PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

The compared Paessler GmbH and SolarWinds solutions aren't in the same category. Paessler GmbH is ranked #5 in NMS , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 4.2% mindshare in the category. SolarWinds is ranked #9 in SM , with an average rating of 7.3, and holds a 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Paessler GmbH users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 101 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

7,245 Views
4,886 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

1,122 Views
747 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between PRTG Network Monitor and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software.

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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

PRTG Network Monitor

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

101

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (5th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (16th), Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (12th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. PRTG Network Monitor is designed for Network Monitoring Software and holds a mindshare of 4.2%, down 5.0% compared to last year.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, on the other hand, focuses on Server Monitoring, holds 2.6% mindshare, down 3.4% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software

Server Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Tochukwu Uzomba

Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited

Efficiently monitor networks across regions with seamless setup and robust feature set

PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational. It is an all-in-one monitoring solution without extra costs. For example, we set it up for an insurance company with branches across Africa. We are able to monitor from Lagos without installing anything in the branches, using the agentless feature. We just put in the IP address and the parameter, and we monitor from those ends. Additionally, all the sensors are very useful. Most people are interested in the bandwidth monitoring sensor to see what bandwidth the users are consuming. The pricing is affordable compared to SolarWinds.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution provides us with the needed feedback on our IT infrastructure. It allows us to grab all the information from a single point of view."

"What I've found most valuable is the custom sensor, which allows you to write scripts or code to monitor a specific metric in your environment."

"I really love the activity library. It gives the flexibility to discover data and metrics about my interface and data server."

"It is nice to have one place where all the information is right there in front of us."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"PRTG is simple to manage. First, you can create a template for a device, then apply it to hundreds of similar devices. That's a great advantage."

"The reporting module is easy to configure."

"The alerting system is very stable, and it's helpful whenever any sensor is down."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."

"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."

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

"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."

"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 application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."

"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"PRTG Network Monitor should provide syslog monitoring since it is not available at this time."

"I would like to see network mapping."

"The technical support service should be improved."

"PRTG Network Monitor needs to enhance network performance monitoring. Moving towards observability, similar to what Datadog offers, could be beneficial."

"The operations dashboard is only available in PRTG's enterprise version, but I wish it could be accessed in the standard licensing. It would also be nice if PRTG had templates for dashboard monitoring, software monitoring, etc. It can help me set up a dashboard because now we don't have a template from PRTG, so we need to create one from scratch."

"In terms of sensors and probes, it would be really cool if PRTG had a purely Azure-based solution. We had to install a probe on one of our cloud servers and then let that probe out from there. It would be really cool if it just monitored Azure without having to install something on the device."

"When you email the support team, they take three to seven days to respond and resolve simple issues."

"The icons on PRTG's network diagram are hard to find. For example, finding the icons for firewalls and servers is difficult, so we're struggling to create the network topology."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."

"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

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

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

"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."

"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for PRTG Network Monitor is a nine out of ten. It meets my company's budget and monitoring requirements. My company is on a perpetual license."

"The pricing for PRTG in our case is reasonable because we have a lot of applications to monitor within PRTG. It is not that expensive."

"I rate the price of PRTG Network Monitor an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."

"The price was pretty good, very competitive."

"Cost was a factor when selecting this solution, but it just did everything we wanted it to do."

"In my company now, we are using the free version."

"We pay for a perpetual license and we have a support fee."

"All monitoring system is close to the same pricing scheme."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."

"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 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."

"The price is too high."

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

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

52%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

45%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it avoid the configuring the device in PRTG. It automatically discover the device an...

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What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?

The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?

The prices are very high for PRTG Network Monitor. That's why I'm using the free100 sensor license.

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

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 12% of the time

Prometheus Group vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

Elastic Observability vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 3% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

March 2025

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

PRTG Network Monitor runs on a Windows machine within your network, collecting various statistics from the machines, software, and devices which you designate. PRTG comes with an easy-to-use web interface with point-and-click configuration. You can easily share data from it with non-technical colleagues and customers, including via live graphs and custom reports. This will let you plan for network expansion, see what applications are using most of your connection, and make sure that no one is hogging the entire network just to torrent videos.

To monitor a large IT environment, it's important to be able to scale PRTG up. Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes all the proven capabilities of PRTG Network Monitor, which are enhanced by exclusive ITOps Board for a service-oriented, central overview of multiple PRTG servers.

Paessler GmbH

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

Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

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March 2025

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