No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Honeycomb Enterprise vs SolarWinds AppOptics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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

Honeycomb Enterprise
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
20th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
AI Code Assistants (8th), AI Observability (19th)
SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
55th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (61st), Cloud Monitoring Software (44th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Honeycomb Enterprise is 1.1%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Honeycomb Enterprise1.1%
SolarWinds AppOptics0.8%
Other98.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

MukeshSharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at Qualys
Tracing microservices has exposed gaps in visibility but has provided high-cardinality insights
I have used better tools, I would say. I would not say that I prefer Honeycomb Enterprise as much. I have used Dynatrace, and I found it more comprehensive, and AppDynamics and other tools. These tools can also provide good information, but I find other tools better. Most of the products, I would say, such as Dynatrace or AppDynamics or New Relic, are targeting this microservices market. I think Honeycomb Enterprise can have something very dedicated for microservices because there is an explosion in the migration from monolithic to microservices. If Honeycomb Enterprise can create a stable solution which is easy to use and which gives additional value and helps for faster debugging with microservices, they can certainly gain market share from others. Tracing is already there. I just wish that these tools are a bit less cryptic. These tools sometimes get quite cryptic for new users. The less cryptic they can be made, that can help these tools. Another thing is that for microservices, when you have multiple microservices installed, that is also required. There are tools where you install on a single microservice, but then these microservices interact with multiple microservices. That kind of picture, I have seen that in AppDynamics; they do give a picture showing that a particular request which arrived here had interaction with these other third-party services or microservices and databases. That is what we need. That is what performance engineers and SREs need to see for each request, where it spent the entire time; how many other services or databases it interacted with and what took more or less time, and if there is a sequence, it should highlight that also. Was it parallel or if, for instance, a call to service A and then a call was made to a database, or a call to service A and a database were in parallel, that kind of information.
John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From a pros perspective, Honeycomb Enterprise could be a better candidate with high cardinality; when there are too many unique values, Honeycomb Enterprise could be more beneficial there."
"The most valuable feature of Honeycomb Enterprise for me is the root cause analysis part because it helps me greatly with the response messages and derived error messages which are very clearly mentioned in Honeycomb Enterprise logs."
"It's very scalable since we used it for a really big organization and it worked."
"Honeycomb Enterprise has positively impacted our organization by providing live alerts."
"From a pros perspective, Honeycomb Enterprise could be a better candidate with high cardinality; when there are too many unique values, Honeycomb Enterprise could be more beneficial there."
"The approach offers significant benefits in terms of efficiency, consistency, and proactive security management, particularly valuable for organizations with large, distributed development teams."
"The biggest return on investment with Honeycomb Enterprise is being able to find, if I am doing production support and something goes wrong, the exact scenario or the exact request and response and the details of that really quickly."
"The solution's most valuable features are the queries for the OpenTelemetry events and all the tracing."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"It's a solid application."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
 

Cons

"I rate Honeycomb Enterprise a seven out of ten because I feel a lot of the journeys could be made cleaner."
"However, the reason it's only five is because it's lagging behind in terms of AI-compatible features."
"The process of log scraping gets delayed on Honeycomb.io. At times, it gives false alerts to the application team."
"Regarding other aspects, I cannot comment fully because we only use that particular part for tracing the particular threads as per the issues and there are multiple issues in which we have not used it."
"On the negative side, dashboarding is not that great."
"Scaling was tricky as the pricing did not accommodate the scale initially as things grew, and throttling is expected based on the pricing models, but the biggest pain point was management or budgeting having to argue on why this was useful to upgrade to the newest pricing."
"I have used better tools, I would say. I would not say that I prefer Honeycomb Enterprise as much."
"I have used better tools, I would say. I would not say that I prefer Honeycomb Enterprise as much."
"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."
"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."
"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"Because of its inability to monitor mobile solutions, I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
"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."
"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?
The only complaint I have is that even though we are on a paid tier where we are paying one hundred thirty dollars per month, we are still lacking the amount of ingestion we have to do. It counts e...
What is your primary use case for Honeycomb.io?
I received information from your team regarding a peer review of Honeycomb Enterprise. As an observability engineer using Honeycomb Enterprise extensively, I can provide substantial input. My prima...
What advice do you have for others considering Honeycomb.io?
In those scenarios where you are not getting the complete data to the customer, it will cap the data to one megabyte. For tracing solution, definitely, I will always suggest Honeycomb Enterprise is...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Grit
AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clover Health, Eaze, Intercom, Fender
TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
Find out what your peers are saying about Honeycomb Enterprise vs. SolarWinds AppOptics and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.