Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Google and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Google is ranked #27 with an average rating of 8.0, while SolarWinds is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.4. Google holds a 1.1% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Google Cloud's operations s...

Read 10 Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) reviews

2,327 Views
1,462 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

3,263 Views
2,160 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Google Cloud's operations s...

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Google Cloud’s operations suite are two leading solutions for server and application monitoring. SolarWinds has the upper hand in ease of use and cost-efficiency, while Google Cloud's operations suite offers advanced features and integration capabilities.

Features: Users value SolarWinds for its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, pre-configured alert options, and ease of use. Google Cloud's operations suite is favored for its seamless integration with other Google Cloud services, advanced analytics, and deeper operational insights.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds needs modern and customizable dashboards, better scalability in larger environments, and enhanced user experience. Google Cloud's operations suite could improve multi-cloud support, clarify pricing structures, and simplify the setup process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds is praised for quick deployment and responsive customer support, resulting in a smooth implementation experience. Google Cloud’s operations suite, with a steeper learning curve and complex setup process, offers comprehensive support and detailed documentation.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds is recognized for competitive pricing and a positive ROI, making it a cost-effective solution. Google Cloud's operations suite, while costlier, is viewed as a justified investment due to its extensive capabilities and superior ROI from sophisticated analytics and integration benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

June 2025

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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

Google Cloud's operations s...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

27th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (31st), Cloud Monitoring Software (21st)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (12th), Active Directory Management (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 1.1%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Anand_Patel

Senior Technical Architect at T-Systems International GmbH

Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations

As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or BigQuery can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings.

Read full review

Carlos Camargo

Senior Operations Manager at Sencinet

Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process

One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

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

"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."

"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"

"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."

"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."

"It's easy to use."

"Google's technical support is very good."

"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."

"The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) pros

"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."

"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."

"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."

"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."

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

"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."

"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."

"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."

"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver."

"The logging functionality could be better."

"It could be more stable."

"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."

"The process of logging analytics can be improved"

"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."

"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) cons

"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."

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

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

"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."

"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."

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

"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."

"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."

"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."

"The cost could be lower."

"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."

"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."

"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

"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."

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

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Educational Organization

26%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?

If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analytics can be improved.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?

I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly use it.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Google Stackdriver?

The Ops Agent and logging transport feature of the solution have had a major impact on improving application performance. The solution also allows the transport of logs into log buckets, which is h...

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 Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS X-Ray vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)

Compared 29% of the time

Datadog vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)

Compared 20% of the time

New Relic vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)

Compared 6% of the time

Prometheus Group vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)

Compared 5% of the time

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Competitors

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 19% of the time

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 18% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 10% of the time

Prometheus Group vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

June 2025

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) report

Download Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

May 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Real-time log management and analysis

Cloud Logging is a fully managed service that performs at scale and can ingest application and platform log data, as well as custom log data from GKE environments, VMs, and other services inside and outside of Google Cloud. Get advanced performance, troubleshooting, security, and business insights with Log Analytics, integrating the power of BigQuery into Cloud Logging.

Built-in metrics observability at scale

Cloud Monitoring provides visibility into the performance, uptime, and overall health of cloud-powered applications. Collect metrics, events, and metadata from Google Cloud services, hosted uptime probes, application instrumentation, and a variety of common application components. Visualize this data on charts and dashboards and create alerts so you are notified when metrics are outside of expected ranges.

Stand-alone managed service for running and scaling Prometheus

Managed Service for Prometheus is a fully managed Prometheus-compatible monitoring solution, built on top of the same globally scalable data store as Cloud Monitoring. Keep your existing visualization, analysis, and alerting services, as this data can be queried with PromQL or Cloud Monitoring.

Monitor and improve your application's performance

Application Performance Management (APM) combines the monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities of Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring with Cloud Trace and Cloud Profiler to help you reduce latency and cost so you can run more efficient applications.

Google

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

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

June 2025

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