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ITRS Geneos vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

ITRS Geneos
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
31st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (40th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (28th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (6th), Active Directory Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ITRS Geneos is 0.9%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.0%
ITRS Geneos0.9%
Other98.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Ravi ShankarSundarasan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Cloud Architect at Blue Yonder
Real-time monitoring has improved incident response and supports proactive anomaly detection
The advantages and strong points of ITRS Geneos for me personally are seamless integration with existing systems as well as upcoming modern systems. The user interface is really good. From a management point of view, these are the key aspects with respect to the user interface and seamless integration. We get very good community support for this product. ITRS Geneos has impacted my organization positively, and I would rate it 4.5 out of 5.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I always appreciate Geneos's stability and ease of use."
"Geneos automatically sends email notifications when any batch job fails, the database is down or the website is down. It is automatically monitoring everything and reduces manual effort."
"The ability to completely tailor and customize what it's monitoring is one of its strongest points. A lot of other monitoring tools are good at certain things, but one of my colleagues described it as the “Swiss Army Knife” of monitoring tools. It can do anything you want."
"I would say that it is an easy-to-use monitoring tool. Amongst the available monitoring tools, it is a really good option."
"Geneos enables customized aggregate views and alerts for both related and disparate components, and this flexibility and insight facilitates proactive and prompt causation analysis so you can easily see everything at once and know why there is an issue within seconds rather than spend precious time trying to find out."
"ITRS Active Console has helped us monitor servers and set thresholds for different metrics, is easy to setup, works with different kinds of servers, and also helps you execute shell scripts as a response to alerts."
"Customizable Dashboard to display real time business flow monitoring is extremely useful to operations as well as business users, not only to monitor health but also capacity and performance at a glance, catering well to capital markets trading environments from on-exchange order latency to client RFQ type multi-stage tracking, with Geneos providing tools to capture data in near real-time and highly customizable ingestion of metrics that allow users to create tailored scripts and tools for their monitoring needs."
"The good thing is you get something out of it day one, you don't need years of training, and then you can build on that."
"SolarWinds SAM is very stable, and we are using it with hundreds or thousands of customers and there are no stability issues."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"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."
"As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best"."
"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."
"The recommendations are a life saver."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"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."
 

Cons

"For the solution to stay relevant in the cloud-based monitoring environment Geneos needs more plug-ins with more features. Instead of offering clients workarounds, the solution should have a cloud-based out-of-the-box version."
"Much of the reporting outside of the user interface is very basic and requires much customization to be useful."
"The Geneos configuration has greatly improved since the nascent version 1.0 days, but still requires specialist knowledge and convoluted config debugging when something’s not monitoring as expected."
"Currently, it is difficult to monitor secure websites using SSL or with SSO enabled."
"I would really like to see something from the Geneos side to set up automated reporting from ITRS. We have to send reporting to management every day. To do that we have to check the dashboard and then we have to report whether everything is fine or not. In the future, I want something, some reporting kind of feature in ITRS, where it can collect all the data and mention what is green, what is amber, what is red in a report."
"Still, it’s not that easy to create stuff to help with visibility and dashboarding in Geneos."
"A bit complex"
"The graphical interface is nice but could be improved."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"I had some stability issues. I lost my environment, but with the help of SolarWinds support, I was able to get back to a stable platform."
"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"
"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."
"From an integration point of view, if you want to have a manager of manager kind of layer, that is currently lacking in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The organization is not just purchasing a license for the product, but also managing services and professional services from ITRS. Another factor is if the implementation is going to be in production, non-production, or both."
"Pricing is the touchy subject, even here. Upper management always wants us to find a cheaper solution. But we have so much integrated with ITRS... It's expensive, but it does its job very well. And you set it and go."
"The product is priced quite high. There are pricing options for customers based on the size of the environment and plug-ins used by the monitoring system."
"ITRS Geneos is not a cheap tool. It's a moderate price for the banking industry. The reason we are not able to add the ITRS monitoring tool for the non-banking industries, and non-finance industries, is that the pricing is too high."
"The licensing cost may seem expensive upfront. However, the service is outstanding, the tool does things that no other tools can do, and the customizability more than makes up for the cost of licensing."
"The market tools are on par with this solution, but if the solution included more features, then it would be well within the range for the cost."
"Its price is reasonable. It isn't too expensive, and it isn't too cheap, but it also depends on a company's volume and negotiation."
"I can say it's not that cheap because the licensing is a little bit costly"
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"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."
"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."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"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 might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
54%
Construction Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Educational Organization
13%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise40
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ITRS Geneos?
I do not have the pricing information because it lies with the finance team.
What needs improvement with ITRS Geneos?
I do not see much room for improvement. Support for data cloud platforms could be great. Modern cloud platforms and data cloud platforms require more attention from the product.
What is your primary use case for ITRS Geneos?
I was using ITRS Geneos at HSBC. I have been using this product for more than two years. I have 20 years of experience working in IT with software in general. I am working with an on-premises deplo...
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...
 

Also Known As

Geneos
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ITRS Geneos is used by over 170 financial institutions, including JPMorgan, HSBC, RBS, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Clients range from investment banks to exchanges and brokers.
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about ITRS Geneos vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.