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Dynatrace vs SolarWinds AppOptics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 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

Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
360
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (3rd), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (3rd)
SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
55th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (60th), Cloud Monitoring Software (45th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 5.6%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dynatrace5.6%
SolarWinds AppOptics0.8%
Other93.6%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration
We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.
John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd
Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions
I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have been capturing all the information and evaluating whether it can be improved or not."
"The monitoring is very good."
"We have identified some critical issues, which are not available or recreatable in the Dev or QA environment."
"The return on investment is the cost savings in developer's time in troubleshooting, analyzing, and finding the root cause of application issues and coming to a resolution."
"The view it provides for default analysis is very nice. The way in which it showcases how the metrics have been captured and how lucidly that they are displayed. This is a good thing to have from a technical and non-technical perspective."
"From my clients' perspective, Dynatrace below the dashboard is very good compared to other monitoring tools."
"We can analyse problems more quickly, and detecting problems becomes easier with Dynatrace."
"It is much easier to deploy, maintain, and delivery of high value insights, which almost immediately lowers the mean time to value and resolution of issues."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"The product has a great dashboard."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"SolarWinds AppOptics does far more than what an individual may realize; it is not just a SIEM tool."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"It's a solid application."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
 

Cons

"When the tool ingests data from other tools, being able to correlate those with the existing topology, so that the AI engine can draw more conclusions in case Dynatrace does not monitor those instances."
"Configuring nodes and agents should be more like plug and play."
"We've installed it to help us with performance issues and we use it when there's a problem, but we find it difficult to get in to find out what's really wrong."
"Ability to better identify SDQ script errors would be helpful."
"They could spend more time and effort in creating brand awareness."
"A useful addition for known issues would be the ability to automatically perform certain activities as a first attempt to resolve issues which are creating a problem."
"One of the new features is "impacted users." I would like to see a rate of impacted users. For example, how long has the problem been going on: 100 users in five minutes. Does that mean that in 3 hours if we don't get this solved, we're impacting x number of people? Understanding the rate at which the problem is impacting people would be a cool feature."
"Pricing is still too expensive."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"Because of its inability to monitor mobile solutions, I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"We had a stability issue with a portion of the installation (Sequencer) when it was first introduced and have chosen not to install that specific function."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
"The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard."
"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be improved."
"Dynatrace's pricing for their consumption units is rather arcane compared to some of the other tools, thus making forward-looking calculations based on capacity planning quite hard."
"We found a tool that can be utilized by testing, DevOps, marketing, software engineering, and monitoring. Before, we always had everybody doing their own thing. Now, everybody's utilizing one tool, which is huge. That is a huge savings."
"There are additional Professional Services costs which ensure the solution is configured with meaningful names so you're getting the most money for your investment."
"There is a license issue where if we increase the memory we have to up the licenses. I was unaware of that going in. I thought it was scalable without all the paperwork behind the scenes. ​​"
"​A Dynatrace partner will always be willing to give you a trial. Go through the trial to see if there is a benefit for your company."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"Its license is a bit expensive. We renew it yearly."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."
"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise300
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
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Also Known As

No data available
AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds AppOptics and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,932 professionals have used our research since 2012.