Google Cloud&#39;s operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

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

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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 (29th), Cloud Monitoring Software (20th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 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 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, 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

"It's easy to use."

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

"I like the monitoring feature."

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

"We find the solution to be stable."

"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"

"Google's technical support is very good."

"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."

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

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."

"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."

"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 for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."

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

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."

"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."

"It could be more stable."

"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."

"The process of logging analytics can be improved"

"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."

"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."

"Mapping interactions between systems."

"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."

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

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

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost could be lower."

"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."

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

"The price is too high."

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

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

"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 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."

"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

"The product is expensive."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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859,957 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Educational Organization

19%

Computer Software Company

11%

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.

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.

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...

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

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

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.

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...

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

Comparisons

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

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

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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 6% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

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

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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

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