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Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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
359
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd), 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
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 6.0%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dynatrace6.0%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.3%
Other92.7%
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.
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 drill down from an alert into a problem and pinpoint the source of an issue saves my client teams hours of time."
"Once we figured out there is a monitoring system that can show us code level details, nothing came closer."
"From the monitoring perspective, the ability to triage quickly is important, and the ability to alert and tell people where the problem is."
"Being able to offload problem handling and root-cause analysis, and get to the point analysis of complex systems is something that I have not seen with my eyes, and in this depth, in any other IT solution to date."
"Reduced incidents, as alert monitoring aids in quicker resolution of events."
"The ability to really drill into performance issues and help our application teams understand what is causing the business's problems."
"Regarding a single solution that could provide real answers, Dynatrace will help because it will give you a lot of data, based on what I've heard at this Performance 2018 conference."
"The proactive monitoring that we can do with Dynatrace where it is 24/7 on with all the user experience indexed and everything coming into us."
"If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product."
"This feature from Solarwinds SAM helped us to monitor and alert whenever the SSL cert is going to expire on the server to avoid any downtime of the services running on the server specially on ADFS platform where we have Video conference, Webex, Office 365 and single sign-on services."
"We choose the Solarwinds based on the simplication of managing the tool itself."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."
"Management Console - Managing service to each server enrolled in the Solarwinds is much easier. Using a web base console, you can control your service much convenient way. There is no need to login remotely. It save a lot of time and effort."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."
"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."
 

Cons

"The licensing part is complicated or not transparent. It is very difficult to assess the number of licenses for a prospect. You have to do a PoC, and calculating the number of licenses for two years or three years is sometimes very difficult. It also depends on each case. There are multiple types of licenses. Sometimes, you need only one of them, and sometimes, you need all of them. This is an area for improvement."
"Need better mapping to true business service rather than purely technical monitoring."
"There are lots of features to share information, but we need to learn to leverage that, both on the web browser and on the mobile app."
"There are a few problems with our Mobile App's Dynatrace Libraries."
"I also wish there was the ability to do alert filtering before it triggered an alert with PagerDuty/OpsGenie/Slack."
"Our primary wish list for RFEs or feature requests are additional integration options with ticketing systems. Although, we are able to work around it, 'ticketing' is not a core function of the product."
"There should be more visibility for network performance monitoring. There should be more metrics for things like 5G and IoT. That would be the main thing because they've moved more to mobile performance rather than fixed networks."
"A tutorial could be embedded in the system as it is hard for a beginner to start using Dynatrace straight away."
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"The technical support team's response time could be improved."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex."
"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Consider volume because that is where you will get the most benefit. Doing a point solution is not cost-effective."
"The pricing is not bad, but it could be better."
"There was also some complexity in the adoption rate of it because of how costly the licensing is."
"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."
"Our annual costs were about the same for both AppDynamics and Dynatrace."
"We license it for two environments, typically all of production and all of one lower environment, usually our staging environment. If there is a downside to Dynatrace, the only thing I can think of would be the cost. If it were cheaper, I'd have it in all my environments. I don't think they're charging more than it's worth, by any means. It's just that good software costs money."
"We asked for a three-year license, and the price was quite good."
"Its license is a bit expensive. We renew it yearly."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"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."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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 Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.