We performed a comparison between SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Grafana based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Grafana stands out due to its open-source nature, flexibility in integration, and visually appealing graphs. SolarWinds falls short in terms of stability, flexibility, ease of use, and pricing, although it offers valuable monitoring capabilities. Grafana's customer service and pricing are positively reviewed. Overall, Grafana is user-friendly and provides a positive return on investment, making it the preferred solution.
"This solution provides valuable insights into the health of our infrastructure in real time."
"It gives us the visibility we need. I like that when we add deployment markers or release markers, we know exactly when an issue arises. For instance, if there is an increased usage of CPU, we can link it directly to the deployment that might have caused the issue. It increases productivity and observability. We can now easily tell when a certain issue arises. It's way easier to debug because it can point you to certain things based on these markers, and we can debug easier."
"What I found most valuable in Grafana is that it has a lot of integrations and features that I need for data processing and visualization."
"Visualisation: It is easy to create beautiful, understanding graphs, snapshots to share the graphs with people who do not have access to Grafana, and templating to create powerful graphs."
"Grafana is a very scalable product. It's a really good product."
"Grafana's built-in integration with third-party tools, databases, and MQs is an amazing feature."
"It is easy to change and move virtual servers."
"It provides a graphical representation and it's clear to see what's happening."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"Setting up alerts via Grafana is a bit complicated, and alerting needs to improve."
"It is limited on the reporting type supported, which is important for managerial-level officers who want reports that are either general or specific."
"The solution must provide tutorials and guides."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"It would be helpful if Grafana provided more information and training on how to use Prometheus."
"The solution should include online support."
"There is room for improvement when using multiple dashboards because they can become complicated to keep track of and use."
"The service dashboard is very hard and needs improvement."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"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."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"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."
"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Pricing and Cost Advice →
Grafana is ranked 6th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 39 reviews while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is ranked 18th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 38 reviews. Grafana is rated 8.0, while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Grafana writes "Agent-free with great dashboards and an active community". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor writes "We use this product for base and application monitoring. ". Grafana is most compared with New Relic, Azure Monitor, Sentry, Dynatrace and Elastic Observability, whereas SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is most compared with Azure Monitor, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Prometheus and SCOM. See our Grafana 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.