AWS Auto Scaling vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

AWS Auto Scaling vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

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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

AWS Auto Scaling

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

15th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS Auto Scaling is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
AWS Auto Scaling	0.4%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.3%
Other	98.3%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Ishaka Michael Efe

DevOps Engineer Intern at HNG Tech

Automation has simplified traffic management and improved workload efficiency

I'm not really sure what improvements I would want to see in AWS Auto Scaling because I haven't really used it extensively or explored most of it. To the extent that I've used it so far, I think it is very good. I can't really say for certain what should be improved because I haven't really explored it a lot. However, what I've been using it for has been very good. If there could be training for AWS Auto Scaling, that would be fine. If you could add more training on how to use it correctly and on the functions that I haven't used before or some people have not really used before, that would help. If there could be more documentation and training on it, that would be beneficial.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The automation aspect where you can automate it to whatever you want is what I value the most about Auto Scaling."

"AWS Auto Scaling is very good for managing traffic and creating new instances when necessary."

"The solution helps optimize the cost of the AWS environment."

"The solution's monitoring effectively monitors our application and CPU utilization."

"It efficiently handles traffic, ensuring we are not running expenses and the infrastructure is strong enough to handle the load."

"The good thing about Autoscaling is that it provides the capacity to minimize downtime. So, it gives you the assurance of stability and robustness within your system."

"The tool gives you the flexibility to scale up and grow. The solution is also fast to deploy."

"The health check integration feature ensures that the instances are healthy and capable of absorbing traffic, thus serving their purpose effectively."

More AWS Auto Scaling pros

"SAM has altered the way monitoring is being looked at - from just being able to monitor CPU, Mem, Disk and network utilization levels we have moved to the next levels of finding out process related issues, service related issues and specific application related issues to identify root cause of performance issues."

"We choose the Solarwinds based on the simplication of managing the tool itself."

"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."

"It is scalable."

"The ROI for SolarWinds products is unmatched in the industry."

"The OOTB (Out of the Box) implementation does have very good node specific pages and can provide a wealth of information."

"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."

"If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"Setting up the configuration involves too much work for the cloud engineer."

"The only area of improvement is the speed at which servers are launched."

"It has latency issues. It depends on the distribution used, whether it's Amazon Linux, Windows Linux, etc. Occasionally, there are latency issues, which might lead to slower performance."

"The solution must improve automation."

"It could be cheaper."

"If there could be training for AWS Auto Scaling, that would be fine. If you could add more training on how to use it correctly and on the functions that I haven't used before or some people have not really used before, that would help."

"AWS Auto Scaling's documentation could be better."

"The product could add more features for managing instances."

More AWS Auto Scaling cons

"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."

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

"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."

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

"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."

"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."

"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them."

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Auto Scaling's price is high."

"The product has moderate pricing."

"The product is expensive."

"AWS Auto Scaling is a pay-per-use and pay-as-you-use service."

"AWS Auto Scaling is a cheap solution."

"The pricing is good. I have not had any customers that have complained about the price."

"AWS Auto Scaling is an expensive solution."

"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."

"The price is too high."

"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."

"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."

"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."

"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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885,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Auto Scaling?

The tool's most valuable feature is vertical auto-scaling, which is easy to use. However, most companies now prefer horizontal scaling. I set up the health check integration to monitor CPU usage. W...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Auto Scaling?

I'm not sure about the pricing aspect of AWS Auto Scaling or the cost of it.

What needs improvement with AWS Auto Scaling?

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

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.

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 ...

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Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Download AWS Auto Scaling product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Also Known As

AWS Auto-Scaling

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

AWS Auto Scaling monitors your applications and automatically adjusts capacity to maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost. Using AWS Auto Scaling, it’s easy to setup application scaling for multiple resources across multiple services in minutes. The service provides a simple, powerful user interface that lets you build scaling plans for resources including Amazon EC2 instances and Spot Fleets, Amazon ECS tasks, Amazon DynamoDB tables and indexes, and Amazon Aurora Replicas. AWS Auto Scaling makes scaling simple with recommendations that allow you to optimize performance, costs, or balance between them. If you’re already using Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling to dynamically scale your Amazon EC2 instances, you can now combine it with AWS Auto Scaling to scale additional resources for other AWS services. With AWS Auto Scaling, your applications always have the right resources at the right time.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

AWS Auto Scaling vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor