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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
358
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (4th)
SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
56th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (60th), Cloud Monitoring Software (46th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 6.3%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dynatrace6.3%
SolarWinds AppOptics0.7%
Other93.0%
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

"The ability to create any dashboard that you want for different levels of reporting for technical people, managers, or even executive level. They can get a one page view of what the system health and performance looks like."
"The agent deployment is the most valuable. You don't need to do any configuration. You just deploy the agents, and it can automatically detect your infrastructure. That was the greatest feature that we saw in Dynatrace. If there is any database, it can detect it automatically and present everything to you."
"The Recorder for setting up a synthetic monitor is a really great tool for non-technical staff to be able to set up a monitor."
"The memory dumps, the tracing, and PurePath. All the tracing that you can do with the tool is, for us, our life. It's our daily job and it saves us a lot of time looking for performance issues."
"It helps developers fix old and new problems, helps businesses to understand conversions, statistics, and service health."
"For stability, our customers have no complaints."
"It used to take a lot of time to troubleshoot. Now, we can actually see the logs anytime we want. I can just find the problem. It has improved performance from a time perspective."
"It is nice to be able to deep dive and pull historical data."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"The product has a great dashboard."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
 

Cons

"We have had problems with our middle layer application implementation."
"The integration of the tools is getting there. It is still not there yet, because we still have to get a lot of tools to put together."
"Support for cloud-based environments needs to be improved."
"I would like the ability to export a user session into csv format. (I am aware that I can export a user session via a webhook)."
"It definitely needs HA, because we have so many applications that are dependent on AppMon that it has been deemed critical. Any downtime, it just affects so many users. So that's one of our key asks for the future."
"We need extended support for some of the agents, the one-agent technologies under Managed. We've got some old legacy platforms that don't have one-agent support yet."
"Graphically, it is not good."
"Make sure older frameworks, like PHP 5.3, are supported."
"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Do a PoC and see if you like it."
"Dynatrace is the most expensive APM that we sell, compared to competitors' products. The license pricing could be improved. My customers pay for licensing yearly."
"Setup cost is very low considering that it is an almost totally, automatic process."
"Licensing is a bit complicated for Dynatrace, and pricing is dependent on how much your organization invests."
"Look at the product and the product features, not the price. Too often people look at the price and turn away. Dynatrace costs a little bit more than the other products I researched, but it can do far more.​"
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was a pretty straightforward process. We had no hiccups."
"The licensing for Dynatrace is high. If you want to go for monitoring solutions, then why Dynatrace? If you have a particular budget, you can go for many other monitoring tools - apart from Dynatrace - and they can help you more and give more data than Dynatrace can. It's not worth the money that you spend for Dynatrace."
"The limitations I see are more to do - and maybe it's because of the nature of the job I have - but they have to do with pricing. It's a little bit pricey. It's a very good tool. It's worth the price, to a certain degree. But it's hard to justify when it's that costly."
"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."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise299
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: February 2026.
882,813 professionals have used our research since 2012.