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AWS CloudFormation vs SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
335
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
AWS CloudFormation
Ranking in Configuration Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds Server Configura...
Ranking in Configuration Management
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 6.9%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS CloudFormation is 3.4%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is 1.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune6.9%
AWS CloudFormation3.4%
SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor1.5%
Other88.2%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24
Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license
The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.
SC
application security engineer at Hyperspace IT India
Automation and consistency in infrastructure deployment provide a robust foundation
When it comes to the challenges with AWS CloudFormation, I faced a few challenges. One challenge is associated with large infrastructures; the template can become very long and hard to manage. Sometimes, the error messages during stack creation or update can be very hard to troubleshoot. Managing the correct order of resource creation and some updates can be tricky, especially with interdependent resources. If a stack update fails halfway and rolls back, it sometimes leaves the resources in an inconsistent state. AWS imposes a limit on stack size and the number of resources per stack, which can be quite constrained for large deployments. Despite all this, once we have experience, we can overcome these challenges very easily. Stack creation or updates can be slower than expected, especially with large and complex resources, and certain resource types or dependencies can add to the wait time. Nevertheless, AWS offers a way to optimize performance by breaking large templates into nested stacks. It's very capable, but there is room for improvement in speed.
AR
Software Developer at NOESIS Portugal
Alerting has helped us detect server issues across our environment
The alert mechanism is the biggest advantage of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor. The customizability of the alerting system is particularly valuable. Whatever devices are in the environment, whether EC2 servers or on-premises servers, all of them can be monitored using this service. I can easily find out what exactly is going wrong in the environment. The clear audit trail aids in troubleshooting and optimization. The tool is effective for detecting unauthorized changes across platforms.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Intune is a must and should be needed for this time, for this hybrid model period, and I highly recommend this product for employees, education institutions, or device management."
"Microsoft Intune's autopilot has been nice to have."
"Microsoft Intune is cost-effective, providing ROI through the time saved for support teams and people working with computers."
"I like the fact that it's integrated with the rest of the Microsoft products, so customers can manage it from their Office 365 portal or Azure portal."
"On the cloud, you can manage everything; you can push policies, maintain patches, and maintain security because everything interacts on the cloud and a VPN is not required."
"The tool's most valuable feature is Autopilot."
"The one feature we find most useful is the Mobile Application Manager; we don't give our users phones, it is their own personal phone, and we need to allow them to have access to the company data on their phone while creating a balance between their own personal data and the company data so that we won't be able to interfere with their own personal data."
"I find Microsoft Intune valuable primarily for its Windows management capabilities, along with its Android Enterprise and Apple device management for mobile devices."
"Since AWS CloudFormation integrates well with the AWS platform, it facilitates faster deployment. Building templates for AWS services within the solution is also straightforward, making the process easier."
"Scripting does what we need to reinstall something from scratch."
"Automations make it pretty easy to provision AWS, development, or deployment environments."
"By using AWS CloudFormation, I can automate tasks like creating VPCs and load balancers instead of doing them manually each time. The features I like most include improved scalability, resource management, ease of deployment, template creation, and resource provisioning."
"I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. We use it every day."
"The most valuable features of AWS CloudFormation include the import and export functionality, and pseudo parameters, which reduce our coding efforts by managing parameterization at the account level."
"AWS CloudFormation has automated the resource-building process, thereby removing the scope of human errors. We can tag the resources which help the billing process."
"AWS Cloud automation reduces the time needed to create AWS resources."
"The customizability of the alerting system is particularly valuable; whatever devices are in the environment, whether EC2 servers or on-premises servers, all of them can be monitored using this service."
"SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is a good-to-have solution for all customers who are under audit pressure, especially from regulatory authorities."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is version control. For example, if we began on the first of the month and we considered that as the configuration of the server, I could set that configuration as my baseline. On a daily basis, if there was the operations team that did, for example, server patching, the tool will maintain all levels of versions."
"The product’s alert feature is good. We receive notifications whenever some failures occur in the configuration."
 

Cons

"Cost is the biggest factor for us right now. Microsoft Intune and AD P1 together in a bundle is a good thing to have, but it is very costly compared to other products in the market. Otherwise, Microsoft Intune is the best."
"Currently, BitLocker does not support BYOD enrollment, which is a product limitation."
"The way the apps are getting deployed, the checkboxes for deleting previous versions are actually creating more conflicts than fixing problems."
"Intune's privilege management feature, while beneficial, is less intuitive than other Intune features, making it challenging to use."
"Sometimes, it takes time to synchronize the policies between the portal and the devices, you don't have a way to estimate how long it will take to deploy. You have some kind of gray area, where it can deploy in 30 minutes or three days."
"I know that their AI pieces are at the infancy stage, but allowing users to do more tagging for information would be an interesting thing because Intune also directly integrates with Azure. Because a lot of the devices are hosted with that, you also get a lot of tagging of user data and other things like that."
"I have not been satisfied with it, and I am planning to change it soon. There are a lot of updates coming from Microsoft that suddenly affect our security policies."
"Intune is not the most user-friendly mobile device management platform available."
"AWS CloudFormation allows you to use the code templates written in JSON and YAML, but not directly in Python. Adding this feature would be beneficial."
"The solution needs to offer better support to other cloud vendors."
"It would help all users if AWS improved the auto-generation of the CloudFormation file."
"Splitting CloudFormation into multiple formations results in changes to resources like API gateway URLs and Cognito pools, which causes issues, especially when trying to maintain consistency across resources."
"The Infrastructure Composer is not fully complete, making it necessary to tweak the code manually after generating it, which could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in the optimization of AWS CloudFormation."
"For a beginner, it's kind of difficult to set up. So, the user does need some knowledge in order to do it."
"There could be more tools for conditional outputs in CloudFormation. Although YAML syntax is structured and AWS has CDK, perhaps more validations could be added to make the work easier."
"The product’s support services and licensing models need improvement."
"Some dashboards I observed in Dynatrace are not available in SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor."
"The price of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is not reasonable, it is slightly on the higher side."
"In a feature release, they could enhance the reporting. However, we have not evaluated this part of the solution extensively."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"Intune's pricing is competitive. For example, the license of Blackberry's Enterprise Mobility Suite was costly, but Intune is affordable. It is included as an additional feature when you buy security enhancements for your organization. For example, let's say I have fifty users in my organization and all of them are using Microsoft cloud services, like Teams, Office 365, and OneDrive."
"I am not that aware of the pricing, but as compared to other MDM solutions, Microsoft is providing a lot of things at the organizational level. So, it is quite reasonable as compared to other MDM solutions."
"The pricing is inherently reasonable, as Microsoft leverages market insights to maintain the total cost of ownership at around ninety to ninety-five percent of what would be incurred in an on-premise scenario."
"It is reasonable for the features it has."
"We use Defender ATP and E5 licenses."
"The pricing is good because customers are not complaining about it."
"In general, pricing within AWS is relatively affordable."
"The tool's pricing depends on the page model."
"The solution's cost is normal, neither cheap nor expensive."
"There's no cost for launching any template using CloudFormation."
"The pricing is not notably high."
"The product is free."
"AWS CloudFormation doesn't have any cost because it's only the resources that you deploy with the solution that'll incur costs."
"AWS CloudFormation's pricing is cheaper than that of other cloud providers."
"SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor has medium pricing compared to other solutions."
"The price of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is not reasonable, it is slightly on the higher side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business124
Midsize Enterprise53
Large Enterprise167
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What do you like most about AWS CloudFormation?
AWS Cloud automation reduces the time needed to create AWS resources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CloudFormation?
AWS CloudFormation is free. However, there may be unexpected costs if developers deploy services incorrectly without ...
What needs improvement with AWS CloudFormation?
When it comes to the challenges with AWS CloudFormation, I faced a few challenges. One challenge is associated with l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor?
In general, I think that licensing for SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is acceptable, and the solution is qui...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor?
Some dashboards I observed in Dynatrace are not available in SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor. The dashboard f...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor?
I work only with SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor. My major use case is the monitoring of environment servers ...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
CloudFormation
SolarWinds SCM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Nextdoor, Coinbase, Expedia
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CloudFormation vs. SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.