Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

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 #20 with an average rating of 7.4. Dynatrace holds a 8.8% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Dynatrace users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Dynatrace

Read 350 Dynatrace reviews

26,702 Views
19,759 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

3,776 Views
2,681 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Splunk AppDynamics

Read 252 Splunk AppDynamics reviews

12,248 Views
9,676 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Dynatrace

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Splunk AppDynamics

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dynatrace, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, and Splunk AppDynamics based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability.

To learn more, read our detailed Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

September 2025

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Helped 868,183 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 8.8%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 4.0%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dynatrace	8.8%
Splunk AppDynamics	4.0%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.4%
Other	85.8%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Anand_Kumar

Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology

Provides a comprehensive view by integrating with other monitoring systems

There may be an issue since there are many tools like Splunk involved in network monitoring. From an IP perspective, Dynatrace is performing well. If they want to develop in network monitoring, they can, as it's part of their product line. It's not rocketry, so they can accomplish it. If I, as an SI, look at it from an enterprise perspective, considering the cost from the client, I prefer not to go with multiple systems, as they don't provide a complete 360-degree view. They need to improve on claims about being an enterprise system. The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.

Read full review

VIVEK PATHAK

Solutions Architect at Airtel

Offering reasonably good dashboarding features but needs to improve the application performance monitoring

My company uses Riverbed for application performance monitoring. I was doing research so that I could understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provide APM capabilities similar to Riverbed, which allows our company to get a packet capture of an entire session, and on the basis of it, we look at the application performance monitoring part. With SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, my company does SNMP polling, so it can drag an entire session, but it focuses more on availability, CPU memory, and server connection status. In Riverbed, my company catches an entire system, so when we deal with two applications, we have end-to-end app visibility. All the application monitoring happens through Riverbed. Our company's main problem is that, as of now, we have two different products in our organization, and we don't want to continue with the multiple products currently. I wanted to understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor already have capabilities like Riverbed, and if they do, then I wanted to figure out why our company should not go with SolarWinds and why we are using products from multiple vendors. My company needs to continue with either Riverbed or SolarWinds. I wanted to see which products are good for the organization and how much I want to continue with Riverbed.

Read full review

Gyanesh Rahatekar

Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd

Application performance management and error resolution improved with data-driven insights

Dynatrace has multiple functions compared to Splunk AppDynamics, so Splunk AppDynamics should add those functions, which are not available as of now. Dynatrace has a universal agent that collects all information related to their CI, and if one CI has multiple languages, then there is no need to instrument multiple agents. However, Splunk AppDynamics requires multiple agents; if I have one server with multiple applications in different languages, then I need to instrument different agents for each application. Splunk AppDynamics should work with Dynatrace with one single universal agent that works with all application languages, eliminating the need for multiple implementations.

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

"We purchased some coaching sessions and utilized those, which were very useful."

"Finds issues that previously occupied people for months."

"Some of the main benefits are being able to quickly identify when transactions start to slow or run into issues, or hiccups if you will."

"The most valuable feature is, I can quickly go to the PurePath and find the problem in the application. I can say that it provides me a way by which I can quickly find the root cause of the problem."

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

"The server monitoring is very accurate in this tool. We are able to prevent many critical Incidents."

"Dynatrace shows the customer path, common errors on desktop and mobile, and allows us to achieve faster page loads."

"With PurePath, I am able to find the root cause of the error or bug existing in our system."

More Dynatrace pros

"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."

"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."

"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."

"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

"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."

"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."

"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."

"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements. The threshold gets configured automatically, so it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"AppDynamics makes it much easier for us to detect problems or issues before they become problems. We have alerting on all of our business transactions."

"This solution gives us quite good insights that we might otherwise overlook, or it might take a really long time to debug those issues."

"It allows us to configure health rules so that we can, based on our own experience, determine when an application is behaving incorrectly."

"For anybody who is looking into enhancing or improving their application code quality, I would definitely recommend this solution."

"The initial setup is simple."

"It reduces the time to resolve issues and requires less manpower."

"The most valuable feature is that we can see how our end-users are interacting with our application across regions."

"AppDynamics' most valuable features are the response time of the business transaction modules, the ability to monitor multiple services, and testing and developing environments."

More Splunk AppDynamics pros

Cons

"I would like a tool that can give me a one page view of all the problems and issues."

"To improve in Dynatrace the log analytics, this is the first thing that has to be enabled."

"Due to the fact that you doing a lot, you have a problem with the learning curve. We're really looking for ways to make this product more accessible."

"Experience with relationship/account manager has been really poor, it does not seem to be the firm's priority to support their customers."

"The reporting could be better."

"Some of the analytics that you get in, e.g., a waterfall analysis of a web page could be clearer. A lot of that is not directly attributable to Dynatrace. Sometimes a vendor will implement a tag or JavaScript plugin that's named something entirely different than what it does. This makes it difficult to track that from the waterfall list, figure out where exactly that component is, and dig more into what it's doing. Dynatrace could probably improve a bit on that waterfall layout to make it clearer as to what exactly is there. It does a wonderful job of telling you what loads and when, but it could be improved in terms of telling me what exactly it is loading."

"We are waiting on the new features to see how they perform."

"There are some bugs in it. Sometimes things get hung just for second, and you have to refresh something. Also, they aren't necessarily intuitive, but to me, they're just going to get better over time."

More Dynatrace cons

"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."

"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."

"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."

"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."

"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."

"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."

"Mapping interactions between systems."

"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"An improvement could be if the monitoring was able to be summarized into something more clear and simple for people who don't have the technical skills on the database side."

"The configuration is tricky and requires a lot of tools."

"The product requires high maintenance."

"The tool is expensive."

"The infrastructure is not as good as other solutions."

"The resolution time takes longer than expected."

"The AppDynamics installation process needs to be more straightforward. Deploying the product is also tricky."

"AppDynamics is agent-based, so some customers are reluctant to install the agents in all their production environments. It would be helpful if they had an agentless version. It covers applications on the server, but the solution is weak on the network side. The agent is not deployed on the network components, so it cannot provide complete information about issues on the network layer."

More Splunk AppDynamics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a bit on the higher end."

"They could improve their price ranges, as there is no option for startups or testing."

"I think that the price is reasonable."

"The product is definitely worth taking a look at. Be aware that it is probably more pricey than other options on the market, but there are a lot of capabilities. Dynatrace has an eye toward the future and the computing and monitoring needs that we are gonna need for the cloud. "

"Dynatrace is an expensive solution."

"We have not fully been able to get the full value out of the product. It is expensive compared to other things that we have had in the past. Paying that much and not being able to get the full return on the product is a downgrade. "

"Pricing is still too expensive."

"Its licensing is complicated or not transparent."

More Dynatrace pricing and cost advice

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

"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."

"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."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"The product is expensive."

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

"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."

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The pricing for AppDynamics Server Monitoring in Africa and the Middle East is too expensive, so it's very hard to sell it to customers. If there could be different pricing or package for the region, that would be great. My company pays for the license of AppDynamics Server Monitoring on a per-agent, per-server basis. It's $700 to $1000 per server, and it's paid annually. My company is on a subscription model for the solution. On a scale of one to five, where one is expensive and five is cheap, my rating for the price of AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a two."

"The licensing cost is fairly high"

"There is no standard license instead, the license is adapted to the organization's requirements."

"I was not involved with the procurement of AppDynamic, but I believe it's expensive."

"AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring does have licensing cost associated with it."

"I would like more flexible pricing: A pay-per-use model, rather than just a fixed-price model."

"This price of this product is expensive."

"There is a license needed to use the solution and it is expensive. The licensing model needs to improve."

More Splunk AppDynamics pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

ITspe9886

IT Specialist at a government with 10,001+ employees

Feb 24, 2019

Compared to AppDynamics where we are still trying to get it into production, we had the latest version of Dynatrace in production within three days

Our primary use case for both Dynatrace and AppDynamics is for application performance monitoring (APM). The main reason for having application performance monitoring is, when we see something is running slowly, we can immediately look to see where the issue is at before our systems crash on us…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	76
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	289

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	54
Midsize Enterprise	36
Large Enterprise	188

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 yo...

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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 sta...

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,...

See all answers

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

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 are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and App...

See all answers

APM tools for a Managed Service Provider - Dynatrace vs. AppDynamics vs. Aternity vs. Ruxit

Hi Avi! It's great to see your thorough approach to selecting an APM package for your MSP company. Considering your f...

See all answers

What do you like most about AppDynamics?

The solution saves time and cost.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs Dynatrace

Compared 11% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Dynatrace

Compared 6% of the time

New Relic vs Dynatrace

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Monitor vs Dynatrace

Compared 5% of the time

ITRS Geneos vs Dynatrace

Compared 2% of the time

More Dynatrace Competitors

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 16% of the time

Prometheus-AI Platform vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Elastic Observability vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Datadog vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 9% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 8% of the time

New Relic vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 8% of the time

Grafana vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 4% of the time

Instana Dynamic APM vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 2% of the time

More Splunk AppDynamics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dynatrace

September 2025

Download Dynatrace product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

August 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk AppDynamics

August 2025

Download Splunk AppDynamics product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

Overview

Dynatrace is an AI-powered software intelligence monitoring platform that accelerates digital transformation and simplifies cloud complexities. Dynatrace is an entirely automated full-stack solution that provides data and answers about the performance of your applications and deep insight into every transaction throughout every application, including the end-user experience. By modernizing and automating enterprise cloud operations, users can deliver an optimal digital experience with higher quality software to customers faster.

Dynatrace offers an all-in-one automated artificial intelligence solution that brings together application performance, cloud and infrastructure, and digital experience monitoring. Dynatrace accelerates performance-driven results through operations, development, and business teams with a shared metrics platform. In addition, users are provided a full-stack monitoring experience with three patented technologies:

Smartscape - visualization mechanism that maps the totality of everything working in your environment and detects any casual dependencies between your applications, processes, websites, services, hosts, cloud infrastructure, and networks.
OneAgent - a technology that analyzes, gathers ,and unifies all business performance metrics throughout every layer of your technology stack.
PurePath Technology - code-level context and timings are captured from the mainframe to the cloud for all end-to-end transactions.

What does Dynatrace offer?

Dynatrace redefines how organizations monitor their digital ecosystems. The solution offers:

Cloud Automation: With AI engine Davis®, users can see the exact reason for problems and facilitate quick auto-remediation and intelligent cloud orchestration.
Application Security: With automated application vulnerability management, users can deliver applications faster and more securely.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Convenient broad visibility across your environments is provided with streamlined, automated infrastructure monitoring.
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM): Optimize your applications, provide better support, and improve user experience with a combination of Real User Monitoring (RUM), Session Replay, and synthetic monitoring throughout your environment.
Applications and Microservices: For complex cloud environments, Dynatrace can automatically provide visibility and root-cause answers. It can also monitor microservices.
Digital Business Analytics: Get AI-powered, real-time answers to analytical business queries with KPIs and metrics that are already flowing through applications.

Reviews from Real Users

Dynatrace is the only solution that provides answers to organizations based on deep insight into each user, transaction, and organization's environment.

Barry P., a managing performance engineer at Medica Health Plans, writes, "With Dynatrace, we have synthetic checks and real-user monitoring of all of our websites, places where members and providers can interact with us over the web. We monitor the response times of those with Dynatrace, and it's all integrated into one place."

A consultant at a tech service company notes, "A feature that's one of the highlights of Dynatrace is the AI. The second most valuable feature is OneAgent. Between infrastructures, applications, operating systems, you can deploy with just a single agent and can practically install and forget about it."

Dynatrace

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

SolarWinds

Splunk AppDynamics enhances application performance monitoring with advanced diagnostics and real-time insights, offering seamless end-to-end transaction tracking and infrastructure visibility.

AppDynamics provides critical tools for businesses to analyze application behavior and performance. Through innovative features like transaction snapshot analysis and adaptable dashboards, users can quickly identify and address issues, ensuring high levels of system uptime and efficiency. It is designed to support complex environments including Kubernetes and AWS, enhancing user experience by detecting performance issues early. Despite needing improvements in network monitoring and integration, it remains a robust option for tracking application health.

What are the key features of AppDynamics?

Real-time Performance Monitoring: Offers immediate insights into application behavior.
Business Transaction Tracking: Tracks transactions from start to finish for bottleneck identification.
JVM Memory Monitoring: Provides detailed JVM metrics and memory use information.
Deep-dive Diagnostics: Enables in-depth analysis of code and stack traces.
Adaptable Dashboards: Customizable views for better data interpretation.

How does AppDynamics benefit users?

Improved Incident Resolution: Faster problem detection and solution implementation.
Enhanced Application Performance: Real-time monitoring optimizes system operations.
Comprehensive Visibility: Provides a full view of application infrastructure.
Informed Decision Making: Detailed analytics guide performance improvements.
Customer Satisfaction: Enhances user experience through faster issue resolutions.

In industries like financial services and e-commerce, AppDynamics facilitates performance tracking across distributed systems, optimizing infrastructure to meet consumer demands. It excels in environments needing precise transaction monitoring and is pivotal in delivering high value and satisfaction.

Splunk

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

Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

September 2025

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