SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

SolarWinds and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.6, while Splunk is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.1. SolarWinds holds a 1.3% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

4,410 Views
2,778 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Splunk AppDynamics

Read 260 Splunk AppDynamics reviews

15,142 Views
11,357 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Splunk AppDynamics

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

Splunk AppDynamics and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor are leaders in the application performance monitoring industry. Splunk AppDynamics has a competitive advantage with its deep-dive capabilities for application stack traces, while SolarWinds excels in infrastructure monitoring.

Features: Splunk AppDynamics offers stack traces, real-time alerts, and in-depth performance insights across environments. SolarWinds provides expansive server and infrastructure monitoring, including AppInsight for SQL and Exchange, but lacks the comprehensive application analysis offered by AppDynamics.

Room for Improvement: Splunk AppDynamics could benefit from improved async call tracking, better network monitoring integration, and a more transparent cost structure. SolarWinds needs enhancements in customization, speed, and the intuitiveness of its user interface. Both require improved integration with emerging technologies, with AppDynamics in particular needing to simplify its licensing model.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk AppDynamics offers versatile deployment, supporting environments like hybrid clouds but requires substantial setup and license management. SolarWinds focuses on ease with on-premises setups and is commended for integration simplicity. Both provide responsive support, with AppDynamics delivering more integrated resources.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk AppDynamics is a premium option with higher costs and a complex licensing model, justified by its comprehensive features and potential cost savings in troubleshooting. SolarWinds is perceived as offering great value, being accessible and competitive, though its costs may rise as needs expand.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk AppDynamics Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk AppDynamics

February 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

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)

Splunk AppDynamics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

260

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 3.7%, down from 5.3% 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 AppDynamics	3.7%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.3%
Other	95.0%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

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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DevendraKumar1

Technology lead at Infosys

Has enabled us to detect issues instantly through alerts and monitor every service from a single dashboard

Splunk requires significantly more improvements compared to Splunk AppDynamics, specifically regarding the licensing aspect. Splunk renews licenses every six months, which is inconvenient. It would be better to have a one-year license to avoid needing to update keys constantly, which can only occur on weekends, making it a burdensome task. Although Splunk is better for certain use cases, Splunk AppDynamics is broader in functionality. Specifically, I want enhancements related to creating dashboards not only for logs or minor services but also for configuration levels, allowing us to check configurations immediately without manually opening the entire code when exceptions arise—a feature I wish to see improved in Splunk, although it may not be necessary for Splunk AppDynamics.

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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."

"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."

"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

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

"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."

"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."

"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"The most valuable feature is that we can see how our end-users are interacting with our application across regions."

"The most valuable feature of AppDynamics is that we can see all query times. If a particular query is taking too much time, we can alert it."

"It provides everything into one view, so we can track information from one place to another."

"AppDynamics has a very broad range of supported technologies, and it's user-friendly. It looks nice, and it's easy to sell the solution to the stakeholders when we can visualize how the website is working. For example, where we have any problems through visual analytics."

"The business transaction that stands between multiple applications is proving to be most valuable."

"The features of Splunk AppDynamics that I appreciate most are the business processes, which benefit my organization by providing a bigger picture, not only of their own systems, however, how it influences other parts of the environment and how we are being influenced by other parts."

"I find troubleshooting is quicker because we can drill down into the end points and see which endpoints are getting critical. Visibility-wise, the micro details are easy to find."

"It is used to test customer behavior on a website."

More Splunk AppDynamics pros

Cons

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

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

"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"

"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."

"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."

"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."

"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."

"They are complex to operate; users need to know what they want during setup."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"The solution's user interface should be improved."

"The discovery is acceptable, however, users need to configure many things if they want good discovery."

"The only improvement I see is intercepting calls in a mobile application without injecting additional code. Currently, when instrumenting or monitoring a mobile application, it's necessary to release updates, prompt users to upgrade, and inject code into the backend. It would be beneficial if there were a method to intercept these calls without requiring users to download and upgrade the application. However, I'm unsure about the feasibility of such an approach."

"The initial setup is a bit complex."

"We constantly need to improve our alert mechanism because we get a lot of false-positive alerts. These are not real errors. In addition, for end-user monitoring, sometimes, we are not able to catch all user activities. Because of not being able to follow the user activity from the start to the end, we are missing out on the performance issues."

"The solution could improve by covering more technologies. For example, it does support .NET Core applications. However, it could be a bit better."

"I have found it sometimes a bit difficult to trace the transaction all the way through to the application. I'm not sure if that problem is on the database side or on the application side, but that would be something that I would like to be improved. The traceability from the application to the database, sometimes, is a bit of a challenge. If you're using AppDynamics, with the Java agent, for instance, you need to be able to trace it through."

"AppDynamics is new to the cloud and could improve its cloud services, they are following a monolithic monitoring approach."

More Splunk AppDynamics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"AppDynamics offers a yearly basis license."

"It is expensive. However, our time to recover has been reduced, and this product has helped recuperate costs and provided us with ROI."

"We find its pricing reasonable and competitive. After it was acquired by Cisco, we found it acceptable."

"The product is a bit expensive compared to other tools."

"AppDynamics Server Monitoring is an expensive solution."

"The solution is highly expensive"

"There is a license to use this solution. However, the clients pay for the licenses we are the service provider."

"It could be a bit lower, but looking at the scalability, functionality, and other things, you can understand why AppDynamics is so expensive as compared to some of the cheaper products that don't have that full single pane of glass they've got. Dynatrace has got three different elements that you need to log into just to get a full view, which is not so good, and because of that, it is a bit cheaper."

More Splunk AppDynamics pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	36
Large Enterprise	195

Questions from the Community

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

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

See all answers

What do you like most about AppDynamics?

The solution saves time and cost.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

Prometheus-AI Platform vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

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Dynatrace vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 10% of the time

New Relic vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 7% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 5% of the time

Grafana vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

January 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk AppDynamics

January 2026

Download Splunk AppDynamics product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

Overview

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

Splunk AppDynamics is a comprehensive performance monitoring tool providing end-to-end transaction tracking, real-time monitoring, and a user-friendly interface. With AI-powered features, it enhances operational efficiency and resilience by offering insights into user interactions and infrastructure issues.

Splunk AppDynamics excels in monitoring applications and infrastructure performance, offering extensive support across environments like AWS and cloud. It aids in application performance monitoring, end-user experience, database analysis, and proactive incident detection. Supporting Java, .NET, and other technologies, it provides real-time insights into application health, resource utilization, and transaction tracking, ensuring reliable user experiences. Challenges remain in UI complexity, agent-based architecture, integration with diverse environments, and documentation clarity. Its licensing model is costly, and customer support may be slow. Performance concerns exist in historical data granularity and network visibility.

What features make Splunk AppDynamics stand out?

End-to-End Transaction Tracking: Monitors entire user transactions for comprehensive visibility.
Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant insights into system performance.
AI-Powered Anomaly Detection: Identifies anomalies with advanced machine learning techniques.
Code-Level Troubleshooting: Diagnoses issues at the code level for precise fixes.
Business Transaction Visibility: Offers detailed views into transaction flow across all system layers.

What benefits and ROI can users expect from Splunk AppDynamics?

Improved Application Performance: Enhances system efficiency and reliability.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines monitoring and issue resolution processes.
Enhanced Business Resilience: Strengthens the ability to adapt to performance challenges.
Seamless User Experiences: Ensures uninterrupted service and user satisfaction.

Organizations in industries like finance and healthcare implement Splunk AppDynamics to monitor critical applications and infrastructure. Its capabilities in transaction tracking and AI-driven insights are crucial for maintaining system reliability, supporting technologies such as Java and .NET, and ensuring optimal resource utilization.

Splunk

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk AppDynamics

February 2026

Free Report: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk AppDynamics

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