Chronosphere vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

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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

Chronosphere

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

33rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (33rd), AIOps (20th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (6th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Chronosphere is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.1%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.1%
Chronosphere	0.7%
Other	98.2%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Karthik Doreswamy

Dev Ops Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Centralized monitoring has unified alerts and dashboards for critical cloud applications

We can improve a bit of UI aspects. The UI could be made more user friendly. Sometimes when identifying the specific logs patterns and identifying what metrics and what logs are coming in, going to a specific log explorer and finding it there is a little difficult. It would be very useful if we could group according to projects and have that UI a little more user friendly. The user interface part was a bit confusing in the beginning. To make it better, I believe we would need some more open sourced or freely available courses on Chronosphere which would help us understand the platform a bit more. The team provides detailed walkthroughs whenever you get into that. However, it would be better if we could have proper video sessions or documentation which would help us understand the tool a bit more.

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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.

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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

"Integrating Chronosphere was pretty much easy coming from an open source tool and it helped us to streamline our monitoring and alerting setup across our organization, which directly impacted on the streamlining of the process as well as reducing errors and also keeping our environment uptime to a greater extent by those alerts and quick responses."

"The alerting features are good"

"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."

"The product integrates with Remedy."

"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."

"I have found the visibility into server health with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor very beneficial, which we use on a daily basis."

"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."

"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."

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

"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"Sometimes when identifying the specific logs patterns and identifying what metrics and what logs are coming in, going to a specific log explorer and finding it there is a little difficult."

"It's not easy for everyone."

"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."

"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."

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

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring."

"We are looking into other solutions because it is just too expensive to keep scaling."

"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."

"Having two places to build and manage alerts is not efficient and not all alerting tools are available in the trap manager."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"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."

"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."

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

"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."

"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."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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

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902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

13%

Transportation Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

13%

University

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Chronosphere?

It isn't very easy. It's not easy for everyone. It would be much easier if there could be a simpler version, like a data number version or an SQL version. It's hard to debug if you don't know the s...

What is your primary use case for Chronosphere?

I work as a data engineer, and we have many streaming pipelines. We use Chronosphere to monitor various metrics, such as how much data our pipeline is processing in each batch, the volume of incomi...

What advice do you have for others considering Chronosphere?

If you want to monitor pipelines and use something like Kafka or any streaming platform, Chronosphere is the best option for monitoring pipelines with real-time alerts. It is loosely coupled with y...

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 ...

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...

Dynatrace vs Chronosphere

Comparisons

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Honeycomb Enterprise vs Chronosphere

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs Chronosphere

Compared 7% of the time

Cribl vs Chronosphere

Compared 7% of the time

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Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Opsview vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Download Chronosphere product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Chronosphere provides a robust platform for managing and monitoring cloud-native applications with features like real-time observability, incident management, and capacity planning. It offers scalable, detailed observability across complex systems, an intuitive interface, and cost-efficient resource management. Users report enhanced productivity, improved collaboration, and better decision-making, bolstering operational capabilities and organizational growth.

Chronosphere

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive server, application, and infrastructure monitoring, focusing on integration, application dependency, and network insights through user-friendly interfaces and detailed dashboards.

With AppStack and AppInsight support, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers service management, detailed resource dashboards, and integration capabilities. It monitors hardware metrics and performance parameters, facilitating database and network insights for cloud and virtual environments. Robust alerting, predictive analytics, and capacity planning ensure efficient management of server health and application performance.

What are the key features?

Integration: Seamlessly connects with existing tools.
AppStack: Provides a holistic view of applications.
AppInsight: Supports widely-used applications.
SNMP Polling: Efficient network data collection.
Diagnostics: Real-time troubleshooting.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailored monitoring views.

What benefits should users expect?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Extends from servers to databases.
Transparent Control: Enhances visibility into performance metrics.
User-Friendly: Simplifies proactive monitoring with alerts.
Predictive Features: Supports capacity and trend planning.

Industries implement SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to enhance server utilization reporting, network configuration, and AV equipment performance tracking. They benefit from monitoring critical services across diverse deployment models, improving management efficiency and decision-making.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability