SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

SolarWinds and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.6, while Splunk is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.4. SolarWinds holds a 1.2% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

4,008 Views
2,605 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 75 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

7,605 Views
4,183 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Splunk Observability Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor compete in the IT monitoring and management space. Splunk holds an advantage with its advanced AI capabilities and comprehensive cloud integration, while SolarWinds offers competitive pricing and strong application-specific monitoring.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud includes fast log searching, custom dashboard creation, and real-time problem solving. It is adaptable for complex environments, offering advanced AI capabilities. SolarWinds SAM offers robust application monitoring like AppInsight for SQL and Exchange, providing detailed monitoring of popular applications, enhanced data integration, and diagnostics.

Room for Improvement: Splunk faces high costs, complex configuration, and calls for improved documentation and automation. Its endpoint protection needs enhancement. SolarWinds requires better performance speed, cloud integration, and dashboard customization. Users report issues with navigational ease and dependency on Windows Servers. Both can improve third-party integration capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk offers flexible deployments for cloud and hybrid models, with responsive customer support needing better consistency and speed. SolarWinds primarily supports on-premises deployment and has a solid customer service reputation, though there are calls for faster response times. Its deployment process can be slow for larger architectures.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk is seen as expensive, offering robust features that justify its price for complex enterprise needs but raises concerns over scaling and licensing fees. SolarWinds is competitively priced, delivering great value for mid-sized to large organizations focused on specific application monitoring. While both solutions provide ROI, SolarWinds' pricing is more accessible.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

December 2025

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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

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.2%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.2%, up from 1.4% 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	2.2%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.2%
Other	96.6%

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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Dhananjay Dileep

Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Unified monitoring has improved end-to-end visibility and reduced detection time across apps

When we have too many detectors in place for one particular app, such as when I have created 50+ detectors through my account, the entire page becomes a bit loaded when creating the 51st detector, feeling heavy and taking time to load. Additionally, it throws random errors; for example, when we try to save one detector, it might throw some random error which is not even related, with something else being wrong, not that particular error, but the underlying root cause might be different. Sometimes the error is just "some problem occurred," and we are not able to point out what the real cause is. This mainly happens when we have too many detectors or too many alerts in place rather than a standard number. One more thing is in the alert rules; if we have a main general alert, and instead of creating a new detector, we are adding a new rule under one detector, when the number of rules also increases, such as when we have 10 or 15 rules under one generic detector, that again creates the same kind of problem, taking some time to save that particular newly added rule, and it might not save at times, just keeps on spinning. Those are the two drawbacks which I spotted recently; other than that, everything looks perfect.

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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

"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."

"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."

"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."

"The solution can be deployed quickly."

"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."

"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"What I appreciate most about Splunk Observability Cloud is the correlation feature, specifically the ease of correlating logs and issues to those traces to see where within the path of the business function is failing."

"The feature I find most valuable, is the data integration."

"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring gives us complete visibility without the need for storage."

"The most valuable feature is log reporting."

"It can monitor, get the data, and then report on the data."

"The Add data feature lets you gather any type of log and easily analyze it."

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

"Splunk's dashboards are great."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

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

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."

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

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

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

"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."

"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"To improve Splunk Observability Cloud, we need more applications to be included in the observability so that more applications can have agents to monitor them and bring that information to the cloud."

"In Splunk Observability Cloud, I notice room for improvement in synthetic monitoring. It does not provide output based on server names."

"The monitoring of workloads when using SignalFx could be improved."

"I would like to see an improvement and some innovation in the customer interface."

"Technical support is good but could be improved, particularly concerning the time taken for ticket resolution."

"The price has room for improvement."

"Splunk's functionality could be improved by adding database connectors for other platforms like AWS and Azure."

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

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 is expensive."

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

"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."

"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."

"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."

"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 like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."

"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."

"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."

"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."

"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 pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

No data available

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	20
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	47

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

What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Opsview vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Cribl vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Honeycomb Enterprise vs Splunk Observability Cloud

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 Observability Cloud

January 2026

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

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

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 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

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

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

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

December 2025

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