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LaunchDarkly vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 30, 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

LaunchDarkly
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
36th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (9th), Model Monitoring (5th), AI Governance (7th), Feature Management (3rd), AI Software Development (17th), AI Observability (37th)
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)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2769948 - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Software Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees
Has increased developer confidence by enabling safe production releases using targeted feature toggles
I wish we were using more targeting in our feature toggles and I wish we were using more feature toggles as well as feature toggle dependencies. Making one feature toggle or one set of feature toggles dependent on another one would allow us to turn them all on or turn them all off at one time. For improvements in LaunchDarkly, managing team members and access to those team members was challenging. We could add team members through Terraform and do it programmatically, and then modify it through the user interface. However, once we started modifying things through the interface, we weren't able to go back to using any configuration programmatically for the team members. It made it challenging to orchestrate team member management. The other aspect I wasn't particularly fond of was when they started adding AI to the interface and deployment interface. It reminded me of old school wizards when installing software and simplified the interface too much, removing some of the engineering control I preferred.
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

"It has really helped during the series of product lines and faster deployment and faster development."
"From the development side, it allows us to manage multiple things."
"LaunchDarkly has positively impacted my organization as the value we deliver to customers is much faster, and we saved a lot by using this feature instead of implementing it ourselves."
"LaunchDarkly has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to confidently ship products across different environments, knowing we can easily turn off any feature that faces issues."
"These features in my current project have helped my team because they allow us to specifically target users to start turning on functionality, we can monitor the behavior and make sure that it's behaving as expected when the feature toggle is turned on, and then we can increase the usage."
"The setup is easy."
"I like that it offers the ability to control the flags."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"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."
"The product integrates with Remedy."
"SolarWinds fit the bill because it gave many possibilities in monitoring with a good amount of out of the box capabilities."
"The solution has good alerts; notifications are sent via email to technicians, and you can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well, which is excellent."
"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."
"This feature from Solarwinds SAM helped us to monitor and alert whenever the SSL cert is going to expire on the server to avoid any downtime of the services running on the server specially on ADFS platform where we have Video conference, Webex, Office 365 and single sign-on services."
"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, as we can go in-depth into services and processes."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
 

Cons

"I strongly believe they need to develop a strategy for handling situations where LaunchDarkly goes down."
"When the system has an excessive number of feature flags, managing them can become cumbersome."
"I have used LaunchDarkly for around two and a half years and I haven't faced any issues with it."
"We need experience to use it, and the initial setup can be difficult. Also, sometimes it has breakdowns."
"LaunchDarkly can be improved by managing old flags. We have an issue with old flags; it became very messy very fast and we need to be very disciplined about managing these flags."
"I did not particularly like the rule area; there are many things to add into the rule to enable it, and I think we could make it easier or more customizable at the organizational level."
"Fetching information about multiple flags in a single action would be beneficial."
"Right now, no improvements are needed."
"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."
"They are complex to operate; users need to know what they want during setup."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges."
"MS Azure Service and user experience monitoring is an area in which the SolarWinds tools are lacking; without a doubt, this is the Achilles heel of the Orion monitoring tools, and I am currently reviewing other vendors for Azure service monitoring tools."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"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."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"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."
"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."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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 Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LaunchDarkly?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that pricing is great, affordable, and fair.
What needs improvement with LaunchDarkly?
LaunchDarkly can be improved by managing old flags. We have an issue with old flags; it became very messy very fast and we need to be very disciplined about managing these flags. I also heard from ...
What is your primary use case for LaunchDarkly?
My main use case for LaunchDarkly is feature flagging and gradual rollouts. Instead of releasing a new feature to all users at once, we can first enable it for internal users, then for a small grou...
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

LaunchDarkly AgentControl, LaunchDarkly CodeControl
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about LaunchDarkly vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.