Grafana Enterprise Stack vs SolarWinds AppOptics comparison

Grafana Labs and SolarWinds are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Grafana Labs is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.6, while SolarWinds is ranked #62. Grafana Labs holds a 0.9% mindshare in IM, compared to SolarWinds’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Grafana Labs users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Grafana Enterprise Stack

Read 14 Grafana Enterprise Stack reviews

2,518 Views
2,493 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SolarWinds AppOptics

Read 9 SolarWinds AppOptics reviews

3,341 Views
1,737 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Grafana Enterprise Stack

SolarWinds AppOptics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

SolarWinds AppOptics and Grafana Enterprise Stack are competing products in application monitoring and data visualization. Grafana Enterprise Stack appears to have the upper hand due to its robust features and enhanced visual insights.

Features: SolarWinds AppOptics provides seamless infrastructure and application monitoring. It ensures granular visibility into system performance and offers custom metric options. Grafana Enterprise Stack excels in data visualization capabilities, integrates with various data sources, and allows extensive flexibility in metric analysis.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds AppOptics could enhance its data visualization features, expand integration with more data sources, and improve the customization of monitoring dashboards. Grafana Enterprise Stack might work on simplifying its initial setup process, reducing the learning curve, and providing more straightforward documentation for better user accessibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds AppOptics offers an easy setup with cloud-based deployment and prompt customer service. Grafana Enterprise Stack, despite presenting a learning curve due to its extensive customization options, results in a tailored solution for complex environments.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds AppOptics offers a cost-effective solution with a straightforward pricing model providing clear ROI. Grafana Enterprise Stack, requiring higher initial investment, offers significant ROI for organizations needing advanced data visualization and integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. SolarWinds AppOptics Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. SolarWinds AppOptics

June 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

Grafana Enterprise Stack

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

20th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SolarWinds AppOptics

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

62nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (54th), Cloud Monitoring Software (42nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Grafana Enterprise Stack is 0.9%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Grafana Enterprise Stack	0.9%
SolarWinds AppOptics	0.8%
Other	98.3%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Rajan M

Test Lead at Calpine Group

Efficient monitoring and alerting enhance operational insights

With Grafana Enterprise Stack, we can identify issues that New Relic cannot help with. While New Relic requires purchase and supports frontend and backend components, Grafana Enterprise Stack helps identify where issues are occurring. When we need to deep dive into issues, we use New Relic to trace transactions and determine where maximum impact occurs, whether in core size, DB side, or frontend components that slow performance. We first evaluate with Grafana Enterprise Stack, then move to New Relic if we identify performance degradation, such as DB queries taking too much time. Grafana Enterprise Stack responds to queries within 6 to 12 hours. They contact users through email immediately when available. Similarly, New Relic follows the same pattern, responding immediately when requests are raised and resolving issues promptly.

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John Yuko

Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd

Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions

I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Grafana's full observability stack, known as LGTM, is highly valuable."

"Compared to other packages, Grafana Enterprise Stack is user-friendly and easy to configure quickly."

"The most valuable features of Grafana for data visualization are its ability to create intuitive dashboards and its wide range of visualization options like graphs, charts, and tables."

"It is truly reliable."

"The ability to graph actual, live, or on-the-fly activity is valuable; it is an added value to work with Grafana Enterprise Stack and to display results or logs, which are huge in nature, in graphical characters."

"Grafana's most valuable feature is its ability to provide a graphical representation of data collected from various sources."

"Grafana Enterprise Stack is a powerful open-source platform with robust capabilities in data visualizations, dashboard creations, and alerting."

"The most valuable features for us are dashboards; we can dashboard anything that we can think of, we can dashboard and measure."

More Grafana Enterprise Stack pros

"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."

"The product has a great dashboard."

"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."

"It's a solid application."

"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."

"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."

"SolarWinds AppOptics does far more than what an individual may realize; it is not just a SIEM tool."

"Customer service is exceptional, as they are very much in tune with our service needs and are always in contact for both enhancement requests and overall satisfaction."

More SolarWinds AppOptics pros

Cons

"I find Grafana really hard to configure. It's difficult to build the dashboard, and it's non-intuitive. In my opinion, it's very difficult to work with Grafana."

"I believe there are some areas for improvement in the product. Something that could be better is the time series functionality."

"The layout is good, but I think it needs some enhancement based on my experience."

"The connection between metrics, logs, and traces could be improved. Currently, one needs to ingest labels and timestamps for them to be connected, however, drilling down sometimes takes time."

"Productivity has been improved with the use of Grafana Enterprise Stack, but cost savings or return on investment specifics are not clear."

"The tool needs to show only fewer updates."

"The connection between metrics, logs, and traces could be improved."

"The solution should include integration with Power BI."

More Grafana Enterprise Stack cons

"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."

"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."

"The solution should be more user-friendly."

"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."

"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."

"The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard."

"We had a stability issue with a portion of the installation (Sequencer) when it was first introduced and have chosen not to install that specific function."

"I'd like to see the ability to use other internal instrumented applications as filters in the overview/aggregation screen."

More SolarWinds AppOptics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the tool's free license."

"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."

"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."

"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Energy/Utilities Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Construction Company

13%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Grafana Enterprise Stack?

I am trying to think about its advanced alerting features; we do not use it too much for that. We do get it to report through to our help desk system and if a threshold gets broken, then a ticket i...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Grafana Enterprise Stack?

I have switched to a different suite, focusing on customer edge solutions that are mostly Fortinet. To manage it, I use Grafana Enterprise Stack and a whole bunch of tools that we wrote ourselves. ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Grafana Enterprise Stack?

We use Grafana Enterprise Stack in all of our clients. I rate this product an eight out of ten.

See all answers

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New Relic vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 6% of the time

OpenText Real User Monitoring vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Grafana Enterprise Stack

June 2026

Download Grafana Enterprise Stack product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

June 2026

Download SolarWinds AppOptics product report

Also Known As

No data available

AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato

Overview

Grafana Enterprise Stack is a powerful tool for real-time data monitoring and visualization. With its flexible and scalable features, it is widely used for creating dashboards, analyzing metrics, and gaining insights into infrastructure, databases, and applications.

Its valuable features include powerful visualization capabilities, extensive data source integrations, customizable dashboards, a user-friendly interface, and a robust alerting system. Users appreciate its flexibility, scalability, and ability to integrate with different data sources, making it suitable for a wide range of industries and use cases.

Grafana Labs

SolarWinds AppOptics offers powerful network performance monitoring and application insights, aiding enterprises in optimizing operations.

SolarWinds AppOptics provides comprehensive tools for network and application performance management. This platform enhances real-time monitoring capabilities, offering topology discovery and hop-by-hop performance analysis. With a focus on minimal configuration, users gain extraordinary visibility into service-oriented architecture applications and are equipped to identify performance issues efficiently. The dashboard's integration capabilities streamline application performance data, empowering organizations with robust reporting features. The deployment is popularly on-premises, yet improvements are desired in pricing strategy and integrations with existing tools.

What are the important features of SolarWinds AppOptics?

Topology Discovery: Facilitates understanding of network structure and connections.
Real-Time Monitoring: Delivers current data to monitor system performance live.
Heat Maps: Provides visual insights into network traffic patterns and performance metrics.
Pathview Monitoring: Enables tracking and evaluation of network performance per segment.
Integration Capabilities: Supports metrics integration for comprehensive system monitoring.

What benefits and ROI should users expect?

Efficiency in Issue Resolution: Swift identification of network bottlenecks and performance issues.
Enhanced Reporting: In-depth reports facilitating data-driven decisions.
Increased Visibility: Comprehensive insights into application and network activities.
Minimal Configuration: Quick setup enabling immediate utility and productivity.

SolarWinds AppOptics is widely used in network operations within enterprises, also extending to server and application monitoring. Deployed to track servers and network devices, it aids in analyzation of logs and data across environments, and is essential for service management. Specific industries benefit from detailed deployment inventory and management portfolios enabled by AppOptics.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

1. Uber 2. PayPal 3. eBay 4. Sony 5. Red Hat 6. IBM 7. Cisco 8. Adobe 9. Expedia 10. Booking.com 11. Airbnb 12. LinkedIn 13. Twitter 14. Netflix 15. Spotify 16. Pinterest 17. Slack 18. GitLab 19. Docker 20. Atlassian 21. Salesforce 22. Microsoft 23. Google 24. Amazon 25. Facebook 26. Apple 27. Intel 28. Oracle 29. SAP 30. VMware 31. HP 32. Dell

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Buyer's Guide

Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. SolarWinds AppOptics

June 2026

Free Report: Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. SolarWinds AppOptics

Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. SolarWinds AppOptics and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

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