Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Dynatrace and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Dynatrace is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8, while SolarWinds is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.0. Dynatrace holds a 4.9% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dynatrace users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Dynatrace

Read 363 Dynatrace reviews

45,567 Views
30,986 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

9,577 Views
5,363 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Dynatrace

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Dynatrace and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor are two prominent IT monitoring tools. Dynatrace leads with advanced AI-driven features and automation capabilities, whereas SolarWinds SAM is favored for ease of use and integrations.

What features are offered by Dynatrace in comparison to SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Dynatrace offers automatic discovery and dependency mapping, AI-driven root cause analysis, and full-stack monitoring. SolarWinds SAM provides customizable dashboards, comprehensive server health monitoring, and detailed application performance insights.

What areas of improvement can be found in Dynatrace in comparison to SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Users suggest Dynatrace improve its learning curve, integration with third-party tools, and user interface complexity. SolarWinds SAM needs enhancements in the alerting system, scaling performance in large environments, and customer support.

How is the ease of deployment and customer service of Dynatrace in comparison to SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Dynatrace is noted for its streamlined deployment and responsive customer service, efficiently supporting various environments. SolarWinds SAM offers a simplified deployment but has mixed feedback on customer service responsiveness.

What setup costs and ROI can be seen with Dynatrace in comparison to SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Dynatrace users report higher initial setup costs with significant ROI from reduced downtime and operational efficiencies. SolarWinds SAM reviews reflect competitive pricing and strong ROI through effective monitoring capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: November 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

November 2026

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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

Dynatrace

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

363

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (7th), Mobile APM (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (1st), AI Observability (3rd)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (7th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 4.9%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dynatrace	4.9%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.0%
Other	94.1%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Vinothkumar Sugumar

Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Unified dashboards have provided end-to-end visibility and now streamline API latency troubleshooting

I think Dynatrace can be improved in dashboard creation, as this is the face of a product. Although Dynatrace may have many things, new users typically do not know the whole power of the product. To onboard new people, it would be beneficial to provide template dashboards or suggested dashboards. Organizations working with microservice architecture will follow some templates, so suggesting simple, hand-picked features that are really helpful could make a difference. Quick configurable and customizable templates would be very useful. Whenever they come into the product, they can use this template and feel that their product is applied to it. Immediately, they will think everything is online and can improve easily. This base can be provided in template form. Since Dynatrace has a lot of features now, the AI integration makes it simple, but the product itself is very huge. To understand and utilize it, maybe it would be good to index the essential features.

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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of application performance."

"Knowing what services are impacted by infrastructure host issues is critical to the service we offer."

"The way it shows a problem on the dashboard is pretty good."

"Alerts monitors reporting and troubleshooting proactive monitoring system health and business process monitoring."

"Being able to have that visibility and that insight into what is going on for our customers was immensely valuable across the board from the development perspective all the way through to higher level business people."

"The stability for the solution is pretty solid overall."

"We are quite happy with the support that they have been providing."

"We have no regrets using Dynatrace; it's been a good experience so far."

More Dynatrace pros

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

"The solution can be deployed quickly."

"If a company would really like insight into its database utilization or performance and why their servers are slow or why the database is not giving a proper response, this solution will help."

"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."

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

"SolarWinds allows network administrators to easily monitor the network by customizing the pages to see what exactly is needed, in addition to the deep statistics shown for nodes and interfaces like response time, packet loss, interface CRC, interface errors, as well as the rich graphs for all network elements."

"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."

"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"Make it easier to define applications. E.g., provide an API for applications defined by REST services."

"Another area for improvement is that I would like the alerting to be set up a little bit more easily. Currently, it takes a lot of work to add alerting, especially if you have a large environment, and I consider our environment to be quite large. The alerting takes a lot of administration."

"Every time we spin up an EC2 instance, we have to slap an agent on it and that is more work. So, if it could go agentless, that would be great."

"It does not have mature enough dashboards."

"It needs improvement with proprietary protocols for the DC RUM part."

"I would like to see the same features as in the New Relic Insights in the dashboard. That is the only thing I want to see improved in Dynatrace."

"The other feature that Dynatrace should have is - from what I see in Dynatrace in our PoC - when you auto-upgrade the agents, the JVM or the application has to be restarted. But if you have something like an "auto-attach" feature, to attach the agent for the running process, it would not require a JVM restart. That would be nicer. That is a killer point."

"It often produces "false alarms" and cannot identify failure patterns over days/weeks that do not indicate concern."

More Dynatrace cons

"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."

"PerfStack can be made more effective."

"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."

"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."

"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."

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

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

"I believe that SolarWinds should spend more effort in reporting."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While it is quite good in respect to its functionality, there are few area in regards to pricing that they can look at how to possibly change. I have heard it's costly."

"The only limitation with scaling to cloud-native environments is licensing. It all depends on how many DEM units you're willing to license. The more of DEM units that you purchase, the more user data you can collect."

"The pricing and licensing are very expensive."

"The product is pricey, but it is feature-rich, which is why we probably haven't looked away from it."

"Dynatrace is very good and it's provided a lot of information, it plays a positive role in making your application up to date in the market. If you want to monitor some applications only, it would be cheaper if you did cloud monitoring, but the price benefit depends on the use case."

"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."

"Price (of the product) is a major concern for all the clients I work with."

"The product is really fast to implement and gives customers instant value. This is important, because it reduces costs on the implementation."

More Dynatrace pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."

"The product is expensive."

"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."

"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."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

13%

University

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	81
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	303

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

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Compared 3% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dynatrace

November 2026

Download Dynatrace product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

October 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Dynatrace is advancing observability for today’s digital businesses, helping to transform the complexity of modern digital ecosystems into powerful business assets. By leveraging AI-powered insights, Dynatrace enables organizations to analyze, automate, and innovate faster to drive their business forward. To learn more about how Dynatrace can help your business, visit www.dynatrace.com, visit our blog and follow us on LinkedIn and X @dynatrace.

Dynatrace

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

TD Bank, Zurich North America, Accenture, Macquarie, United Airlines, Raymond James, BT, Vodafone, Air France-KLM, TELUS, American Airlines, Air Canada, ADT, Virgin Money

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

November 2026

Free Report: Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.

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