Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

SCOM vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

SCOM
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (5th), Network Monitoring Software (14th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (22nd), Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

SCOM and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. SCOM is designed for Event Monitoring and holds a mindshare of 9.0%, up 7.6% compared to last year.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, on the other hand, focuses on Server Monitoring, holds 3.2% mindshare, up 2.7% since last year.
Event Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SCOM9.0%
ServiceNow IT Operations Management11.7%
OpsRamp9.6%
Other69.7%
Event Monitoring
Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.2%
Zabbix15.2%
Checkmk7.3%
Other74.3%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.
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

"The ease of deployment, especially on Windows platforms, is valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the extensibility, as there are really no limits as to what you can do with it."
"The solution has improved our overrides and the ability to start services if they're stopped."
"They have great integration with the active directory."
"The stability has been great."
"SCOM's most valuable features are the network path feature, reporting, and integration with business intelligence."
"The product’s auto-remediation feature helps with automation."
"It discovers the components automatically, which is a fantastic thing. The discovery works in an automatic way, and it has a dynamic way of discovering the components, assets, and applications. It doesn't require any manual intervention."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"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."
"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 is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."
"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."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."
 

Cons

"The solution should be more user-friendly and offer a better user interface."
"It lacks certain details that other products do better, like granular access and better application monitoring."
"Then there is also an issue with capacity and limited space. That is something that needs to be improved."
"All of the areas of reporting are very bad and need to be improved."
"The solution should have more tools for monitoring the cloud engine versus on-premise."
"The price could be improved."
"On-prem network monitoring is something that could be improved drastically."
"SCOM needs to improve its usability."
"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."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."
"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"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."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"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."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Event Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
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

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, BMC Helix, IBM and others in Event Monitoring. Updated: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.