SolarWinds AppOptics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

SolarWinds AppOptics and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds AppOptics is ranked #48 with an average rating of 8.0, while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.4. SolarWinds AppOptics holds a 0.3% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of SolarWinds AppOptics users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds AppOptics

Read 9 SolarWinds AppOptics reviews

726 Views
516 Comparison Views

80% 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

SolarWinds AppOptics

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor SAM and SolarWinds AppOptics compete in the monitoring tools market. SAM offers comprehensive monitoring features, but AppOptics has the upper hand with ease of use and advanced analytics.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides extensive server and application monitoring capabilities, including real-time alerts, detailed performance metrics, and comprehensive monitoring. SolarWinds AppOptics stands out with advanced analytics, broader integration options, and an intuitive feature set.

Room for Improvement: SAM users suggest enhancements in scalability, a more modern experience, and improved user-friendliness. AppOptics users recommend expanding support for legacy systems, improving customization options, and broader support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAM users report a complex deployment process and a need for better support documentation, while AppOptics users highlight an easier deployment experience and more responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: SAM has a higher setup cost but offers good ROI with thorough monitoring features. AppOptics presents a lower setup cost and significant ROI due to its efficiency and comprehensive analytics, making it more cost-effective and valuable.

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

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds AppOptics vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 851,604 peers since 2012

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

SolarWinds AppOptics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

48th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (50th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)

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 SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.3%, down from 0.4% 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

John Yuko

Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd

Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions

I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

Read full review

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

"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."

"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."

"The reporting of the solution is very good."

"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."

"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."

"The product has a great dashboard."

"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."

"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."

"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 most valuable feature is application monitoring."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."

"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."

"The solution should be more user-friendly."

"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."

"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."

"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."

"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."

"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."

"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."

"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."

"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."

"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."

"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."

"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."

"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."

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

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.

See recommendations

851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

50%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software 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

What do you like most about SolarWinds AppOptics?

The product has a great dashboard.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds AppOptics?

The solution should be more user-friendly.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds AppOptics?

I used the solution for monitoring servers and network equipment.

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 SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 33% of the time

New Relic vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 16% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 13% of the time

Zenoss Cloud vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 11% of the time

DX Performance Management vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 10% of the time

More SolarWinds AppOptics 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 8% of the time

Lenovo XClarity Controller vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 2% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

May 2025

Download SolarWinds AppOptics product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

April 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

AppOptics is a SaaS-based simple, powerful and affordable Infrastructure & Application monitoring for custom on-premises, cloud, and hybrid systems.

Your business runs on applications, and when they go down or run slowly, it can impact the business in lost productivity, customers, or revenue. To add to the complexity, your IT environment is changing, and workloads can be spread across data centers, and cloud resources. You need to monitor the availability and performance of applications and infrastructure, regardless of where they are, so you can identify potential issues early and address them before they impact users

SolarWinds

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

TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds AppOptics vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

April 2025

Free Report: SolarWinds AppOptics vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds AppOptics vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our SolarWinds AppOptics vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report.

See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.