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 7.8, while SolarWinds is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.4. New Relic holds a 6.3% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.6% 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 158 New Relic reviews

16,159 Views
12,825 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

3,510 Views
2,527 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

New Relic

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and New Relic are popular monitoring tools with distinct benefits. SolarWinds is often highlighted for its easier setup and better value for initial setup costs, while New Relic is noted for its advanced features but with a higher learning curve.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers robust infrastructure monitoring, comprehensive alerting capabilities, and user-friendly dashboards. New Relic provides advanced application performance monitoring, detailed transaction analysis, and extensive integrations. Users find New Relic's feature set more innovative.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds users indicate a need for a more intuitive configuration process, better documentation, and enhanced scalability. New Relic users desire more flexible customization options, improved data accuracy, and a simpler user interface. SolarWinds is seen as easier to set up, while New Relic offers greater customization once mastered.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is frequently noted for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. New Relic, although more complex to deploy, provides comprehensive support that users find valuable once they navigate the initial setup. SolarWinds's ease of deployment is an advantage, but New Relic’s robust support balances the comparison.

Pricing and ROI: Users generally find SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to offer better value for initial setup costs and a quicker ROI. New Relic’s pricing is seen as premium, justified by its advanced features and depth of monitoring capabilities. Despite higher costs, New Relic’s extensive features are considered worth the investment.

To learn more, read our detailed New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

April 2025

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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

7.1

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

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (10th), Active Directory Management (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 6.3%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.6%, 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

Iqbal Khowaja

Chief Technology Officer at State of Hawaii

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.

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Subhajit Nag

Senior Process Associate at Tata Consultancy Services

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.

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

"Every time there is a crisis, high traffic, or if we see a problem with a server, we go to New Relic and monitor it to determine the cause."

"Server uptime is its most valuable feature."

"It has in-depth analysis using developer code for someone whose not traditionally a developer."

"The alert mechanism is quite accurate when something goes wrong in your system. For example, if you have hundreds of APIs on your server, and any of the APIs is not performing well, you get an alert. When there is a drop or change in the threshold value, the beauty of New Relic is that within a fraction of seconds, all the stakeholders who are configured in the New Relic system will get an alert. That's one good thing."

"What I like best about New Relic APM is its user interface because it's simple. The most valuable feature of New Relic APM is end-to-end monitoring."

"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 solution offers good documentation."

"The solution is quite stable."

More New Relic pros

"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."

"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."

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

"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."

"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."

"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 SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."

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

"The product has good documentation for Linux, however, their documentation for Windows is lacking substantially. It's something they need to develop."

"New Relic needs to improve is the user data schema."

"The browser isn't exactly reliable."

"We would like to receive more AWS-specific details from the New Relic Dashboard, like EC2 health."

"I haven't come across any features that are lacking."

"There were some settings we had issues with."

"I would like to be able to invest less time in IT and ad hocs. We should be concentrating on other issues."

More New Relic cons

"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."

"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."

"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."

"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."

"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."

"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."

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

"Mapping interactions between systems."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost is significant with a lot of extras."

"They gave us aggressive discounts when they were brought in for the first time, but they have also kept them for the year-on-year renewals, which has been absolutely fine."

"The solution is quite expensive. It costs around $5,000 a month. There aren't any additional costs above that."

"The solution is cheap, but prices can go up when users grow."

"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."

"The solution is less expensive than AppNeta."

"New Relic is either free with low retention and minimal functionalities, or expensive with full options and retention."

"I think it's overpriced for the technical support that we get. We spent over 1,00,000 USD a year."

More New Relic pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."

"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."

"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."

"The price is too high."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

43%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

35%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about New Relic Insights?

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

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 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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 12% of the time

Elastic Observability vs New Relic

Compared 11% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 9% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 5% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 18% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 18% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

Prometheus Group vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

New Relic

May 2025

Download New Relic product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

May 2025

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 is a powerful tool for optimizing web pages, tracking user behavior, and monitoring application performance. It helps detect anomalies, generate metrics, and create dashboards for synthetics monitoring, container workloads, stress tests, and more.

New Relic provides organizations with comprehensive insights into APIs, infrastructure, and scalability. It supports mobile and web applications with features like java tracking, health maps, customizable dashboards, and drill-downs. Users benefit from its easy initial setup, accurate alerts, UI monitoring, error tracking, and traceability. New Relic supports multiple ecosystems with straightforward pricing and new feature introductions, offering end-to-end monitoring, thorough data analysis, and effective problem resolution.

What are New Relic's most important features?

Java Tracking: Efficiently monitor Java applications.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Comprehensive overview of infrastructure health.
APM: In-depth application performance monitoring.
Tight Integration: Seamless integration across different system layers.
Health Maps: Visual representation of system health.
Customizable Dashboards: Personalized data display and insights.
Drill-Downs: Detailed analysis at multiple levels.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Application Insights: Detailed understanding of application performance.
Accurate Alerts: Immediate notifications for issues.
Traceability: Enhanced end-to-end traceability for problem resolution.
Scalability: Accommodation of growing infrastructure.
Flexible Query Design: Adaptable search and analysis functionality.
Reliable Performance: Consistent application monitoring and upkeep.

New Relic is leveraged in industries such as e-commerce, finance, and technology. It helps monitor web traffic, evaluate load balancing, and ensure applications meet performance standards. Companies use it for stress tests, container-based workloads, API monitoring, and infrastructure management. Its integration capabilities are valuable for maintaining performance and scalability across diverse ecosystems, aiding in thorough data analysis and problem resolution.

New Relic

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

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

April 2025

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