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DX Unified Infrastructure Management vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

DX Unified Infrastructure M...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
20th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (55th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (36th), Cloud Monitoring Software (29th), AIOps (23rd)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (19th), Active Directory Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of DX Unified Infrastructure Management is 3.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.9%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor2.9%
DX Unified Infrastructure Management3.4%
Other93.7%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

ON
Solution Architect at SA Consulting
Helps us provide visibility into network performance, capacity planning, and cost analysis
Better support and more accessible resources are crucial. Customers have expressed that support is not as flexible, and it is difficult to obtain necessary information quickly. Customers would benefit from improved training material for integration with other products. The solution's pricing is high and needs to be reconsidered, and the technical support should improve to provide more accessible and open information.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to monitor any platform. We have Windows, Linux, AIX, and mainframe all being monitored with the same UIM infrastructure."
"One of the most valuable features would be the out-of-the-box capability; it's extremely capable from day one, not a lot of customization is required in order to implement it within your environment, and I think that's just a huge resource win from a time-measurement perspective."
"It has a good learning curve for someone even if he doesn't have experience with server monitoring tools."
"We have seen, over the last 4 or 5 years, about a 30% decrease in escalations in crisis management, less severity events because we are trending and tracking against thresholds so we get early warning alerts."
"Nimsoft shines like the sun compared to ProactiveNet with night and day differences in stability, scalability, functionality, features, and quality of support."
"We are using it to monitor all of our infrastructure, network devices, and applications across our datacenters in Europe, Americas, Mexico, and Asia."
"Basically, the most valuable feature for us is that the dashboard is easy to use as it aggregates all data."
"Latest version of tool comes integrated with Jaspersoft reporting solution, giving excellent reports."
"I have found the visibility into server health with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor very beneficial, which we use on a daily basis."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"SolarWinds is one of the best products on the market and if they eventually support the IBM Mainframe then it will be perfect."
"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 solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"SolarWinds SAM is very stable, and we are using it with hundreds or thousands of customers and there are no stability issues."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"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."
 

Cons

"I would like to see them improve integrations with other CA products to use the data on dashboards and more widgets on UIM dashboards."
"Being able to report on the monitoring configurations and find out where you differentiate from standards. If I've deployed 500 probes to monitor Oracle, and I want to know that they're all monitored the same, I have no way to do that now."
"There is also room for improvement in the reporting. It is not really good enough, according to our customers. So what we now usually do is use Power BI to get them the kinds of reports they want."
"Administration interface, in particular the infrastructure manager. The event console could also use a make-over."
"There are a few areas for improvement, but I would have to say some of the Java content is a little buggy and would definitely like to see continued upgrades and improvements in the GUI."
"Cloud vendors have expanded their services and features and functions within their own platforms. Having to rely on a third-party to keep pace with that development cycle has proven rather disappointing."
"Maybe a little bit more on the reporting side. It does integrate with a product called iReport, but that's very cumbersome to use."
"Usually it's reliability issues. Some of the components don't always function as intended, or don't function as you would think they should."
"I had some stability issues. I lost my environment, but with the help of SolarWinds support, I was able to get back to a stable platform."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"We are looking into other solutions because it is just too expensive to keep scaling."
"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CAD $400,000 annually."
"Pricing for DX Unified Infrastructure Management isn't cheap at all. It's a complex tool, so you have to pay more. No one is happy with a large bill to pay, but if it's a complex product and you designed a complex solution to be monitored, it'll be your fault that you need to buy an expensive product, and that would be implicit in the design of DX Unified Infrastructure Management. Monitoring is just a small part of it. Sometimes you have to pay a significant amount of money for a complex yet very good solution."
"The license cost depends on the number of probes and robots."
"This product is expensive compared to other vendors (SolarWinds, ManageEngine)."
"The product-price ratio is better than other brands such as Fortinet or SonicWall."
"Reasonable setup cost and licensing prices."
"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 solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"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."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"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 product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
13%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise80
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for DX Infrastructure Manager?
We are an integrating company that offers DX Unified Infrastructure Management to customers. We help them set it up, do the integration, and provide support. Our end customers include financial ins...
What advice do you have for others considering DX Infrastructure Manager?
I would recommend DX Unified Infrastructure Management to others as it is a good and reliable solution. I would rate it nine out of ten due to its robust functionality and capability to support inf...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Infrastructure Manager?
The pricing of DX Unified Infrastructure Management is high and often a concern for customers. The cost is higher compared to other Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), which is feedback we hav...
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...
 

Also Known As

DX Infrastructure Manager, DX Infrastructure Manager for Z Systems and CA UIM for zSystems, CA UIM (DX Infrastructure Manager), CA Nimsoft Monitor, CA UIM, DX Infrastructure Manager
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBNCloud, IIJ Global Singapore, AT&S, AXSOS, Aozora Bank, HCL Technologies, IntelliNet, Securex
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Unified Infrastructure Management vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.