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Oracle Enterprise Manager vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

Oracle Enterprise Manager
Ranking in Server Monitoring
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
129
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (3rd)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (22nd), Active Directory Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Oracle Enterprise Manager is 2.2%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 3.3%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Enterprise Manager2.2%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.3%
Other94.5%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer996648 - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder and President at a training & coaching company with 1-10 employees
Extensive functionality impresses despite occasional setup complexity
The functions and features of Oracle Enterprise Manager that I have found most valuable are its evolution from being problematic in 10g and 11g versions to becoming better and more stable. Now it has become a significantly improved product. We have integrated identity management, and we are using it for normal database examination, tuning, and performance. We are working with STATSPACK and similar tools that are integrated in Oracle Enterprise Manager. We are currently working with version 13.5, having upgraded from 13.4 last year. Automation is useful for improving operational efficiency, and there are many more opportunities to automate outside the databases. Not many things need to be automated inside the databases. We have jobs running, imports, exports, and similar tasks. To automate these processes, we utilize the Scheduler from Oracle, which is managed in the databases by the vendor. This is not part of our DBA functions in Oracle Enterprise Manager.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Query tuning, historical graphs, real time statistics on query usage, easy to find blocking or locking queries, easy to kill queries, easy to add new datafiles to tablespaces about to run out of space, easy to explore table structure."
"For any Enterprise edition database customer, I highly recommend that they should implement OEM and at a minimum purchase license for Diagnostic and Tuning pack for database."
"The biggest bang for our buck with Enterprise Manger is automated patching."
"It is a good tool for monitoring databases."
"Oracle Enterprise Manager has eased the responsibilities among our DBAs. We can now assign individual tasks to separate DBAs."
"It's a standardized GUI tool, which is very good and pluggable with automatic connection to an Oracle database, in comparison with any other GUI tools available in the market."
"As a troubleshooter, I was able to quickly resolve memory issues."
"I recommend Oracle solutions like T5 Super-Cluster, T5-8 and Oracle Solaris 11 operating systems, as they are highly scalable and fault-tolerant systems."
"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."
"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."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"One of the most valuable features are the reports, they're pretty good, and the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
 

Cons

"I would like to see better pricing."
"The one area was the process of setting up targets and hosts as it seems rather lengthy and repetitive."
"The monitoring feature should be improved, so that it may be used as a dependable monitoring solution, as well as a deployment solution for SPARC-based hardware and operating systems."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"I feel more dashboards can be added, especially those useful to higher levels of IT management."
"I have been using OEM 13c which is their latest release and I would have expected that the product would have been more stable and should not have bugs for very simple things like CPU utilisation or amount of physical memory on Linux hosts."
"What I would love to see in Enterprise Manager is more support for the hardware, more support for Bare Metal."
"Technical support is good. That said, they take a lot of time before they start acting upon an issue."
"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."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
"Having two places to build and manage alerts is not efficient and not all alerting tools are available in the trap manager."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is the responsibility of our customers."
"We are satisfied with the pricing."
"The pricing is very high."
"Oracle Enterprise Manager is a free-of-cost solution. Oracle Enterprise Manager can be expensive only if you go for its licensing part."
"The basic functions are free. You only pay license fees for advanced features."
"The product is very expensive."
"The solution is inexpensive to purchase."
"As far as I know, you do not pay for Oracle Enterprise Manager separately. You can use Enterprise Manager for free if you already have an Oracle license for your database."
"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 price is too high."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Performing Arts
7%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise81
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Oracle Enterprise Manager?
What I like most about Oracle Enterprise Manager are its features, particularly the active session history. It provides insights into SQL, and I use it regularly to identify potential issues.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Enterprise Manager?
I would rate the pricing of Oracle Enterprise Manager as very expensive, definitely deserving a 10 out of 10.
What needs improvement with Oracle Enterprise Manager?
The weaknesses I would like to address in Oracle Enterprise Manager involve the dealing of Grid Infrastructure. Oracle Enterprise Manager's handling of Grid Infrastructure needs some improvement. I...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

7-Eleven, Halliburton, Cisco, Garmin, Nationwide, Korea Telecom, Allied Irish Bank
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Enterprise Manager vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.