We performed a comparison between SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Instana Dynamic APM based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Instana Dynamic APM provides real-time data with one-second granularity, has a user-friendly GUI, and offers valuable App Connect middleware for visualizing the main flow and integration node, making it the preferred solution. Instana Dynamic APM also has a fast and easy initial setup process, and reasonable pricing, and has been reported to provide a positive ROI for businesses.
"Sometimes it's able to provide a proper RCA on its own. It's able to correlate different events that occurred and that becomes like an RCA in itself."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."
"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable. In case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out. We can drill down to the application and figure out what's going on and where the issue is."
"With auto-discovery, we didn't need to consider much. We just installed the agent on the host and it was able to detect everything from the host level up to the service level, for whatever stack was installed, and that includes containers and dockers."
"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
"If a key monitored value has crossed a threshold, it sends out an alert. And the solution is able to intelligently find out if something is beyond the range that it normally resides in."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"Identifying the problem statement is easy."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."
"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."
"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"Maybe log monitoring could be better."
"Many managers, as well as our customers, used to ask for reports, such as "top X number of queries that are slow," or "top pages that have the highest number of issues." This is something that can be improved by Instana. Currently, they don't have that kind of reporting available out-of-the-box."
"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."
"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"
"I think that Instana should improve the university and the certification process, so the users can find experts in Instana with their certification module process."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."
More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Pricing and Cost Advice →
Instana Dynamic APM is ranked 20th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 12 reviews while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is ranked 21st in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 38 reviews. Instana Dynamic APM is rated 7.4, while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Instana Dynamic APM writes "A really good GUI that is easy for non-technical users to understand". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor writes "We use this product for base and application monitoring. ". Instana Dynamic APM is most compared with Dynatrace, AppDynamics, New Relic, IBM Application Performance Management and Elastic Observability, whereas SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is most compared with Azure Monitor, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Prometheus and ServiceNow Discovery. See our Instana Dynamic APM vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report.
See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.
We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
