ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

ServiceNow and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. ServiceNow is ranked #39 with an average rating of 8.0, while SolarWinds is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.6. ServiceNow holds a 0.7% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

1,253 Views
1,203 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

4,708 Views
2,919 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and ServiceNow Cloud Observability compete in the IT management tools category. User reviews indicate SolarWinds has the upper hand with its pricing model and customer support, while ServiceNow stands out for its robust features.

Features: SolarWinds offers comprehensive monitoring, alerting capabilities, and detailed performance insights. ServiceNow has strong IT workflow integration, advanced analytics, and extensive integrations.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds could improve scalability, dashboard customization, and user interface. ServiceNow needs to address setup complexity, notification noise, and initial training requirements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds provides a straightforward deployment process with high-quality support. ServiceNow, while more complex to deploy, also offers robust customer service.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds is noted for cost-effective pricing and good ROI. ServiceNow, though higher in cost, offers satisfactory ROI due to its advanced features.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 2026

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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

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

39th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.3%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability	0.7%
Other	98.0%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

VinayKumar16

Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech

Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting

The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

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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.

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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

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."

"The UI is very intuitive."

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

"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."

"From a customers point of view, they get a good return on investment because they are not paying a lot of money when you compare to what they used to pay for IBM and other large vendors."

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

"As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best"."

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

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

"SolarWinds fit the bill because it gave many possibilities in monitoring with a good amount of out of the box capabilities."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."

"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."

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

"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."

"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."

"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."

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

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

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

"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."

"The product is expensive."

"The price is too high."

"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."

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

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

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

"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."

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.

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884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with LightStep?

There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering LightStep?

I recommend the product to others. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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 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

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

February 2026

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

February 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

LightStep

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

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

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 2026

Free Report: ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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