
"I have found the visibility into server health with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor very beneficial, which we use on a daily basis."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like to be able to invest less time in IT and ad hocs. We should be concentrating on other issues."
"They need to improve the alerting and dashboarding as these are the key features in DevOps."
"The pricing could be improved as it is quite high relative to what is offered."
"It is a serious tool and requires a lot of time invested in order to understand how it works."
"It would help customers if there were an on-premises version available."
"Documentation is one of the biggest things that I have a problem with since its documentation is not clear sometimes."
"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 setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The pricing and licensing are too high."
"We feel it's a little bit pricey."
"This is an expensive product."
"The solution is less expensive than AppNeta."
"The monthly cost os $1000 per server per month, but it could be even more. We pay about $250 for the server, and then New Relic wants over $1000 to give us statistics on those servers."
"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."
"I loved this product, but we can no longer afford it, so we dropped it."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"The price is too high."
"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 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."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise61
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

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?
New Relic can be improved by incorporating an automated incident analysis solution. They have comprehensive enterprise data, and based on that, they could generate and forecast things. They can pre...
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: September 2025.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.