SolarWinds AppOptics vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

SolarWinds and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #56, while Splunk is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3. SolarWinds holds a 0.7% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 2.3% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds AppOptics

Read 9 SolarWinds AppOptics reviews

1,675 Views
1,039 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 78 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

8,968 Views
4,753 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds AppOptics

Splunk Observability Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and SolarWinds AppOptics compete in the data monitoring and analytics category, with Splunk having the upper hand due to its extensive analytics and dashboard capabilities.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud offers robust analytics with capabilities like rapid log search, data integration, and highly customizable dashboards. SolarWinds AppOptics provides network performance analysis, application management tools, and a user-friendly interface for monitoring.

Room for Improvement: Splunk users highlight pricing, complexity, and integration with external tools as areas for improvement. SolarWinds AppOptics could enhance integration capabilities and provide a more centralized view of combined logs and metrics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk Observability Cloud supports hybrid and public cloud environments, while SolarWinds AppOptics focuses on on-premises and public cloud setups. Both products are known for responsive customer service, although Splunk's support response times could improve.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Observability Cloud is more expensive compared to SolarWinds AppOptics, though many users achieve a solid ROI through improved operational efficiency. SolarWinds AppOptics is viewed as more competitively priced, offering reasonable market value.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds AppOptics vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds AppOptics vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

January 2026

Download the complete report

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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

SolarWinds AppOptics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

56th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

60th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

46th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

7th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

7th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (7th), Container Management (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud	2.3%
SolarWinds AppOptics	0.7%
Other	97.0%

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

Taiwo Ige

IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.

Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact

Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

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

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

"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."

"The product has a great dashboard."

"The reporting of the solution is very good."

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

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

"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."

"It supports proactive management, enhances security, and improves operational efficiency."

"Initially, before Splunk, we had a long time to resolve issues. Now, with Splunk Observability Cloud, we will be able to solve them quickly and know exactly where the issue is."

"I like the fact that Splunk APM makes it easy to connect to the application database and run queries against the data."

"Splunk Observability Cloud has helped me reduce my mean time to detect, and we have worked on around 80 applications last year for one particular client, and since the MTTR has improved drastically, they have given us 245 applications, which is around 150 applications added to the previous number of applications, which is definitely a performance improvement."

"Once configured correctly, the analysis reporting the Splunk APM provides is better than that of the other APM tools."

"The dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are amazing, and if you configure them correctly, they are amazing, and it is quite fast as well."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

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

"The solution should be more user-friendly."

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

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

"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."

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

"In the next release, I would like to see more integration with other solutions."

"The pricing would be one area for improvement."

"This solution is difficult to configure and the instructions are complex."

"Splunk could be better integrated with configuration manager solutions so we can automatically resolve issues without human interference."

"The implementation can be more user-friendly."

"The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another."

"The solution's machine learning deployment is hard and should be made user-friendly."

"The clustering part of indexes can be more refined."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."

"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."

"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."

"The solution's pricing is costly."

"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."

"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."

"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."

"This is an expensive solution."

"I am not in that circle, but we are currently licensing based on our queries. That is working out for us. Previously, it was by volume of data, and now, we can store as much data as we want."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	50

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

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What needs improvement with SignalFx?

Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...

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What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...

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Comparisons

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Compared 13% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 11% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 9% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 7% of the time

Datadog vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 4% of the time

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Avantra vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Cribl vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Kentik vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

February 2026

Download SolarWinds AppOptics product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

January 2026

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring

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

Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?

Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.

Why consider this for ROI?

Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk

Sample Customers

TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds AppOptics vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

January 2026

Free Report: SolarWinds AppOptics vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds AppOptics vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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