Honeycomb Enterprise vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Honeycomb.io and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Honeycomb.io is ranked #27 with an average rating of 9.0, while SolarWinds is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.4. Honeycomb.io holds a 1.6% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Honeycomb.io users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Honeycomb Enterprise

Read 2 Honeycomb Enterprise reviews

2,534 Views
2,407 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

3,787 Views
2,727 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Honeycomb Enterprise

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Honeycomb Enterprise are competing in server and application performance monitoring. SolarWinds has an edge in pricing and support, while Honeycomb's advanced features make it appealing for businesses investing in comprehensive solutions.

Features: SolarWinds offers customizable dashboards, extensive reporting, and a wide range of automation tools. Honeycomb is known for its event-driven architecture, robust tracing capabilities, and superior data analysis for granular insights.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds prioritizes easy setup with a straightforward installation process and extensive customer support. Honeycomb may require more effort during implementation due to its sophisticated architecture but offers responsive support to aid in navigating complexities.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds offers competitive pricing appealing to budget-conscious organizations focusing on maximizing ROI through efficient resource management. Honeycomb, with higher initial setup costs, delivers significant return through high-level analytical capabilities, justifying the expenditure for those seeking in-depth performance insights.

To learn more, read our detailed Honeycomb Enterprise vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Honeycomb Enterprise vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2025

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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

27th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Code Assistants (11th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

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 August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Honeycomb Enterprise is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Diego Gomes De Lima

Senior Software Engineer at SumUp

Easy to use and the dashboard is very intuitive

We faced some OpenTelemetry metrics lost between the communication from the service and the Honeycomb.io. I can't say if this is a Honeycomb.io issue or if there are some limitations in OpenTelemetry. Alerts are very helpful in Honeycomb.io, but we don't usually merge because we can compare queries with queries for making alerts. We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced.

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VIVEK PATHAK

Solutions Architect at Airtel

Offering reasonably good dashboarding features but needs to improve the application performance monitoring

My company uses Riverbed for application performance monitoring. I was doing research so that I could understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provide APM capabilities similar to Riverbed, which allows our company to get a packet capture of an entire session, and on the basis of it, we look at the application performance monitoring part. With SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, my company does SNMP polling, so it can drag an entire session, but it focuses more on availability, CPU memory, and server connection status. In Riverbed, my company catches an entire system, so when we deal with two applications, we have end-to-end app visibility. All the application monitoring happens through Riverbed. Our company's main problem is that, as of now, we have two different products in our organization, and we don't want to continue with the multiple products currently. I wanted to understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor already have capabilities like Riverbed, and if they do, then I wanted to figure out why our company should not go with SolarWinds and why we are using products from multiple vendors. My company needs to continue with either Riverbed or SolarWinds. I wanted to see which products are good for the organization and how much I want to continue with Riverbed.

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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

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

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

"The solution can be deployed quickly."

"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."

"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."

"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."

"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."

"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."

"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."

"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

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

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

"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."

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

"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."

"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."

"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."

"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."

"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."

"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."

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

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

"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."

"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."

"The product is expensive."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Honeycomb.io?

The solution is mainly used for stack observability. It observes service behavior or any kind of failure that may be happening. The tool is also related to research. My company is working more on t...

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

We set up Honeycomb.io on all the services so that we can have all the set traces of the communication between all the services inside the company. This helps us understand where it could be failin...

See all answers

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

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs Honeycomb Enterprise

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Compared 17% of the time

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 16% 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 5% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

August 2025

Download Honeycomb Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product 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 & 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

Clover Health, Eaze, Intercom, Fender

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

Honeycomb Enterprise vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2025

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