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SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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
44
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
6.6
Number of Reviews
265
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 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 3.8%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk AppDynamics3.8%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.3%
Other94.9%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Shamim Alsharif - PeerSpot reviewer
Performance Test Engineer at TANIM CONSULTING, LLC
Real-time monitoring has improved our banking API performance and supports detailed business transaction analysis
The real-time monitoring is what we can see for anything that is needed in terms of CPU, memory, or the connections or the sessions related. It's real-time monitoring of performance of each of the components, which is what we need and use all the time. It's highly effective, I would say. Infrastructure visibility, transaction monitoring, to check the actual user experience in terms of the response time, MRT and all those things. We do the component monitoring like the API performance and the connections and all those things, but we also do the business process monitoring and business transaction monitoring.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The recommendations are a life saver."
"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."
"As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best"."
"Once we got our IT inventory organized and aligned with the business, we were able to leverage our Orion Platform to provide more than just a reactive-based monitoring service to the business."
"SolarWinds allows network administrators to easily monitor the network by customizing the pages to see what exactly is needed, in addition to the deep statistics shown for nodes and interfaces like response time, packet loss, interface CRC, interface errors, as well as the rich graphs for all network elements."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."
"I feel AppDynamics is really unique, because I really want to check our loss."
"We can view the server activities, including issues in the process, with a single click."
"The platform is reliable in identifying the core system issues."
"We can see the customer's path from their computer to the backend systems."
"Technical support is the best thing with AppD."
"It gives me the ability to trace logs between transactions, for example, a DB transaction or JVM transaction from one hub to the other, so I can easily find out where the problem is or where the bottleneck of the issues lies."
"It is a stable solution."
"It is not a cheap tool, but you also save in manpower to setup because it is easy and fast."
 

Cons

"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"Stability-wise, we experienced some performance issues when upgrading from 4.4 to 4.5."
"The setup, implementation and use are clumsy and need to be refined."
"We are having a problem where one of our tenants has had issues with availability over the past two months. There is a lot of downtime for the SaaS tenant."
"In terms of improvements we would like to see, we want to understand what the battery consumption metrics are whenever a user is viewing. It would be really helpful for us if we could get those details levels."
"The solution's pricing could be improved and made more competitive."
"The price of the solution could improve."
"We have not had stability issues for end-users, but for admins specifically, the UI can be slow, since they can see all applications/nodes/etc."
"In the transaction naming features, for business transactions, we are not always able to tie a business transaction to a real user transaction."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"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 would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"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 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 solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"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."
"Pricing is based on the size of the deployment."
"We have a license-based solution. That means you need a license for each server you monitor."
"We have two different licensing models for this solution. One of them is the agent based model, which requires payment per agent. The other is an infrastructure based model, where the price is based on the CPU core. For the infrastructure model wholesale level pricing applies. All of the up to date licensing prices for this product are available on the manufacturers website."
"The license for AppDynamics is procured by our customers."
"AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring does have licensing cost associated with it."
"AppDynamics Server Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"This solution is not the cheapest but it works well. You will end up doing more work with a cheaper solution than if you just spent the extra money on a better solution like this one."
"The pricing model for AppDynamics could be better. You have to subscribe to a yearly or a three-year licensing, which isn't very handy. The solution is one of the most expensive in the market today."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business56
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise199
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk AppDynamics and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.