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AlertSite vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

AlertSite
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
37th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
API Monitoring Software (3rd)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (10th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AlertSite is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.3%
AlertSite0.2%
Other98.5%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

SandeepTarwe - PeerSpot reviewer
Alerting capabilities have enabled timely escalation and resolution of issues
In AlertSite, I was monitoring the kiosks and servers for JetBlue Airlines. The servers would trigger alerts if there were any outages or issues with any of the kiosks, servers, or the ticketing tool. I monitored these alerts and escalated them to the concerned team to rectify them at the earliest…
VIVEK PATHAK - PeerSpot reviewer
Offering reasonably good dashboarding features but needs to improve the application performance monitoring
My company uses Riverbed for application performance monitoring. I was doing research so that I could understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provide APM capabilities similar to Riverbed, which allows our company to get a packet capture of an entire session, and on the basis of it, we look at the application performance monitoring part. With SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, my company does SNMP polling, so it can drag an entire session, but it focuses more on availability, CPU memory, and server connection status. In Riverbed, my company catches an entire system, so when we deal with two applications, we have end-to-end app visibility. All the application monitoring happens through Riverbed. Our company's main problem is that, as of now, we have two different products in our organization, and we don't want to continue with the multiple products currently. I wanted to understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor already have capabilities like Riverbed, and if they do, then I wanted to figure out why our company should not go with SolarWinds and why we are using products from multiple vendors. My company needs to continue with either Riverbed or SolarWinds. I wanted to see which products are good for the organization and how much I want to continue with Riverbed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If there are any issues, it triggers an alert within 30 seconds. When it triggers the alert, we go ahead and check it immediately. The alert is triggered on a real-time basis."
"This solution has numerous advantages. It's extremely simple to configure. Either digital monitors or single-URL monitors are simple to configure and build."
"There are custom reports available along with the inbuilt reports."
"I found multiple features in AlertSite that I like. One is data monitoring history, for example, a history of the blackouts and the data. Sometimes, there's a glitch in the application that AlertSite can capture, and the tool notifies you about that glitch. It also identifies issues that could happen in the future. AlertSite is also a fast tool that you can use to monitor on-premise servers, internal applications, and even global applications. The data is available on a single UI in AlertSite, so there's no need to monitor and click on different applications or URLs. I also love that the tool is quite user-friendly, apart from being fast."
"The alerting capabilities were really helpful."
"The alerting capabilities of AlertSite were really helpful."
"The best feature of AlertSite is that it shows you a visual graph and also sends you notifications about errors, so you get immediate notifications about errors which means that your support team can start taking steps and more quickly make sure the site is up and that customer experience isn't interrupted in terms of using your system and your products. AlertSite is a very good tool. It's user-friendly, and you can see everything on the dashboard. Configuring it is also easy."
"I highly recommend AlertSite to other users."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"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."
"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"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."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
 

Cons

"I could use a few changes to the user interface."
"One area that needs improvement in AlertSite is the slow UI. I'm using the classic UI because it's quite user-friendly, or in human-readable format, but it's a little slow. It takes time to load all the monitors, so if that could be sped up, that would be helpful. The AlertSite support team also needs improvement in terms of availability. Most of the agents in the team aren't available 24 x 7, so if there's something you need to discuss, you need to tell the support team ahead of time to schedule it. Multiple times, when a case comes up during weekends or whenever my team is doing an update, support needs improvement, availability-wise. I use AlertSite for synthetic monitoring, so whatever is available right now is okay, but if I want to request a new feature on a website, currently, the UI refreshes automatically. I would like to have the option on AlertSite to configure that manually. The UI auto-updates every few minutes, so if I can control that manually, that would be helpful."
"Additionally, support from AlertSite is not at an enterprise level since it is not offered 24/7."
"It is not compatible with all of the product platforms that we use."
"AlertSite sometimes triggers false alerts or fake alerts, which needs to be rectified. When we see an alert and go ahead and run certain tests on it, the test always passes. However, on the main screen, it shows up as critical. Therefore, the false alert needs to be fixed."
"What needs improvement in AlertSite is the documentation, particularly the lack of documentation. If there's a specific activity you want to do, you can't even find information on how to do it, so you have to contact the AlertSite support team to assist you, and only then would the issue be resolved. At the moment, it's not easy to find or get full documentation on how to deal with different issues. You always have to go back to AlertSite support and get help. The documentation for AlertSite could be improved and it's what I'd like to see in the next release of the tool because at the moment, the documentation isn't complete, so you'll have to contact support, but contacting support isn't an issue because the team responds to you quickly."
"I would like the ability to get more data points with regard to some of the unique requirements that we have."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."
"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."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is high."
"My company pays to use AlertSite, but I'm unsure of the exact costs because it depends on how many monitors you have."
"We purchased the license once and had the option of selecting the number of user licenses."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"The price is too high."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlertSite?
I would rate the pricing aspects of AlertSite as nine out of ten, indicating it is good or low-priced.
What needs improvement with AlertSite?
SmartBear, as a vendor, is focusing more on API management and testing rather than monitoring. AlertSite could benefit from more future-focused innovation, especially with competencies in generativ...
What is your primary use case for AlertSite?
I have been working with the AlertSite ( /products/alertsite-reviews ) product since 2019. Within our organization, specifically one service unit at one of the Big Four firms, this product has been...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, Payless ShoeSource, Hilton Inc., StubHub, Symantec, Newegg, Sapient, AstraZeneca, Dell, Quest Diagnostics
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about AlertSite vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.