New Relic vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

New Relic and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. New Relic is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2, while SolarWinds is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.0. New Relic holds a 3.7% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of New Relic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

New Relic

Read 175 New Relic reviews

20,904 Views
14,215 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

6,822 Views
3,957 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

New Relic

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and New Relic are both key contenders in application performance monitoring, with SolarWinds being praised for its easy deployment and support, while New Relic is preferred for its advanced features which justify its higher cost.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor excels in comprehensive monitoring capabilities, offering seamless integration with a variety of applications and servers. Its data visualization is intuitive and easy to comprehend, making it quite user-friendly. New Relic shines with its robust APM tools, delivering real-time insights and an extensive range of integrations, especially optimized for cloud environments. The emphasis on detailed real-time analytics provides New Relic with a substantial advantage.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds could enhance its long-term ROI potential by expanding its feature set and leveraging more advanced analytics. Improved cloud integration would also bolster its competitiveness. Refining dashboard customizations could further elevate user experience. New Relic might benefit from enhancing its customer support to offer more personalized service options. Additionally, improving cost transparency and streamlined onboarding processes could address barriers for new users. Offering more flexible pricing models might make advanced features more accessible.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds is recognized for its straightforward on-premise deployment, coupled with reliable support services. This makes it an attractive option for businesses seeking local installations with robust assistance. Conversely, New Relic's SaaS deployment model allows rapid setup and can easily scale, although it offers less personalized customer support compared to its competitor.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds generally offers a more cost-effective entry point to server and application monitoring with lower initial setup costs, yet its long-term ROI might be limited due to narrower feature offerings. On the other hand, New Relic involves higher upfront fees, but its expansive APM functionalities and adaptation to evolving tech landscapes provide substantial long-term ROI potential, making it a more valuable investment despite the higher initial costs.

To learn more, read our detailed New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 902,270 peers since 2012

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

6.9

Number of Reviews

175

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd), AIOps (4th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (7th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 3.7%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.1%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
New Relic	3.7%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.1%
Other	95.2%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji

System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Real-time alerts have reduced server outage impact and support fast incident response

In the dashboard, if they could show a little more metrics regarding the application and related things, that would be how New Relic could be improved. Currently, there are things showing from the server level and application level, but it can be improved. That is what I felt. Regarding user interface, I do not feel much concern, but for some kind of issues when we are trying to get support from the New Relic team, their SLA seems to be long. They are taking seven to ten working days for resolving some kind of scenario or issue. That is a bit difficult for us. If they could improve the customer support by reducing their SLA within three to five days, if they could remediate everything, that will be so much helpful. When it comes to the customer support part, I felt they need to be a little more improved on that part. The support overall is good, but they can improve. That is the reason I have given it eight out of ten.

Read full review

NikhilKalwint

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What the product has done for us was expedite our ability to discover actionable data that led directly to improvements in our app which would have taken considerable longer if we'd had to build similar functionality ourselves."

"The solution offers good documentation."

"There are many valuable features in New Relic APM; we developed some software applications and we are able to monitor the errors very easily, and their log security retention is very good."

"New Relic is now the leader in efficiency improvement."

"New Relic gives us one view over all our assets."

"The most valuable feature for us is the ability to see what is going on with the apps on our web server."

"Customer Service: The Support has been excellent -- affordable and bringing us meetings and phone calls with great availability and customer-oriented support."

"The most important thing is that it tells us where the latency in throughput and response time are."

More New Relic pros

"SAM has altered the way monitoring is being looked at - from just being able to monitor CPU, Mem, Disk and network utilization levels we have moved to the next levels of finding out process related issues, service related issues and specific application related issues to identify root cause of performance issues."

"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."

"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 product integrates with Remedy."

"We choose the Solarwinds based on the simplication of managing the tool itself."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"The deployment process could be improved."

"Sometimes we've noticed agents fail to report/respond."

"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 connectivity between legacy and newer cloud applications is not great."

"I hope the next release has the ability to retain historical data. A current limitation is comparing a present call with that of the same time the previous day, or previous week."

"There has been some problem with the agent, and it is just not working well. It is not able to record information with the application server. They have been able to fix the issue, but it took quite a long time. This is the main issue in the APM products and also in New Relic. The mobile application monitoring has been pretty difficult to set up and also quite expensive. It should be a little bit easier and cheaper. Because it is pretty difficult and expensive, many customers don't take it."

"From a point of view of showing you what to do fine but in terms of showing you what to do with the data infuriatingly unhelpful."

"I think their dev packages for server monitoring could handle configuration a bit better."

More New Relic cons

"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."

"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."

"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."

"We are looking into other solutions because it is just too expensive to keep scaling."

"AppInsight needs to include more applications, the current list is very limited."

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently."

"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."

"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an expensive tool."

"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."

"If I remember it correctly, the pricing was based on the core, and the monthly subscription used to cost us $1,500 or $2,000. We had pre-prod and production services. Costing was different for pre-prod and production. For pre-prod, it was 40% less than the production service cost. It was a combined package."

"The pricing and licensing are good if you have an account manager and a partner manager who are looking to help out."

"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."

"The price of New Relic could improve. It is expensive."

"I think the pricing is reasonable."

"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."

More New Relic pricing and cost advice

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

"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."

"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

"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."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."

"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Educational Organization

13%

University

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	51
Large Enterprise	79

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

While I appreciate many aspects of New Relic, I believe the product could improve in some areas—specifically, some advanced capabilities can have a learning curve for new users, and the licensing a...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for New Relic Insights?

Since I'm a performance engineer, I typically use New Relic day-to-day for investigating any performance bottlenecks identified during our performance testing of any application. I look at the resu...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

The initial cost is quite high, but the renewal cost is reasonable.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

Elastic Observability vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Opsview vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

New Relic

June 2026

Download New Relic product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

May 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

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

New Relic offers real-time application monitoring and insight into performance bottlenecks. Its customizable dashboards and APM integration provide efficient operational support, while server performance alerts ensure quick issue detection.

New Relic provides comprehensive monitoring of application performance, tracking bottlenecks across databases and front-end components. Users employ it for server and infrastructure monitoring, as well as analyzing key metrics such as CPU and memory usage. The solution's ability to integrate with tools like PagerDuty enhances incident management capabilities. However, users have expressed a need for improvements in query language simplicity, more detailed historical insights, and better mobile app monitoring support.

What are New Relic's most important features?

Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant visibility into application performance.
Detailed Transaction Tracing: Identifies specific transaction issues quickly.
Error Rate Tracking: Monitors and reports on error occurrences efficiently.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailors dashboard views for specific needs.
APM Integration: Seamlessly integrates with application performance management tools.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Operational Efficiency: Quick issue detection reduces downtime.
Improved Debugging: Enhanced error analysis supports rapid problem resolution.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Offers a holistic view of application performance and user behavior.
Incident Management: Integration with incident tools helps streamline responses.
Efficient Alerts: Rapid alert systems ensure timely notifications of issues.

In industries like e-commerce and financial services, New Relic supports application performance monitoring to enhance user experience and system reliability. Organizations leverage its insights for optimizing performance, particularly in server operations and infrastructure management. Its ability to monitor API failures through synthetic monitoring is crucial for maintaining high service levels.

New Relic

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive server, application, and infrastructure monitoring, focusing on integration, application dependency, and network insights through user-friendly interfaces and detailed dashboards.

With AppStack and AppInsight support, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers service management, detailed resource dashboards, and integration capabilities. It monitors hardware metrics and performance parameters, facilitating database and network insights for cloud and virtual environments. Robust alerting, predictive analytics, and capacity planning ensure efficient management of server health and application performance.

What are the key features?

Integration: Seamlessly connects with existing tools.
AppStack: Provides a holistic view of applications.
AppInsight: Supports widely-used applications.
SNMP Polling: Efficient network data collection.
Diagnostics: Real-time troubleshooting.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailored monitoring views.

What benefits should users expect?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Extends from servers to databases.
Transparent Control: Enhances visibility into performance metrics.
User-Friendly: Simplifies proactive monitoring with alerts.
Predictive Features: Supports capacity and trend planning.

Industries implement SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to enhance server utilization reporting, network configuration, and AV equipment performance tracking. They benefit from monitoring critical services across diverse deployment models, improving management efficiency and decision-making.

SolarWinds

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

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

June 2026

Free Report: New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Find out what your peers are saying about New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report.

See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.