Apica vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Apica and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Apica is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.7, while SolarWinds is ranked #19 with an average rating of 7.4. Apica holds a 0.3% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of Apica users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Apica

Read 11 Apica reviews

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257 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

2,994 Views
2,085 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Apica

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Apica compete in monitoring IT infrastructure and applications. Based on user reviews, Apica holds an advantage due to its feature-rich experience and advanced capabilities, despite SolarWinds' strengths in detailed insights.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offer customizable monitoring options, detailed application performance insights, and comprehensive internal infrastructure monitoring. Apica provides robust synthetic monitoring, extensive API testing tools, and focuses on external performance metrics.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve in scalability, reducing resource consumption, and optimizing performance. Apica could enhance ease of use, dashboard intuitiveness, and simplify its configuration process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is noted for its straightforward installation process and responsive support team. Apica’s deployment can be complex and might require more technical expertise, but it also has a supportive customer service team.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers competitive pricing and is regarded as providing good ROI due to its extensive feature set and ease of use. Apica, though potentially higher in cost, is seen as worth the investment by users due to its advanced monitoring capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Apica vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Apica vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

June 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

Apica

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

17th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (18th), IT Operations Analytics (5th), Observability Pipeline Software (2nd)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Apica is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Punith H K

Senior Systems Engineer at Infosys

Enables users to create scripts easily and provides excellent real-time monitoring features

It is easy to create scripts. We don't have to write any script. Ready-made options are available. We can select, drag, and drop the options, and the script is ready. The solution’s real-time monitoring features have had a huge impact on our service delivery. If we have an application and the script for it, we keep monitoring it. When the script goes red, it indicates that something is not working. So, we check and analyze the applications. We keep track of applications and monitor whether they are live or not. The tool is also useful for monitoring cloud services.

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Carlos Camargo

Senior Operations Manager at Sencinet

Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process

One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

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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

"Apica allows me to record APIs easily and enhances scripts through options like auto-correlation, enabling me to access dynamic fields."

"With the ZebraTester, the ability to have and store dynamic variables, when setting up the monitors, means you can extract that value and use it in a subsequent service call. This is something that has made our lives easier... This is one of the features that I like the most because it helps us in configuring these services, in a certain flow, without the need to re-record the whole thing."

"The GUI is powerful and doesn't require scripting or regular expressions. It has a vast finder for correlation, which is easier than other tools like JMeter and LoadRunner. It's also easy to integrate with other tools with a separate execution environment. The tool is also easy to use."

"It is easy for beginners to learn and use Apica."

"We see the benefit almost every day. It allows us to be alerted whenever there is a store that is not responding properly around the world. We do have a network operation center (NOC) who receives these alerts, immediately checking if everything is okay."

"As always, within the IT industry, everybody's always looking to upgrade and update everything else like that. Apica has been one of those things but it's really hard to replace because it offers us the unique capability to see what the customer is seeing. A lot of other ones can do Selenium script and things like that, but there's a lot in Apica that we use right now. We utilize a lot of the scenario options in Apica right now, and there's a lot of other ones that do parts of it, but it doesn't do everything that Apica does."

"You can tell from the operational space of people who are using and consuming this data that they are more integrated. It is not dependent on one team anymore. It saves a lot of time by capturing and pinpointing the exact problem that is happening quickly. We have moved from getting escalations manually to getting escalations synthetically."

"I like the transcript download feature. And with UI scripting, it's helpful that Apica handles a lot of the backend work automatically. I don't have to tag everything manually, though I can tag elements later if needed. It's really good at recording the steps."

More Apica pros

"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."

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

"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"

"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."

"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 is application monitoring."

"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."

"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"Learning the tool has always been a little difficult from a scripting perspective because the framework is proprietary and unique. Once we became used to what it does and how to perform it, then it became easier for my team and me. I would like to see some of the testing steps be part of a more well-known language, like Java or Python. That would be a big improvement."

"There are some components of the user interface that are not up to date. Just to give you an idea, today we have web applications that are called single-page applications that are much faster than the old style of web application. If we can move faster into the flow of the graphic user interface, and in a more effective way, it will save us a lot of time."

"We could use more detailed information in the request and response sections."

"Apica is costly, and there's no way to test mobile applications through Apica."

"If you are adding any input file, the tool fails to capture the path."

"Apica should add more features and integrations with different tools and certain ticketing systems, like ServiceNow."

"Apica was a relatively new tool when I started using it. Although Apica had good documentation, it still felt less developed or advanced than a tool like LoadRunner."

"Alerting needs improvement. It's a little noisy. It needs some better options. Currently, they have an issue, when you set up a synthetic monitor, you can set up where it's monitoring from, a data center that Apica owns."

More Apica cons

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

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."

"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."

"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."

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

"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."

"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I know Apica is an expensive solution, but it is worth the money for the service it provides."

"The pricing is very reasonable, but it is not cheap."

"The tool is completely free and open source. I've been using it for about two and a half years and installed it on both my personal and client machines without needing a license. All features are available for use without any hidden fees."

"I am sure that Apica's price will be lower than LoadRunner."

"Apica is pretty cost-effective if you buy both solutions together: Synthetic and LoadTest. If you are going for one solution, the cost is on par with any tool in the market."

"License management is another area that Apica could do better. We have already had these conversations with our account teams. This is something that they are looking at largely improving in upcoming releases. I believe that this is already on their roadmap."

"The solution's pricing is not cheap, but it is in the midrange."

"The level of alerting accuracy has saved us time and money in operational costs. Overall, it has automated a lot of the manual efforts which have been more complex with some of our other scripting tools or monitors. So, it brings things together by doing things faster and saves us money."

More Apica pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."

"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

10%

Media Company

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apica Synthetic?

The GUI is powerful and doesn't require scripting or regular expressions. It has a vast finder for correlation, which is easier than other tools like JMeter and LoadRunner. It's also easy to integr...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apica Synthetic?

I know Apica is an expensive solution, but it is worth the money for the service it provides.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Apica Synthetic?

Apica cannot perform endurance or scale-up tests independently. It requires other tools like ALM. When editing scripts, only one can be accessed at a time, risking changes affecting other folders. ...

See all answers

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 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...

See all answers

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 10% of the time

Prometheus Group vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Apica

July 2025

Download Apica product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

June 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

Apica LoadTest, Apica Synthetic

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Apica offers a unified platform to remove complexity and cost associated with data management. You collect, control, store, and observe your data and can quickly identify and resolve performance issues before they impact the end-user. Apica Ascent swiftly analyzes telemetry data in real-time, enabling prompt issue resolution, while automated root cause analysis, powered by machine learning, streamlines troubleshooting in complex distributed systems. The platform simplifies data collection by automating and managing agents through the platform’s Fleet product. Its Flow product simplifies and optimizes pipeline control with AI and ML to help you easily understand complex workflows. Its Store component allows you to never run out of storage space while you index and store machine data centrally on one platform and reduce costs, and remediate faster. Observe offers modern observability data management, helping you with MELT data, effortless dashboarding, and seamless integration of synthetic and real data.

Experience the Apica Ascent Platform

Apica

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

Sample Customers

HBO, JPMC, Morgan Stanley, Xander, EA Sports, Volvo

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

Apica vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

June 2025

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