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
19th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
AI Code Assistants (8th), AI Observability (18th)
SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
54th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (62nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (42nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Honeycomb Enterprise is 1.1%, down from 1.6% 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

"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."
"The solution's initial setup process was straightforward since we were getting enough support from Honeycomb.io's team."
"The solution's most valuable features are the queries for the OpenTelemetry events and all the tracing."
"Efficiency improvements in processes with Honeycomb Enterprise have definitely been seen, and the most representative example is that more projects can be handled than could be done prior to using Honeycomb Enterprise."
"Honeycomb Enterprise played a vital role in identifying the problems in the initial calls itself, which has actually saved us a lot of incidents and reduced customer complaints by almost ninety to ninety-two to ninety-three percent as per the data I have."
"The approach offers significant benefits in terms of efficiency, consistency, and proactive security management, particularly valuable for organizations with large, distributed development teams."
"Honeycomb Enterprise is effective because it helps teams quickly find, understand and debug unusual behavior in the complex systems."
"Honeycomb Enterprise has positively impacted our organization by providing live alerts."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"The product has a great dashboard."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."
"It's a solid application."
"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."
"SolarWinds AppOptics does far more than what an individual may realize; it is not just a SIEM tool."
 

Cons

"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."
"The way Grit architecture is designed and how it works, it is and may not become an alternative choice of code security solutions."
"The process of log scraping gets delayed on Honeycomb.io. At times, it gives false alerts to the application team."
"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."
"We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced."
"One challenge is that many things have to be defined manually and are not totally automated, while some competitors used for different projects or clients do have automation."
"I rate Honeycomb Enterprise a seven out of ten because I feel a lot of the journeys could be made cleaner."
"There are a lot many negatives that Honeycomb Enterprise is having. One of them is that it needs good instrumentation and instrumentation to work properly."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"I'd like to see the ability to use other internal instrumented applications as filters in the overview/aggregation screen."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
"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."
"The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?
If any particular issue is going to take half an hour for root cause analysis, by just getting the error code, particular HTTP status codes or response error messages, we can pinpoint the issues wi...
What is your primary use case for Honeycomb.io?
I was using Honeycomb Enterprise for checking the logs and for application purposes when we were trying to find bugs and errors in a particular application. We used Honeycomb Enterprise for HTTP st...
What advice do you have for others considering Honeycomb.io?
I have read about Honeycomb Enterprise's query engine and the visualization part, which is very interesting. However, those decisions were made by the top leads, so I am not part of that decision. ...
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: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.