Honeycomb Enterprise vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Honeycomb Enterprise 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

Honeycomb Enterprise

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

14th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Code Assistants (8th), AI Observability (11th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (5th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Honeycomb Enterprise is 1.0%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Honeycomb Enterprise	1.0%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.0%
Other	98.0%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Ernest Nwaefulu

Tech Consultant at multi ideal

Observability has transformed how I troubleshoot microservices and reduce incident time

Overall, I have had a very good experience with Honeycomb Enterprise, but there are a few areas where it could be improved. I would like to see more out-of-the-box dashboards and templates for common Kubernetes and cloud-native workloads so that new users can get value more quickly. The learning curve can be steep, especially for engineers who are new to distributed tracing and observability concepts. Additionally, while the query capabilities are very powerful, there are times when specifying advanced query workflows could be improved to provide a better overall experience for troubleshooting and observability. Beyond what I mentioned, there are a few other areas that could also be improved. I would like to see even deeper native integration with more DevOps and ITSM tools to make it easier to connect observability data directly into incident management and operational workflows. Regarding pricing, Honeycomb Enterprise delivers strong value, but as organizations scale and generate larger volumes of telemetry, cost can become a consideration. More flexible pricing options or cost optimization features for high-volume environments would be helpful. My support experience has been generally positive, but faster turnaround time for complex technical issues and more advanced implementation guides or best practices documentation would make onboarding and troubleshooting easier. These improvements would make an already strong observability platform even more accessible and scalable for enterprise teams.

Read full review

NikhilKalwint

Technical Specialist at ServiceIO

Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility

From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

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

"Honeycomb Enterprise has positively impacted my organization by improving the way I understand production problems and significantly reducing the time required to do so."

"It's very scalable since we used it for a really big organization and it worked."

"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."

"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 solution's most valuable features are the queries for the OpenTelemetry events and all the tracing."

"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."

"The solution's initial setup process was straightforward since we were getting enough support from Honeycomb.io's team."

More Honeycomb Enterprise pros

"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"

"The ROI for SolarWinds products is unmatched in the industry."

"From a customers point of view, they get a good return on investment because they are not paying a lot of money when you compare to what they used to pay for IBM and other large vendors."

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

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

"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

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

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced."

"On the negative side, dashboarding is not that great."

"One of the disadvantages or areas for improvement I see is that it is very costly. My honest opinion is that its service is very good, but for me as an individual, if I am using it in a small app, it creates a huge amount of data and it is very expensive to manage."

"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."

"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."

"The learning curve can be steep, especially for engineers who are new to distributed tracing and observability concepts."

"The learning curve for things such as traces, spans, high-cardinality data, and advanced queries is an area where Honeycomb Enterprise can be improved."

"The process of log scraping gets delayed on Honeycomb.io. At times, it gives false alerts to the application team."

More Honeycomb Enterprise cons

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

"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."

"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."

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

"Scalability was an issue in the past."

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

"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."

"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."

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

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

"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 solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"The price is too high."

"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."

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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915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

13%

University

Financial Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?

What is your primary use case for Honeycomb.io?

I have been using Honeycomb Enterprise for the past three years. My main use case has been troubleshooting and performing monitoring for Kubernetes-based applications and microservices.

What advice do you have for others considering Honeycomb.io?

I would say that Honeycomb Enterprise takes governance and security very seriously. I appreciate that it supports enterprise features such as role-based access control, SSO integration, and audit c...

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 is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...

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Product Reports

Honeycomb Enterprise

Download Honeycomb Enterprise product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Also Known As

Grit

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Honeycomb Enterprise is designed to optimize performance visibility, offering a robust platform for distributed system observability. It provides insights for complex data and aids in faster issue resolution, making it a valuable tool for IT professionals.

This tool is tailored for real-time data tracking and improving system performance efficiency. Enterprises benefit from its capacity to handle large-scale data, ensuring seamless operations and continuity. Honeycomb Enterprise helps teams to tackle data challenges head-on by delivering comprehensive analytics that enhance infrastructure reliability and performance metrics.

What Features Make Honeycomb Enterprise Stand Out?

High-Resolution Visibility: Enables detailed system monitoring to identify issues quickly.
Trace Analysis: Offers powerful tracing of distributed systems for in-depth insights.
Data Scalability: Manages extensive data sets effortlessly for better decision-making.
Real-Time Alerts: Provides instant alerts to preempt potential disruptions.
Collaboration Tools: Facilitates teamwork with integrated tools enhancing productivity.

What Benefits and ROI Can Users Expect?

Reduced Downtime: Faster detection and resolution of issues minimizes operational interruptions.
Cost Efficiency: Optimizes resources leading to lower operational costs.
Improved Decision Making: Enhanced data analytics lead to smarter business strategies.
Enhanced Productivity: Streamlined processes improve team efficiency and output quality.

In industries like finance, e-commerce, and technology, Honeycomb Enterprise implementations demonstrate its utility in managing complex data flows and optimizing system reliability. Businesses in these sectors leverage its capabilities to maintain high service standards and operational efficiency.

Honeycomb.io

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive server, application, and infrastructure monitoring, focusing on integration, application dependency, and network insights through user-friendly interfaces and detailed dashboards.

With AppStack and AppInsight support, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers service management, detailed resource dashboards, and integration capabilities. It monitors hardware metrics and performance parameters, facilitating database and network insights for cloud and virtual environments. Robust alerting, predictive analytics, and capacity planning ensure efficient management of server health and application performance.

What are the key features?

Integration: Seamlessly connects with existing tools.
AppStack: Provides a holistic view of applications.
AppInsight: Supports widely-used applications.
SNMP Polling: Efficient network data collection.
Diagnostics: Real-time troubleshooting.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailored monitoring views.

What benefits should users expect?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Extends from servers to databases.
Transparent Control: Enhances visibility into performance metrics.
User-Friendly: Simplifies proactive monitoring with alerts.
Predictive Features: Supports capacity and trend planning.

Industries implement SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to enhance server utilization reporting, network configuration, and AV equipment performance tracking. They benefit from monitoring critical services across diverse deployment models, improving management efficiency and decision-making.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Clover Health, Eaze, Intercom, Fender

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Honeycomb Enterprise vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor