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ManageEngine ADManager Plus vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 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

ManageEngine ADManager Plus
Ranking in Active Directory Management
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Active Directory Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Server Monitoring (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of ManageEngine ADManager Plus is 10.0%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.9%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Active Directory Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ManageEngine ADManager Plus10.0%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor2.9%
Other87.1%
Active Directory Management
 

Featured Reviews

AliImran - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Administrator at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Reporting features have supported regular user management while some automation capabilities remain unused
While the features in ManageEngine ADManager Plus are very good, not all features are necessary for every organization. Automation is a strong feature within the product but is not currently required due to the organization's environment and needs. There are always possibilities for improvements in the initial setup of ManageEngine ADManager Plus.
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

"The scalability is also good. ADManager Plus is being used by seven to eight system administrators right now, and it has been working fine."
"Technical support from ManageEngine is very satisfactory."
"The solution is perfect for moving myself from first to second-level support and empowering technicians to handle certain tasks such as resetting passwords, reporting expiring passwords, etc."
"The most valuable features of the solution are vulnerability management and system patching functionalities."
"The most valuable feature of this product is that it makes it easy to administer your active directory."
"It makes our job easier, especially for managing data for a bulk of users."
"My company chose ADManager Plus because it is cost effective and is a versatile solution."
"The most valuable feature for me is automation."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"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."
"The OOTB (Out of the Box) implementation does have very good node specific pages and can provide a wealth of information."
"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."
"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."
"I have found the visibility into server health with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor very beneficial, which we use on a daily basis."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"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."
 

Cons

"The bulk email ID creation must be improved. I had to create 50 to 60 IDs manually because when I tried the bulk option, it didn't work. I still had to cross-verify because some fields were empty."
"Lacks sufficient integration with management tools."
"All of it needs to be improved. It has corrupted my environment."
"Scalability, including the ability to add new users, is rated as six out of ten."
"There is room for improvement in support, they should work on overall competence and turn-around time."
"The solution is very complex, especially when there's an active directory of more than 1,000 users, which makes it hard to administrate. They need to improve the management of the administrative process."
"Some things are not very intuitive."
"Some of my clients experience issues with the GPO results, which do not always generate the real outcomes. This needs to be resolved by technicians."
"The technical support is nothing special."
"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."
"PerfStack can be made more effective."
"Having two places to build and manage alerts is not efficient and not all alerting tools are available in the trap manager."
"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."
"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 technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I need to pay for the license, and I believe that it could be made cheaper."
"The cost of this product is a little higher than I would expect for a tool like this."
"I am satisfied with the solution’s pricing."
"The pricing depends on scope and makes sense for use cases with multiple domains."
"It is not expensive."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"I downloaded the trial version, only."
"The product is expensive."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"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 price is too high."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing 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 Enterprise8
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ManageEngine ADManager Plus?
While the features in ManageEngine ADManager Plus are very good, not all features are necessary for every organization. Automation is a strong feature within the product but is not currently requir...
What is your primary use case for ManageEngine ADManager Plus?
ManageEngine ADManager Plus is used for multiple tasks, especially for reporting purposes that cannot typically be obtained from Active Directory or present difficulties requiring additional expert...
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

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about ManageEngine ADManager Plus vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.